cinema2020

Iran

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The first examples of cinema arrived at the beginning of the twentieth century, introduced by the official photographers of the royal house, who were commissioned by the shāh to document the activity of the sovereigns and religious rites and then project the short films to the court dignitaries, in occasion of official ceremonies. If the first film shot in I. (but developed and screened only years later in Russia) is due to Mehdi Rusi Khan, a photographer of Russian origin who in 1896 filmed the coronation of Mozzafer al-Din Shah, the first Iranian to use a camera was Mirza Ebrahim Khan 'Akkas-Bashi, who, following the shāh Mozzaffer during a trip to Europe, shot some images at the Ostend flower market on 18 August 1900. This film, believed to be lost, was instead found in the Golestan palace in Tehran, and used by Mohsen Makhmalbaf in his Gozide-ye tasāvir-e dorān-e Qājār (1992, Selected images of the Qajar era). Instead, the antiquarian Ebrahim Khan Sahhaf Bashi was responsible for opening the first public cinema hall in 1902, an arena set up in the courtyard of his shop mainly for the use of high society in Tehran, which was only inaugurated in 1905, by the same antique dealer, a real cinema, intended for the projection of films purchased in the West.

These were the beginnings of the Iranian film industry which, thanks to the considerable favor of the public, developed into a series of increasingly better equipped cinemas and which slowly began to spread from the capital to the provinces as well. An industrial sketch which, moreover, had to face both the opposition of the Islamic religious hierarchy and the social and cultural backwardness of the country. In this context, the first Iranian to shoot, albeit for private use, fiction films using family and friends was Khan Bab Khan Mo'tazedi, an engineer trained in Paris who had worked for Gaumont and was appointed official photographer of Reza Khan, the new shāh d'I. that in 1921, with a coup,

Aside from Mo'tazedi's attempts, Iranian production continued to be documentary in nature, making most of the films shown in Tehran's theaters import US and European. It was however thanks to the collaboration of Mo'tazedi as a photographer that in 1930 the first Iranian film was made, silent and in black and white, Avani Ohanian's Ābi va Rābi (Abi and Rabi), an Armenian who, arrived in Tehran after having studied at the Moscow Film Academy, he founded the first Iranian film school. The film, the film of which is not preserved, was shot by Ohanian with his students, and consisted of a series of skits centered around two comic characters, one tall and thin, the other short and fat. The extraordinary success obtained pushed the director to shoot a second film in 1932, Hāji Āqā, aktor-e sinemā (Haji Aqa, film actor), in which, through the story of a severe and reactionary father grappling with his daughter who studies secretly acting, the contempt for cinema nourished in Iranian religious circles is stigmatized. This film, however, did not meet the favor of the public and Ohanian left the country to move to India. The success of the attempt to promote an Iranian production made by Ebrahim Moradi which, in addition to seeing his first film fail, due to technical difficulties, namely Enteqām-e barādar (1932, Revenge of his brother), which was filming on the Caspian Sea, he had to face the failure of Bolhavas (1933, The sensual man), in which,

These were still silent productions, which suffered from the comparison with foreign films, already sound, of which, in the meantime, the Iranian public had learned to appreciate the qualities. The structural limitations of the small Iranian film industry did not allow for further efforts; in fact when in 1933 the first sound film in Farsi language was titled Dokhtar-e Lor (The Lor girl) by Ardeshir Irani, it was actually produced in Bombay and written by the Iranian poet who emigrated to India, 'Abdol-Hosein Sepanta, who he was also its interpreter. The success of the film - a melodramatic adventure that pits a government agent against a bandit, both interested in a beautiful waitress - pushed Sepanta to always make four more films in India, inspired by epic literature: Ferdowsi (1934), biography of the Iranian epic poet; Shirin va Farhād (1935, Shirin and Farhad), melodramatic love story; Chashmhā-ye siāh (1935, Black eyes), still a love story, but with a historical background, and Leyli va Majnun (1936, Layla and Majnun), on the union of two young people tragically opposed by families. The success at home was not enough for Sepanta to convince the government to grant him his support when, in 1936, he returned to I. with the intention of starting a modern film production. The situation did not improve in the following years, which indeed saw Iranian screens increasingly invaded by foreign films, especially US, due to the dual occupation of the country by Allied Anglo-Russian troops. love; Chashmhā-ye siāh (1935, Black eyes), still a love story, but with a historical background, and Leyli va Majnun (1936, Layla and Majnun), on the union of two young people tragically opposed by families. The success at home was not enough for Sepanta to convince the government to grant him his support when, in 1936, he returned to I. with the intention of starting a modern film production. The situation did not improve in the following years, which indeed saw Iranian screens increasingly invaded by foreign films, especially US, due to the dual occupation of the country by Allied Anglo-Russian troops. love; Chashmhā-ye siāh (1935, Black eyes), still a love story, but with a historical background, and Leyli va Majnun (1936, Layla and Majnun), on the union of two young people tragically opposed by families. The success at home was not enough for Sepanta to convince the government to give him his support when, in 1936, he returned to I. with the intention of starting a modern film production. The situation did not improve in the following years, which indeed saw Iranian screens increasingly invaded by foreign films, especially US, due to the dual occupation of the country by Allied Anglo-Russian troops. union of two young people tragically opposed by families. The success at home was not enough for Sepanta to convince the government to give him his support when, in 1936, he returned to I. with the intention of starting a modern film production. The situation did not improve in the following years, which indeed saw Iranian screens increasingly invaded by foreign films, especially US, due to the dual occupation of the country by Allied Anglo-Russian troops. union of two young people tragically opposed by families. The success at home was not enough for Sepanta to convince the government to give him his support when, in 1936, he returned to I. with the intention of starting a modern film production. The situation did not improve in the following years, which indeed saw Iranian screens increasingly invaded by foreign films, especially US, due to the dual occupation of the country by Allied Anglo-Russian troops.

It was paradoxically the increasingly widespread practice of dubbing foreign films in the late 1940s to give a new push to national production. One of the main architects was Esma'il Kushan who, after having achieved considerable success by importing foreign films dubbed into Turkey in I., in 1948 he founded a production company in his country, with which he made the first sound film shot in I., Tufān-e zendegi (1948, The storm of life) directed by the famous theater actor Ali Daryabegi. The scant success of the film, a family drama focused on the practice of combining weddings, did not discourage Kushan, who thus began to produce clearly popular works such as the musical comedy, Variete-ye bahāri (1949, Spring Variety), and above all melodrama, Sharmsār (1950, Shame), meeting the favor of the public. They were the prodromes of an Iranian commercial cinema which, with genre works (mainly dramas and melodramas, but also comedies, detective films and adventure films) with a popular and not infrequently inspired system inspired by the great successes of Western cinema (of which were practically unauthorized remakes), allowed the start in the fifties and the consolidation in the sixties of a particularly flourishing season, during which the production companies multiplied and the number of films produced began to increase tenfold. However, there was no shortage of directors who attempted to create a cinema of refined artistic quality and of more authentic social and cultural significance. Farrokh Ghaffari, e.g. after studying cinema in Paris, she returned home where she made Jonub-e shahr (1958, The South of the city), a realistic portrait of the difficulties faced by a woman to survive the death of her husband; and Shab-e quzi (1964, The Night of the Hunchback), a film with episodes of underworld setting, inspired by some tales of the Thousand and One Nights, only to return to being talked about only in 1976 with the historian Zanburak (L ' gunner). Like Ghaffari, Ebrahim Golestan also came from documentary cinema (Yek ātash, 1961, Un fuoco, and Tappehā-ye Marlik, 1963, The hills of Marlik) and stood out for the realism of Khesht va ayene (1964, The brick and the mirror) and later for Asrār-e ganj-e darre-ye jenni (1974, The secrets of the treasure of the valley of the demons): works of great rigor, which were also successful in international festivals,

