7th June 2008

The Di Gennaro Foundation organises, in collaboration with the “Carlo Levi” House of Culture, a meeting in Tortoreto with Director Carlo Lizzani* for the presentation of the volume “Il mio lungo viaggio nel secolo breve”

The book goes back to the past from his years of intellectual development among Cineguf film experts up to his involvement in political conflict and opposition. From the despair of post war in a Rome where cinema was dying, to the discovery of a new frontier of European culture in a Bohemian Milan. From his first attempts as scriptwriter and assistant director with Rossellini in “ Germania anno zero” and in the writing of “Riso amaro” by De Santis, to the beginning of a personal quest as a writer, which would remain uninterrupted for over 50 years. All this regardless of the difficulties of a sharp-eyed board of censors, the telluric movements of the sixties and seventies, and the distortion of the cinematographic industry forced to deal with the growing power of the mass- media of television…. And so, retracing the steps of a personal journey- remaining faithful to aesthetic and ethical instances of neorealism, through an active political commitment and a compelling need to narrate the recent past as well as the present yet to be understood-, Carlo Lizzani outlines the essential parts of an intellectual and artistic autobiography in which a sense of civil and cultural commitment is never neglected. This passion which would bring him to recount, as a documentarist, the great times and crises of the 9 th Century (from China to Vietnem, to Angola…) as well as to accept challenges such as that of reintroducing the Biennial of Venice after the wave of protest in 1968.

Through the constant trick of going back to the past (portrayed in letters, diary entries, articles, interventions) and reflections regarding the present, Lizzani confronts-with the lucidity of a person who has experienced the devastation of war, the appeal of great utopias, the disastrous legacy of an absolutist vision of History- the labour of a mind that has never given up on heading for the future

*Carlo Lizzani (Rome, 1922) is one of the most important directors and intellectual militants of the Italian, cultural scene. Among his most notable films are Achtung! Banditi! , Cronache di poveri amanti , Il processo di Verona , La vita agra , Fontamara and Celluloide. La muraglia cinese was the first full length film to be shown in China. Professor of Directing and Scriptwriting at CSC and director of the Venice Film Festival(1979-1983), he wrote a History of Italian Cinema(1953, 1992), which has been published in many countries.