Tonino Guerra | |
|---|---|
 Guerra in 2011 | |
| Born | Antonio Guerra (1920-03-16)16 March 1920 Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy |
| Died | 21 March 2012(2012-03-21) (aged 92) Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy |
| Occupations | Writer, poet, screenwriter |
Antonio "Tonino"Guerra[1] (16 March 1920 – 21 March 2012) was an Italian poet, writer andscreenwriter who collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors, such asAndrei Tarkovsky,Michelangelo Antonioni,Theo Angelopoulos, andFederico Fellini.[2]
Guerra was born inSantarcangelo di Romagna.[3]According to his obituary inThe Guardian, Guerra first started writing poetry when interned in a prison camp in Germany, after being rounded up at the age of 22 with other antifascists from Santarcangelo.The Guardian wrote: "To pass the time he told his companions stories: when he came home in 1945 he found a publisher for a book of them,I Scarabocc (Cockroaches, but also 'scribblings')."[3] At 30, he moved to Rome and worked as a schoolteacher.[3] During this time he metElio Petri, the future director ofInvestigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), who worked as assistant toGiuseppe De Santis. Guerra was able to get his first screenwriting credit after he and Petri went to the Abruzzi mountains to find out about wolf-hunting; "Though they discovered that wolf hunters no longer existed, De Santis went ahead anyway with the film,Uomini e Lupi (Men and Wolves, 1957)".[3]
Although a follower ofCesare Zavattini,[4] who essentially defined the style and morals ofItalian neorealism, Guerra deviated from his mentor: while Zavattini brought the directors with whom he collaborated over to his own social and moral speculation, Guerra went to the filmmakers and helped them advance their own concept.[citation needed] He worked with such filmmakers asMichelangelo Antonioni, inL'Avventura,La Notte,L'Eclisse,Red Desert,Blowup,Zabriskie Point andIdentification of a Woman;Federico Fellini, inAmarcord;Theo Angelopoulos, inLandscape in the Mist,Eternity and a Day andTrilogy: The Weeping Meadow;Andrei Tarkovsky, inNostalghia andVoyage in Time; andFrancesco Rosi, inThe Mattei Affair,Lucky Luciano,Illustrious Corpses andChrist Stopped at Eboli.
In 1990, Guerra in collaboration withGiovanni Urbinati to create the exhibition "La Cattedrale dove va a dormire il mare/The Cathedral where the sea goes to sleep."[5][6] at the deconsecrated church in Budrio near Bologna. In 1995, he was awarded with an Honorable Diploma at the19th Moscow International Film Festival.[7]