The situation only matured in the late sixties, when a group of young directors, mostly trained abroad, recognized themselves in the current of the Nouvelle vague, opening themselves to new thematic and artistic perspectives. A movement was formed which - also taking advantage of the propitious moment offered by the government's most available attitude towards cinema, following the reform program launched by the shāh in 1963 - produced a series of works in which human issues were addressed and social with more marked psychological truth and figurative significance, although often forced to indulge in a marked symbolism in order to escape the still tight links of censorship. Notable authors include the names of Dariyush Mehrju'i, Mas'ud Kimiya'i, Naser Taqva ' ie above all Amir Naderi and Bahram Beyza'i. Graduating in philosophy in the United States, Mehrju'i made his debut with the excellent detective Almās-e 33 (1967, Diamante 33), but stood out both at home and abroad by winning the Fipresci prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1970 with Gāv (1969, La vacca), written with the collaboration of the well-known Iranian writer Gholam Hosein Sa'edi. A rural drama dedicated to the hard life of a farmer who sees a cow die, his only source of livelihood, the film was opposed by censorship, which did not like the image of the country offered to the international audience. This did not prevent Mehrju'i from making Postchi (The Postman) in 1972, in which, through the history of a civil servant, a critical cross-section of the contradictions inherent in the forced development to which the country was subjected to by neo-colonialism is offered, and Dāyere-ye minā (1974, The Blue Circle), dedicated to the social drama of health care. Kimiya'i prevailed with Qeysar (1969), considered one of the most important films of Iranian cinema, and Khāk (1973, Terra), dedicated to the relationship between peasants, their fields and landowners, which were followed by numerous other works that, strong of a poetics based on the representation of urban marginalization and on the comparison between individual dramas and mass movements, they placed the director in the group of the most representative authors of the period, only to find him marginalized in the post-revolutionary period. Taqva'i, already known for his documentary work and especially for some short films, was imposed with the debut feature Ārāmesh dar hozur-e digarān (1972, Calma in the presence of others), an acute reflection on the scourge of corruption told through the character of an army general, which was followed by intense activity both in the cinema both on television. But it was Naderi and Beyza'i who represented the highest expressive possibilities of the Iranian nouvelle vague. Naderi concretized in his works a pure cinematographic instinct destined to represent the destiny of struggle and resistance in the solitude of men. His work went from an acutely realistic initial phase characterized by films such as Khodā hāfez rafiq (1971, Goodbye friend) and Tangnā (1973, The Dead End) to a second symbolic and impressionist season (Davande, 1985, The runner; Āb, bād , khāk, 1987, water, wind, land). Subsequently he moved to the United States where he continued to create works of considerable value. Beyza'i, writer, scholar, theater man, one of the main names in Iranian cinema, after making himself known with the short film Safar (1972, Journey), stood out for his ability to combine the themes of Persian culture with a glance cinematically very intense and a sincere communicativeness. Among his works Ragbār (1972, Acquazzone), debut film and realistic lunge on life in Tehran seen through the eyes of a master; Gharibe va me (1975, The stranger and the fog), set in a small seaside village tight in the grip of intolerance; Kalāgh (1976, Il corvo), the story of a journalist who carries out a television investigation on a missing girl; and Cherike-ye Tārā (1978, The Ballad of Tara), an adventurous fairy tale about an ancient sword inherited from a woman. Beyza'i was able to keep his inspiration even after the 1979 revolution, as evidenced by the later Bashu, gharibe-ye kuchek (1988; Bashu, the little foreigner), still an intense drama focused on the theme of intolerance lived on background of the conflict with Iraq through the relationship that is being established between a mother from a northern village and an orphan of war adopted against her will.

The flourishing of authors and works related to the movement of the nouvelle vague, which coincided with the period of greatest development of the national film industry (in 1972 90 films were produced, about 400 cinemas were active and the spectators exceeded 100 million), however, represented a marginal phenomenon in the context of Iranian production, which remained otherwise dominated by genre films intended for a popular audience. But the galloping inflation that weighed on the country did not fail to make its negative effects felt also on the film industry which, starting from 1976, began to show serious signs of crisis, drastically decreasing production in favor of a new increase in the distribution of foreign films. The authors of the nouvelle vague (already largely organized in an autonomous cooperative, after the resignation from the single trade union of show business workers resigned by many in 1974 in protest against the government's cultural policy) tried not to fail in their commitment , as evidenced by works such as Bāgh-e sangi (1976, The garden of stones) by Parviz Kimiavi, the story of an old fanatic who creates a garden of stones to offer to God, and Khāk-e sar be-mohr (1977, La terra sealed) by newcomer Marva Nabili, a realist drama about the life of a young peasant woman in a village of rigid Muslim faith. It was in this period, moreover, that a personality emerged destined to have a prominent role in Iranian cinema: after the resignation from the single union of show business workers resigned by many in 1974 as a protest against the government's cultural policy) they tried not to fail in their commitment, as evidenced by works such as Bāgh-e sangi (1976, The garden of stones ) by Parviz Kimiavi, the story of an old fanatic who creates a garden of stones to offer to God, and Khāk-e sar be-mohr (1977, The sealed land) by debutant Marva Nabili, a realistic drama about the life of a young peasant woman in a village of strict Muslim faith. It was in this period, moreover, that a personality emerged destined to have a prominent role in Iranian cinema: after the resignation from the single union of show business workers resigned by many in 1974 as a protest against the government's cultural policy) they tried not to fail in their commitment, as evidenced by works such as Bāgh-e sangi (1976, The garden of stones ) by Parviz Kimiavi, the story of an old fanatic who creates a garden of stones to offer to God, and Khāk-e sar be-mohr (1977, The sealed land) by debutant Marva Nabili, a realistic drama about the life of a young peasant woman in a village of strict Muslim faith. It was in this period, moreover, that a personality emerged destined to have a prominent role in Iranian cinema: as evidenced by works such as Bāgh-e sangi (1976, The garden of stones) by Parviz Kimiavi, the story of an old fanatic who creates a garden of stones to offer to God, and Khāk-e sar be-mohr (1977, The sealed earth ) by newcomer Marva Nabili, a realist drama about the life of a young peasant woman in a village of rigid Muslim faith. It was in this period, moreover, that a personality emerged destined to have a prominent role in Iranian cinema: as evidenced by works such as Bāgh-e sangi (1976, The garden of stones) by Parviz Kimiavi, the story of an old fanatic who creates a garden of stones to offer to God, and Khāk-e sar be-mohr (1977, The sealed earth ) by newcomer Marva Nabili, a realist drama about the life of a young peasant woman in a village of rigid Muslim faith. It was in this period, moreover, that a personality emerged destined to have a prominent role in Iranian cinema:Abbas Kiarostami. Working initially for the Institute for the intellectual development of children and adolescents, he immediately became noted for the realistic tension that characterized his works made with non-professional actors. His second work, Gozāresh (1977, The report), introduced I. for the first time the direct taking of sound. But his cinema is mainly due to the intuition of the poetic possibilities inherent in the simple representation of the childhood universe, which characterizes his works of the eighties (Khāne-ye dust kojāst ?, 1987, Where is my friend's house?) and then the expression of a clear aesthetic of interiority based on the representation of the most intimate truth of life in films such as Namā-ye nazdik (1990; Close up), Zir-e derakhtān-e zeytun (1994; Under the olive trees) and Ta '

The flare-up of the popular uprising against the shāh regime and the 1979 revolution, which brought I. to become an Islamic Republic led by the Ayatollāh Khomeyni, they also had repercussions on cinema, which saw the production prospects and artistic freedoms change due to the repression exercised by the censorship bodies imposed by the new regime. In this climate, if some directors of the nouvelle vague preferred to expatriate (F. Ghaffari, E. Golestan, P. Kimiavi, later also A. Naderi), others found ways to adapt to the changed conditions, giving life - especially starting from the late the eighties, when the production structure was consolidated again - to a new season of Iranian cinema, prolific of works and authors always able to impose themselves on the attention of international critics: in fact a first phase, marked by the refusal of the western world, in which authors and works adhering to post-revolutionary dictates were overcome (while censorship unlocked and placed on the market films made before 1979), Iranian cinema found a productive and expressive formula that knew how to regenerate both its industrial structure and its authors. A certain balance was restored in the international relations, thanks to the moderately reforming policy of the new president Ali Rafsanjani, elected in 1989, and the disappearance of Khomeyni, the I. he has been able to make his cinema a bridge to the western world. Between the eighties and nineties, a group of authors has gained international recognition and has won prizes in all the main festivals, so much as to constitute an authentic cultural case for a West increasingly fascinated by a series of works suspended between metaphorical realism and metaphysical lyricism. Among these authors, he proved to be particularly representativeMohsen Makhmalbaf, a prestigious figure abroad as loved by the public at home. A full expression of post-revolutionary culture, this director has been able to modulate his cinema on increasingly rigorous solutions, going from the metaphorical roar of his first successes - Dastforush (1986; L'ambulante) and Baysikelran (1988; Il ciclista) - to the aesthetic rarefaction of his last, more ambitious works: Gabbe (1995), Nun va goldun (1995; Bread and flower), Sokout (1998; Silence), Safar-e Qandahār (2001; Journey to Kandahar). Makhmalbaf founded, in the nineties, a film school which is also a production company, aimed at guaranteeing independence to the authors who work there. In this context, the director's daughter, Samira Makhmalbaf, made her debut, who, after Sib (1998; La mela), this author has shown that she knows how to combine humor and drama by letting emerge in the absurd tones of the events that tells an intelligent analysis of the relationships of power. Always careful to grasp the human dynamics taking place in suburban backgrounds, Bani-Etemad has made her masterpiece with Nargess (1992, Narciso), a daring melodrama that tells a love triangle between a thief, a fatal woman and an honest young woman . He then confirmed the high level of his inspiration with Zir-e pust-e shahr (2001, Under the skin of the city), an interweaving of dreams of escape abroad and the need for resignation in the heart of a Tehran family. directors who established themselves in the nineties of particular importance Jafar Panahi who, in addition to a series of short films, he has made three films welcomed with interest by international critics and awarded at festivals: Bādkonak-e sefid (1995; The white balloon), Ayne (1997, The mirror), Dāyere (2000; The circle), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and Babak Payami, who returned to Tehran after studying in Canada, successfully made his debut in 1998 with Yek ruz bishtar (2000, One day more) - a story of a secret love told through the city streets - and obtained recognition in Venice with the subsequent Rāy-e makhfi (2001; The vote is secret), set in a remote area of ​​I. on election day, following the journey of an employee to collect the ballot papers. The Circle), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and Babak Payami, who returned to Tehran after studying in Canada and made his successful debut in 1998 with Yek ruz bishtar (2000, One more day) - story of a secret love told through the city streets - and obtained recognition in Venice with the subsequent Rāy-e makhfi (2001; The vote is secret), set in a remote area of ​​the I. on election day, following the journey of an employee to collect the ballot papers. The Circle), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and Babak Payami, who returned to Tehran after studying in Canada and made his successful debut in 1998 with Yek ruz bishtar (2000, One more day) - story of a secret love told through the city streets - and obtained recognition in Venice with the subsequent Rāy-e makhfi (2001; The vote is secret), set in a remote area of ​​the I. on election day, following the journey of an employee to collect the ballot papers. One more day) - the story of a secret love told through the city streets - and he obtained recognition in Venice with the subsequent Rāy-e makhfi (2001; The vote is secret), set in a remote area of ​​I. on election day, following the journey of an employee to collect the ballot papers. One more day) - the story of a secret love told through the city streets - and he obtained recognition in Venice with the subsequent Rāy-e makhfi (2001; The vote is secret), set in a remote area of ​​I. on election day, following the journey of an employee to collect the ballot papers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Ghaffari, Le cinéma en Iran , Tehran 1973.

B. Maghsoudlou , Iranian cinema , New York 1987.

Iran and its screens , curated by F. Bono, Venice 1990.

Y. Thoraval, Les cinémas du Moyen-Orient. Iran-Egypte-Turquie , Paris 2000.

Middle Eastern and North African film, ed. O. Leaman, London-New York 2001, pp. 130-222.

Zimbabwe

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Together with the South African Republic, the former Southern Rhodesia (independent since 1980) is the only state in southern Africa to present an important cinematography, made by both white filmmakers and black directors.

A central role was played by Michael Raeburn, author of fundamental films such as Rhodesia countdown (1970), in which the last days of English domination and the beginning of the guerrillas are captured with a satirical gaze; The grass is singing (1982), which describes the discovery of rural life by a white woman at the time of racial segregation; Jit (1990), story of the vicissitudes of a teenager who arrives in the city in search of his musician brother and falls in love with a girl; and finally Home sweet home (1999, choreography by his wife Heidi Draper), a splendid family home movie and narration of a journey between Paris, Boston and the Z. which brings personal and social memories to the surface. In the early period of the film history of the Z. there are also works by other directors,

In addition to Raeburn, Ingrid Sinclair, who has settled in the Z. since 1985, has a prominent place. His too is a cinema (often in the form of a documentary) linked to memory, which has revealed itself to be openly political with Flame (1996), the first feature film made. by the director and set among the guerrillas fighting for freedom. With her husband, director Simon Bright, Sinclair founded the production company Zimmedia. Other filmmakers who contributed to the creation of the Z. cinema were Godwin Mawuru, Farai Sevenzo, Isaac Meli Mabhikwa, Manu Kurewa. With Neria (1992), a melodrama with unforgettable female figures, Mawuru directed the film of the nineties with the greatest impact made in the country. Sevenzo's Rwendo (1993) is set in Cape Town and tells the destinies of a white settler and a black South African. More time (1993) by Meli Mabhikwa is a slender didactic comedy on how to prevent AIDS. Kurewa divided his filmography between Great Britain (Sugar for my honey, 1995; One Sunday morning, 1996) and Z. (Mangwana, 1997), telling stories of confrontation and racial contamination. Southern takes place every two years in the capital Harare African Film Festival, one of the major cinematographic events on the continent. BIBLIOGRAPHY

The association des trois mondes, FESPACO, Les cinémas d'Afrique - Dictionnaire , Paris 2000, passim.

G. Gariazzo, South African cinema , in History of world cinema , curated by GP Brunetta, 4th vol., Americas, Africa, Asia, Oceania. National cinemas , Turin 2001, pp. 510 and 1268.

G. Gariazzo, Short history of African cinema , Turin 2001, pp. 160-63.

AngolaCINEMATOGRAPHY

The Angolan is one of the most politicized cinemas on the African continent, in keeping with the country's historical path. The A., in Portuguese hands since the 16th century, was for a long time the typical exploitation colony; in 1961 various independence movements (the most important of which was the MPLA, Popular Movement of Libertação de Angola) began guerrilla operations. After independence (1975), an uninterrupted civil war, albeit interspersed with long periods of respite, began between the various organizations, divided by ethnic and political reasons.The cinema mirrored the vicissitudes of the anti-colonial opposition and the civil war. In the 1960s, during the liberation war, the documentaries of the MPLA information and propaganda department constituted precious counter-information materials, which anticipated the subsequent works of the protagonists of the Angolan cinema. The first feature-length film, based on a work by the Angolan writer L. Vieira, was Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga (1972) (a French woman with a father from Guadeloupe); shot in Congo, it tells with great expressive force, through the portrait of a stubborn female character, the rebellion of a people against the Portuguese dictatorship of A. Salazar: for this reason it was possible to project it into A. only after the end of colonial domination. was Sambizanga (1972) by Sarah Maldoror (a French woman with a father from Guadeloupe); shot in Congo, it tells with great expressive force, through the portrait of a stubborn female character, the rebellion of a people against the Portuguese dictatorship of A. Salazar: for this reason it was possible to project it into A. only after the end of colonial domination. was Sambizanga (1972) by Sarah Maldoror (a French woman with a father from Guadeloupe); shot in Congo, it tells with great expressive force, through the portrait of a stubborn female character, the rebellion of a people against the Portuguese dictatorship of A. Salazar: for this reason it was possible to project it into A. only after the end of colonial domination. 

The years immediately following independence were the most significant for Angolan cinematography, from 1977 to the early 1980s guaranteed and supported by the Instituto Angolano do Cinema, directed by L. Vieira. Important films include Antonio Ole's documentaries Resistencia popular en Benguela (1975), Carlos de Sousa and Costa's Retrospectiva (1976), the ten episodes of Presente Angolan from the Tempo mumuila (1979-1981) series by Rui Duarte de Carvalho ( a Portuguese who became an Angolan citizen after independence) and Memoria de um dia (1982) by Orlando Fortunato de Oliveira, between documentary and fiction, one of the best works. To remember also the numerous documentaries made in that period by the brothers Carlos, Francisco and Vitor Henriques: in particular, respectively, Asas da revolução, canhoes da libertade (1979), O golpe (1977), Revolução revolução (1980). Duarte de Carvalho was the first to shoot a locally produced fiction feature, Nelisita (1982): a political and visionary film, characterized by the use of black and white and based on the oral tradition of Nyaneka, a population of the South-East of the country. 

Film production then went into a serious crisis: Duarte de Carvalho had to wait until 1989 to shoot (but in Cape Verde) his second feature film, Moia, or recado das ilhas, also known as Le message des îles, built on the path of a woman who returns home to find her roots; and later the activity was kept alive only by a few short film authors, such as Zézé Gamboa (of which we remember Mopiopio, also known as Souffle d'Angola, 1990, a reconnaissance of the capital Luanda and its musical groups) and Mariano Bartolomeu (Un lugar limpio y bien iluminado, 1991; Quem fas correr Quim ?, 1992). In more recent years, the use of the video has allowed the A. not to disappear completely from the maps of African cinema. Social and political contexts,

MozambiqueCINEMATOGRAPHY

In M. the start of a national cinematography dates back to very recent times as it coincided with the period of the struggle for independence. 1975, the crucial year, in fact led the country to liberation from Portuguese domination and the creation of the first monthly newsreels, Kuxa kanema (Birth of the image), produced by the new Instituto Nacional de Cinema (which would have been busy until 1986 also in the diffusion of films on the whole national territory). In this way, after the war documentaries that testified the actions of the Frente de Libertaçao de Moçambique (FRELIMO, Marxist-inspired, active in an initial phase in the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule and subsequently, after the proclamation of independence, single party in power), the first national films were born, all politically oriented. Fernando Silva (owner of Almeida and Silva), who passed away in 1999, linked his name to Mozambican cinema with works such as: Um ano de independência (1976), a description of the past under Portuguese domination; Mapai (1976), short documenting the tension between M. and Rhodesia in the early seventies; A tempestade da terra (1996), a story of friendship intertwined with the memory of repression. Collective films are De Rovuma a Maputo (1977), Vinte cinco (1977), the latter directed by Celso Luca and José Celso Martinez Correa, and Estas são armas (1980). In a film in which both local and foreign directors have worked, a prominent place is occupied by Ruy Guerra, director of the Instituto Nacional de Cinema and author of the masterpiece Mueda, memórias e massacre (1979), which documents the annual representation of the inhabitants of Mueda to commemorate the massacre carried out by the Portuguese in 1960. In 1977 the Conferência Africana de Cooperação Cinematografica (CACC) was established in Maputo, with the aim of organizing a film distribution independent from the control of foreign companies , but the attempt failed. José Antonio Ribeiro Cardoso is responsible for the first totally Mozambican fiction feature, O vento sopra do Norte (1987), set during the war of liberation. His is also the foray into popular music Canta meu irmão, ajuda-me a cantar (1982) .M's cinematography suffered a severe blow on February 12, 1991, when a fire destroyed the Instituto Nacional de Cinema, or the technical structures and the film archive of the whole nation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mozambique , in the Association des trois mondes, Dictionnaire du cinéma africain , 1st vol., Paris 1991, ad vocem.

A. Elena , Cinema of Sub-Saharan Africa , and S. Toffetti , Hic sunt leones. Black African cinema , in History of world cinema , curated by GP Brunetta, 4th vol., Americas, Africa, Asia, Oceania. National cinemas , Turin 2001, pp. 400-01, 476-77 and 1234.

G. Gariazzo , Short history of African cinema , Turin 2001, pp. 122-24.

MadagascarCINEMATOGRAPHY

As in many other African countries, the development of the cinematography of the former French colony, which became independent in 1960, did not await independence. One of the pioneers of cinema in sub-Saharan Africa, the director Raberono, is in fact Malagasy: he made the film La mort de Rasalama (the date is uncertain: 1937 or 1947) to commemorate the first Christian martyr of M. in centenary of death. Apart from this work, the island's cinematography was formed in the sixties and seventies: Justin Limby Maharivo, Naïvo Rahamefy, Edmond Agabra, Hugo Raharimanantsoa, ​​Architote Andrianajamanana, Jean-Claude Rahaga were the most significant directors, for the most documentary authors. In particular, we remember Fitampoha (1980), directed by Rahaga and the French Jacques Lombard, testimony of the secular ceremony, officiated every ten years, of the immersion of the royal relics in the ocean waters; fiction are films such as Limby Maharivo's Asakasaka (1973), the story of a girl who dies after having an abortion, and Richard-Claude Ratovoranivo's Tranon Kala (1971), on the memories of a death row inmate.

Prominent figures are also Benoît Maurice Ramampy, Ignace-Solo Randrasana and Raymond Rajaonarivelo: reflections on power and justice are at the center of Ramampy's films The Accident (1973) and Dahalo, Dahalo (1984, also known as Il était une fois dans le Moyen-Ouest); Randrasana's work moved between the sociological and the historical side, analyzing the city-countryside relationship (Very remby, 1974, also known as Le retour) and the 1947 insurrection for independence (Ilo tsy very, 1987, also known as Mad 47). Rajaonarivelo worked on historical facts (Tabataba, 1988) and elements of popular culture (Quand les étoiles rencontrent la mer, 1997). Also noteworthy is the original Macbeth reinterpretation of the Englishman Alexander Abela, who in Makibefo (1999) made recite the tragedy of W.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The association des trois mondes, Dictionnaire du cinéma africain , 1st vol., Paris 1991, ad vocem; G. Gariazzo , Short history of African cinema , Turin 2001, pp. 138-39; S. Toffetti , Hic sunt leones. Black African cinema , in History of world cinema , curated by GP Brunetta, 4th vol., Americas, Africa, Asia, Oceania. National cinemas , Turin 2001, pp. 474 and 1224.

AfricaCINEMATOGRAPHY

Since its inception, African cinema has been inscribed in a paradoxical condition that has accompanied it over time. Born, with rare exceptions, between the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, as one of the effects of the dismantling of European colonial occupations (French, English, Italian, Belgian, Portuguese, Spanish), for social and political reasons has walked into the history of cinema with about fifty years behind most of the rest of the world. In this way, and surprisingly, in their pioneering phase many of the African cinemas were simultaneously close to the experiences of the transition from silent to sound and already impregnated - in the best cases - with new international moods,

This is the distinctive element of a composite and rich production, very different from one region to another, from one country to another on an immense continent populated by a multitude of national stories, from the Maghreb to Egypt, from. western to southern. Cinema has followed the trend of these stories: it has developed better where conditions of political stability allowed it; in some cases he was born, stopped and resumed several times in the same nation; hardly had a regular estate, except in the case of the Egyptian and South African colossus. Egypt was actually the only country to have developed, since the 1930s, a permanent industry (renamed 'Hollywood on the Nile') and a star system capable of reaching all the countries of the Arab world. The Republic of South Africa, although active as Egypt since the early decades of the 20th century, has in fact long been conditioned, also as regards cinema, by the apartheid segregationist policy. In the other cases, instead, we are faced with medium-small films that rarely have maintained a solid continuity, even in the most historically relevant examples (Senegal, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon - from the fifties or sixties - and Burkina Faso - from the eighties ). It is easier to find authors who have been able to build exemplary personal filmographies over time, from the Senegalese Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop-Mambety to the Tunisians Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud and Nouri Bouzid, from the Malian Souleymane Cissé to the Cameroonian Jean-Marie Téno, up to the Burkinabé Idrissa Ouédraogo. Since the early decades of the 20th century, Egypt has in fact long been conditioned, even as regards cinema, by the apartheid segregation policy. In the other cases, instead, we are faced with medium-small films that rarely have maintained a solid continuity, even in the most historically relevant examples (Senegal, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon - from the fifties or sixties - and Burkina Faso - from the eighties ). It is easier to find authors who have been able to build exemplary personal filmographies over time, from the Senegalese Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop-Mambety to the Tunisians Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud and Nouri Bouzid, from the Malian Souleymane Cissé to the Cameroonian Jean-Marie Téno, up to the Burkinabé Idrissa Ouédraogo. Since the early decades of the 20th century, Egypt has in fact long been conditioned, even as regards cinema, by the apartheid segregation policy. In the other cases, instead, we are faced with medium-small films that rarely have maintained a solid continuity, even in the most historically relevant examples (Senegal, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon - from the fifties or sixties - and Burkina Faso - from the eighties ). It is easier to find authors who have been able to build exemplary personal filmographies over time, from the Senegalese Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop-Mambety to the Tunisians Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud and Nouri Bouzid, from the Malian Souleymane Cissé to the Cameroonian Jean-Marie Téno, up to the Burkinabé Idrissa Ouédraogo. by apartheid segregationist politics. In the other cases, instead, we are faced with medium-small films that rarely have maintained a solid continuity, even in the most historically relevant examples (Senegal, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon - from the fifties or sixties - and Burkina Faso - from the eighties ). It is easier to find authors who have been able to build exemplary personal filmographies over time, from the Senegalese Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop-Mambety to the Tunisians Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud and Nouri Bouzid, from the Malian Souleymane Cissé to the Cameroonian Jean-Marie Téno, up to the Burkinabé Idrissa Ouédraogo. by apartheid segregationist politics. In the other cases, instead, we are faced with medium-small films that rarely have maintained a solid continuity, even in the most historically relevant examples (Senegal, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon - from the fifties or sixties - and Burkina Faso - from the eighties ). It is easier to find authors who have been able to build exemplary personal filmographies over time, from the Senegalese Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop-Mambety to the Tunisians Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud and Nouri Bouzid, from the Malian Souleymane Cissé to the Cameroonian Jean-Marie Téno, up to the Burkinabé Idrissa Ouédraogo. Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon - from the 1950s or 1960s - and Burkina Faso - from the 1980s). It is easier to find authors who have been able to build exemplary personal filmographies over time, from the Senegalese Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop-Mambety to the Tunisians Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud and Nouri Bouzid, from the Malian Souleymane Cissé to the Cameroonian Jean-Marie Téno, up to the Burkinabé Idrissa Ouédraogo. Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon - from the 1950s or 1960s - and Burkina Faso - from the 1980s). It is easier to find authors who have been able to build exemplary personal filmographies over time, from the Senegalese Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop-Mambety to the Tunisians Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud and Nouri Bouzid, from the Malian Souleymane Cissé to the Cameroonian Jean-Marie Téno, up to the Burkinabé Idrissa Ouédraogo.

For political reasons, or for lack of adequate support, some of the reference cinemas of the 1960s and 1970s have almost completely disappeared, such as those of Algeria, Angola, Niger, Nigeria. Furthermore, if in some cases the colonizers (in particular the French and partly the British, e.g. in Ghana) had invested in cinema as a propaganda tool, thus leaving traces and a minimum of structures, elsewhere colonization (such as Italian in Libya and Eritrea) and then internal wars prevented the birth and growth of cinema (the long list includes Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia etc.).

The spread of other forms of audiovisual communication made it possible, in the 1990s, to limit this gap, allowing both filmmakers to continue their work without having to wait for the times of national and international grants (which are often the source of new and worrying cultural colonizations), and to films that until now have been virtually absent from the continental scene, from Eritrea to Namibia, to start producing their own images, to document local history and stories with indigenous glances. Going into the specifics of these 'marginal' cinemas, you will notice that they all come from A. sub-Saharan, or from the heart of the continent, from its poorest areas, devastated first by colonization and then by national regimes, while the idea of ​​an A. free and autonomous,

Northern Africa

For the films of the countries of this area, all of Arabic language and culture, see the individual items: Morocco , Algeria , Tunisia , Libya , Egypt .

West Africa

People's Republic of Benin . - In. western (where the guide films are those of Senegal , Guinea , Mauritania , Mali , Burkina Faso , Ivory Coast , Ghana , Niger , Nigeria) Benin (French colony with the name of Dahomey until 1960) had its pioneers in Pascal Abikanlou and Richard de Medeiros. In 1974 (the year in which the Marxist-Leninist regime was proclaimed which changed the name of the state the following year) Abikanlou, active since 1966 with a series of documentaries, shot Sous le signe du vaudou, first national feature film, clash between the traditions of the villages and the pitfalls of the cities. Three years later, de Medeiros, whose filmography was inaugurated in 1970, debuted in the fiction feature film with Le nouveau venu, in which the clash between a corrupt official and a 'newcomer' of the administration is presented in an original way who wants to change the state of affairs. However, the government did not adequately support cinema, and the designated structure (Office national du cinéma du Dahomey, ONACIDA, which became in 1974 Office béninois du cinéma, OBECI) has failed in its mandate. The eighties saw the appearance of François Sourou Okioh, author of Ironou (1985, known with the title Méditations), on political and ideological repression, while in the following decade Sanvi Panou, with Pressions (1999), staged the bizarre relationship between an elderly white woman and a young black man. If Mora Kpai-Idrissou has made short films between Benin and Germany, the self-taught Jean Odoutan has given new breath to this cinematography with feature films marked by a dense vein of madness: Barbecue-Pejo (1999), Djib (2000), Mama Aloko ( 2001). The eighties saw the appearance of François Sourou Okioh, author of Ironou (1985, known with the title Méditations), on political and ideological repression, while in the following decade Sanvi Panou, with Pressions (1999), staged the bizarre relationship between an elderly white woman and a young black man. If Mora Kpai-Idrissou has made short films between Benin and Germany, the self-taught Jean Odoutan has given new breath to this cinematography with feature films marked by a dense vein of madness: Barbecue-Pejo (1999), Djib (2000), Mama Aloko ( 2001). The eighties saw the appearance of François Sourou Okioh, author of Ironou (1985, known with the title Méditations), on political and ideological repression, while in the following decade Sanvi Panou, with Pressions (1999), staged the bizarre relationship between an elderly white woman and a young black man. If Mora Kpai-Idrissou has made short films between Benin and Germany, the self-taught Jean Odoutan has given new breath to this cinematography with feature films marked by a dense vein of madness: Barbecue-Pejo (1999), Djib (2000), Mama Aloko ( 2001). he staged the bizarre relationship between an elderly white woman and a young black man. If Mora Kpai-Idrissou has made short films between Benin and Germany, the self-taught Jean Odoutan has given new breath to this cinematography with feature films marked by a dense vein of madness: Barbecue-Pejo (1999), Djib (2000), Mama Aloko ( 2001). he staged the bizarre relationship between an elderly white woman and a young black man. If Mora Kpai-Idrissou has made short films between Benin and Germany, the self-taught Jean Odoutan has given new breath to this cinematography with feature films marked by a dense vein of madness: Barbecue-Pejo (1999), Djib (2000), Mama Aloko ( 2001).

Togo. - The cinematography produced in Togo (French colony until 1970) also had an episodic character. Metonou Do'Kokou, known as Jacques Quenum, and Kodjo Gonçalves made their debut in the 1970s. Two fiancés leave the village in the illusion of finding luck in the city in Quenum's short film Kwami (1975), while the documentary filmmaker Gonçalves was appreciated for Au rendez-vous du rêve Abeti (1979). Original, and rare in African cinema, was the path of Clem Clem Lawson, who made the animated film Bienvenue en Métropotamie (1982), a satirical reading of the Paris metro. A young woman is the protagonist of Kilizou Blaise Abalo Kawilasi's feature film (1992);

Guinea-Bissau. - The former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau, independent since 1974 after eleven years of guerrilla warfare, has produced a small but active cinematography, led by Sana Na N'Hada and Flora Gomes. In the late seventies the two filmmakers co-directed the militant short films Regreso de Cabral (1976) and Anos no oça luta (1978). In the same period the Instituto Nacional do Cinema (1977) was born. The debut feature of this film is due to Umban U'Kset: N'Turuddu (1986, The mask) is a fantastic journey, between fiction and documentary, of a boy who wants to reach the capital to take part in the carnival. Gomes landed on the feature film with Mortu Nega (1987, The One Who Didn't Want Death), in which the theme of war is still in the foreground; he then recounted Guinea-Bissau of the years immediately following Yonta's declaration of independence in Udju azul (1992; Yonta's blue eyes). They are the two best films of the director, who later let himself be overwhelmed by the mannerism in Po di sangui (1996, The tree of souls), hermetic sliding on layers of ancient cultures, starting from the tree of souls to which it refers the title. Na N'Hada, on the other hand, only signed her first feature film, Xime, in 1994, set in the village that gives the film its title during the struggle for independence. who later let himself be overwhelmed by mannerism in Po di sangui (1996, The tree of souls), hermetic sliding on stratifications of ancient cultures, starting from the tree of souls to which the title refers. Na N'Hada, on the other hand, only signed her first feature film, Xime, in 1994, set in the village that gives the film its title during the struggle for independence. who later let himself be overwhelmed by mannerism in Po di sangui (1996, The tree of souls), hermetic sliding on stratifications of ancient cultures, starting from the tree of souls to which the title refers. Na N'Hada, on the other hand, only signed her first feature film, Xime, in 1994, set in the village that gives the film its title during the struggle for independence.

Liberia, Sierra Leone and Gambia. - Cinema in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Gambia is almost non-existent. In Liberia (independent since its formation in 1847) the civil war that began in 1989 has destroyed every structure, including that of television: to date there is no national cinematography, even in Sierra Leone (British colony until 1961) , one of the poorest countries on the African continent, torn apart by the civil war since the military coup in 1992, the state of tension and violence prevented even the slightest development of cinema and the audiovisual industry. Only a few documentary films and some fictional attempts have made sporadic attempts to get out of the dark. Gambia (British colony until 1965),

Capo Verde. - Nelle isole del Capo Verde (colonia portoghese fino al 1975), nell'Oceano Atlantico, l'attività cinematografica è scarsa. Nei primi vent'anni post-coloniali un posto di rilievo è stato occupato, da una parte, dalla Televisão Nacional do Cabo Verde (TNCV), che ha fatto realizzare da registi locali film sulla cultura popolare, e, dall'altra, dal Cineclub Popular di Praia, la capitale, nato sulle ceneri dello storico Cineclub (movimento multiculturale di resistenza brutalmente represso nel 1960 dalla polizia politica portoghese), che ha promosso la conoscenza del cinema e ha documentato gli avvenimenti salienti della storia nazionale. La terza istituzione presente nel Paese è l'Instituto do Cinema do Cabo Verde, nato nel 1977 per distribuire film stranieri e incentivare il cinema nazionale. Bisogna però attendere il 1994 per il primo lungometraggio a soggetto, Ilheu de contenda di Leão Lopes, nel quale viene affrontato il tema dell'identità capoverdiana raccontando la storia di una famiglia e del rapporto conflittuale e tormentato con la propria terra.

Central Africa

Gabon . - In the large central A., in addition to the more developed cinemas (such as those of Chad , Cameroon , Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, for which v. Congo), particularly worthy of note is that of Gabon (French colony until 1960), whose history began in the seventies. The Center national du cinéma (CENACI) and Radiodiffusion télévision gabonnaise (RTG) are the state bodies that have guaranteed it some stability. Did Simon Auge make the character of Où vas-tu Koumba perform? (1971, co-directed by Alain Ferrari) a journey to discover the country; Philippe Mory in Les tams tams se sont tus (1972), dealt with the theme of the loss of traditions; Pierre-Marie Dong shot Identité (1972), on the crisis of an intellectual, and Demain, un jour nouveau (1979), biography of President O. Bongo, in power since 1967, and together with Charles Mensah he signed Obali (1977) and Ayouma (1978), reflections on the condition of women in traditional society. Finally in Ilombé (1979), filmed by Mensah and the Frenchman Christian Gavary, the story of a young man persecuted by the vision of a mysterious female figure is told. A series of three episodes, medium-length films for television, Orega (1999), based on the musical traditions of Gabon, was the debut work of Marcel Sandja. A new boost to Gabonese cinema was given by Léon Imunga Ivanga with Dôlè (1999), a story of friendship and dream set in the capital Libreville and told with absolute simplicity of gaze.

Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe . - In these countries the history of cinema is currently young, or very young. In the Central African Republic (French colony until 1960), marked by the brutal dictatorial regime of Colonel JB Bokassa (1966-1979), cinematographic activity is largely linked to the works of the documentary maker Joseph Akouissonne, author of Josepha (1974), portrait of one of the most famous African hairdressers in Paris, by Zo kwe zo (1981, known as Un homme est un homme), a journey through the main historical events of the country, and some documentaries on cinema in Africa. Léonie Yangba Zowe is responsible for Lengue (1985), N'Zale (1986) and Yangba-Belo (1987), documentaries on traditional dances.

In Equatorial Guinea (Spanish colony until 1968), continuously subjected to dictatorial regimes, cinema has not yet made its appearance. The brutality of successive governments and a very repressive censorship have also prevented the emergence of an audiovisual production.The two small islands of São Tomé and Príncipe (Portuguese colonies until 1975), located in the Gulf of Guinea, are sparsely populated and in severe economic difficulties, and only a few amateur products have been made.

East Africa

In A. orientale il cinema ha avuto uno sviluppo più limitato rispetto alle zone centro-occidentali. Le cinematografie più ricche sono state quelle di Sudan, Etiopia e Kenya, mentre hanno avuto storie meno corpose Eritrea, Gibuti, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ruanda e Burundi.

Somalia, Eritrea, Gibuti. - Come per altri Stati dell'A. orientale, spesso travolti da guerre e carestie, in Somalia (sotto amministrazione fiduciaria dell'Italia fino al 1960) il cinema non è cresciuto molto. I cineasti che hanno contribuito a mantenerlo in vita sono stati: Mohamed Hadj Giumale con la storia d'amore Miyi io magalo (1968, Città e villaggio); Idriss Hassan Dirié con Dan iyo xarago (1973, La realtà e il mito), ambientato durante il colpo di Stato del generale Siad Barre dell'ottobre 1969; Abdourahmane Artan con l'umoristico It is not a joke (1985); Abdulkadir Ahmed Said con i racconti fiabeschi Geedka nolosha (1989, L'albero della vita) e Aleel (1992, La conchiglia); Said Salah e Amar Sneh, che in The Somali darwish (1984) hanno narrato l'epopea del guerriero somalo Mohamed Abdullah Hassan e della resistenza alle truppe coloniali italiane. Negli anni Ottanta Mogadiscio è stata sede di un festival biennale di cinema, il Mogadishu Pan-African Film Symposium (MOGPAFIS), la cui prima edizione ha avuto luogo nel 1981: tale manifestazione sarebbe potuta diventare il principale punto di riferimento per i Paesi di area anglofona (così come in Burkina Faso il Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou, FESPACO, v., lo è per l'A. occidentale francofona), ma non ha praticamente lasciato tracce.

È ancora agli esordi la cinematografia dell'Eritrea, Stato che ha raggiunto l'indipendenza nel 1993, dopo una lunga guerriglia (1961-1991) contro l'Etiopia. Temesghen Zehaie Abraha ha fondato nel 1993 gli Eritrean Video Services, che hanno prodotto i primi due lungometraggi eritrei, Barut (1997) e Minister (2000); entrambi trattano temi legati alla storia del Paese, dalle colonizzazioni straniere (Italia e Gran Bretagna) alla guerra con l'Etiopia. In particolare Minister è un viaggio epico-avventuroso, un melodramma politico, talvolta eccessivo, talvolta straniante, che fa ben sperare per il futuro del cinema dell'Eritrea.Gibuti (colonia francese fino al 1977) è ancora ai margini del cinema africano; agli anni Ottanta risalgono il mediometraggio documentario sugli eventi politici dal 1973 alla proclamazione dell'indipendenza, Frêle biche (1984, noto con il titolo Belle biche) di Moussa Farah, prodotto dalla Radiodiffusion télévision de Djibouti, e il lungometraggio satirico Moussa le grand (1984), girato in video da Ahmed Dini.

Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. - Further south, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi complete the picture of a cinematographically smaller area. Tanzania (born in 1964 from the union of Tanganyika, under British trusteeship until 1961, and Zanzibar, British protectorate until 1963) has a richer history. In this country cinema emerged in the seventies, and particular importance was attached to documentary activity, with Living together (1977) by Cyril Kaunga and other documentaries by Joe Mponguhana. The eighties proved richer: Nangayoma N'Goge and the American Ron Mulvihill created Arusi ya Mariamu (1983, Mariamu's marriage), on the vicissitudes of a sick woman, suspended between hospitals and healers; Hamie Rajab recounted the adventures of a loser in Watoto Wana Haki (1984). Martin R. Mhando was the director who worked more continuously; in particular he directed the feature film Yomba Yomba (1987), which stars a child and is the sequel to Fimbo ya Mnyonge, shot in the seventies by the Danish director Tørk O. Haxthausen; moreover in 1998 he signed with Mulvihill Maangamizi - The ancient one, meditation on the spirituality of man.In Uganda (British colony until 1962), another country destabilized by wars and dictatorships, cinema has not experienced a great development. The first director, Sao Gamba, emigrated to Kenya, where he has always worked. Other filmmakers, on the contrary, have struggled to get Uganda out of anonymity: Faustin J. Misanvu tackled the drama of AIDS with the medium-length film It's not easy (1991), produced by John Riber; Paul Bakibinga and Riber again dealt with the same topic, but with unbearable moralism, in the television educational series Time to care the dilemma (1998); Robby Wodomal denounced the law imposing marriages on girls in Girl child of Bwamba (1994); Finally, Lovinca Kavouma stood out with Kintu (1999), a short film on the procedures for obtaining fabrics from the bark of trees, halfway between documentary and fiction, which marks a possible beginning of Ugandan cinematography. Jacqueline Rose Nabagereka also contributed to the development of cinema in this country with some documentary works, including The revolution of women (2001). Robby Wodomal denounced the law imposing marriages on girls in Girl child of Bwamba (1994); Finally, Lovinca Kavouma stood out with Kintu (1999), a short film on the procedures for obtaining fabrics from the bark of trees, halfway between documentary and fiction, which marks a possible beginning of Ugandan cinematography. Jacqueline Rose Nabagereka also contributed to the development of cinema in this country with some documentary works, including The revolution of women (2001). Robby Wodomal denounced the law imposing marriages on girls in Girl child of Bwamba (1994); Finally, Lovinca Kavouma stood out with Kintu (1999), a short film on the procedures for obtaining fabrics from the bark of trees, halfway between documentary and fiction, which marks a possible beginning of Ugandan cinematography. Jacqueline Rose Nabagereka also contributed to the development of cinema in this country with some documentary works, including The revolution of women (2001).

Burundi and Rwanda (under Belgian trust until 1962) made their film debut in the 1970s, but then the war between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups inexorably undermined the growth of these two young cinemas. In 1979 the Service du cinéma was created in Burundi, an institution whose role was however almost non-existent. In 1980 Jean-Michel Hussi Nyamusimba made Ni-Ni, a fiction short film, which tells the story and the fantasies of an African maid in Paris. Joseph Bitamba and Léonce Ngabo are still the reference filmmakers: Bitamba, president of the Bakame association for the production of animation works, directed Umuganuro in 1986 and in the 1990s various documentaries, including the short film Le métis (1996), where the mestizo of the title is a boy half of Hutu ethnicity and half Tutsi; Ngabo, in addition to shooting some short films for television, has instead signed the feature film Gito, the ingrat (1992), a comedy in which he tells of an African student who returned home from Paris, where he graduated, who he is besieged by both his French and Burundian girlfriends.

In Rwanda, the Rwandan Information Office produced Gaspard Habiyambéré's Amélioration deHAbitat rural au Rwanda (1975): it is one of the few examples of an almost non-existent cinematography (apart from some educational documentaries and newsreels), a consequence the lack of an adequate cultural policy and the tragic internal ethnic war; Habiyambéré also owes Manirafashwa (1986, known with the title L'enfant rwandais), where once again the starting point is given by a rural context.

Southern Africa

In southern A. (under the guidance of the cinemas, first of all in the Republic of South Africa , and then of Zimbabwe , Angola , Mozambique and Madagascar ), small cinemas meet, both continental and island.

Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland. - They are closely linked to the history of South Africa Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland, all countries in which cinema is actually yet to be born. In Namibia (annexed in 1946 to the Republic of South Africa with the name of Southwestern A., and independent since 1990, after almost thirty years of armed resistance), cinematography is mainly represented by Richard Pakleppa, author of historical documentaries (Tears of blood, 1993; I have seen - Nda mona, 1999, on the armed struggle against South Africa) and works of fiction (Sophia's homecoming, 1997, episode of the television series Africa dreaming). Other directors have also been active, such as Moses Mberira, who signed Birth of a nation in 1990; Cecil Moller, creator of numerous videos, including The naming (1997), where the difficult choice of the name to give to the son by a couple of different cultures is told; and finally Bridget Pickering, author of Uno's world (2001), also rich in narrative and visual elements typical of the television serials.

Lesotho (British protectorate with the name of Basutoland until 1966) is being born cinematically thanks to the audiovisual structures managed by the Ministry of Information and Television. The white South African Don Edkins has been committed to making and producing documentaries for years: in Boitjaro (1997) and Land of our ancestors (1998) he described the daily life of mountain communities, while Landscape of memory (1999) is a series in four episodes he produced, which combines archival materials and personal experiences of some veterans of wars and armed struggles, whose common theme is the re-establishment of truth throughout the A. Austral and reconciliation after apartheid.

Botswana (British protectorate with the name of Bechuanaland until 1966) does not have a real cinematography to date. Even Swaziland (British protectorate until 1968) has so far adequately developed the audiovisual sector; among the video productions, we remember David Max Brown's Siswel ′ intsiba (1996), on the attempt to develop an economy based on natural resources.

Zambia and Malawi . - Even in Zambia (British protectorate with the name of Northern Rhodesia until 1966), a single-party state for thirty years and then hit by a complex crisis, political instability and economic impositions dictated by the International Monetary Fund have so far prevented any cinematographic activity. Among the very few works made, the feature film The arrival of comrade Toivo from detention, directed by Swapo Film Crew.

The history of cinema has yet to begin also in Malawi (British protectorate until 1964). In this country the first free elections led in 1994 to the fall of the HK Banda regime, in power since independence. Unlike other states, however, the new political climate could favor the emergence of local audiovisual structures.

The islands: Mauritius, Reunion, Comoros, Seychelles. - After Madagascar, among the different islands of the Indian Ocean, Mauritius (British colony until 1968) has had the richest film history, starting from the seventies, thanks to the activity of Ramesh Tekoit, whose filmography has ranging from the TV series (L'embarras du choix, 1972) to the documentary (Île Maurice, une perle de l'Océan Indien, 1973), to the feature-length feature film (Et le sourire revient, 1980, on the emotional affairs of a boy who returns to home). Also in the seventies the Brijmohun brothers made their debut with the fiction feature film Bikhre sapne (1975, known as Rêve perdu). Other directors who have worked since those years are: Kenneth Noyau (La charrette, 1977; L'argile et la flamme, 1980, co-directed by Harikrishna Anenden), Goo Lam Hossen (Immigrés en France, 1982), Magalingum Valaydon (Objectif énergie, 1983), Radha Rajen Jaganathen (À Lucy, 1993, original and fairytale tale of the adventure of three Masai, who arrived in Paris to retrieve the remains of the first woman on Earth). Khal Torabully (Pic Pic, nomad d'une île, 1995; Les traboules des vagues, 1997) ventured into the video. Selven Naïdu is the author of numerous documentaries for television and the fiction short film Le rêve de Rico (2000) in which, between dream and reality, a child waits to pass school exams. Reunion (still an integral part of the French Republic), other island with a history of slavery and colonization, presents a more recent cinematography. Jim Damour founded the Industry cinématographique réunionnaise with Serge Damour and since 1991 he has worked on history and memory programs:

The cinema of the Comoros archipelago (French protectorate until 1975) is still without history, with some exceptions. The only directors of whom there are traces are Kabiré Fidaali and Ouména Mamadali: with Iel Solma (1986, co-directed by Raymond Tiendrebeogo) Fidaali has explored the world of healers and sages who preserve traditional culture; later, together with Mamadali, he described in Baco (1995) the preparations of an old man who arranges his succession.

The Seychelles archipelago (British colony until 1976) has so far produced a series of documentaries in film and video that explore the islands' natural heritage and were made by Marie-Claire Elisabeth, Ralph Lablache De Charmoy, Jacqueline Mustache-Belle, Roland Ward; Also noteworthy is the film Bolot Feray (1995) by Jean-Claude Matombe, based on a comic theater piece on the habits of traditional society. b

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The cinema of black Africa 1963-1987 , edited by S. Toffetti, Milan 1987.

The birth of cinema in Africa. The cinema of sub-Saharan Africa from its origins to 1975 , edited by A. Speciale, Turin 1998.

The association des trois mondes, FESPACO , Les cinémas d'Afrique - Dictionnaire , Paris 2000.

A. Elena , Cinema of Sub-Saharan Africa , and S. Toffetti , Hic sunt leones. Black African cinema , in History of world cinema , curated by GP Brunetta, 4th vol., Americas, Africa, Asia, Oceania. National cinemas , Turin 2001, pp. 385-414 and 457-88.

G. Gariazzo , Short history of African cinema , Turin 2001.

Pilotto, Camillo

Film and theater actor, born in Rome on February 6, 1888 and died there on May 27, 1963. Son of art, after treading the tables on the stage at a very young age, he made his debut in cinema in the mid-ten years, but never left the theater. Among the best characteristics of Italian cinema, he mostly played honest and courageous characters, obtaining recognition from the public especially in the years that followed the advent of sound. Numerous were the films in which he participated and in which he gradually added a profitable radio, dubbing (thanks to his persuasive voice) and television activity.

Son of two Venetian actors, Libero Pilotto and Antonietta Moro, he regularly finished his technical studies but, instead of embarking on a career as a lawyer, as his parents wished, he retraced their footsteps in the artistic field. He made his debut in the theater at a very young age: as a young actor, he first joined the company of Ermete Zacconi (1903), then in the seasons 1911-1913 he was hired as the first actor by Manzoni of Milan, directed by Marco Praga. He then recited, with youthful impetuosity and generosity, alongside Dina Galli, Emma Gramatica and Armando Falconi.

In 1916 he moved on to the cinema, playing the role of the villain in a small part in The Survivor by Augusto Genina. Success smiled instantly: his rough and massive 'mask' seemed particularly suitable for the big screen, from which he had to move away during the First World War. Returning from the front, he started acting again in the theater, taking part in tours both at home and abroad. At the end of the 1920s he joined the Milan Art Theater, as well as joining Marta Abba and Maria Melato. Now known on the stage, he was requested by the cinema especially from the 1930s, starting with his participation in the first Italian sound film, The song of love (1930) by Gennaro Righelli, which was followed, among others, The old lady and Amleto Palermi's secretary for all, both from 1932, Mario Bonnard's Three men in frack (1933), alongside the De Filippo brothers, Mario Mattoli's Tempo massimo (1934), Lorenzino de 'Medici (1935) from Guido Brignone, where Duke Alessandro is, Marco Elter's Le sole al sole (1935), Mario Camerini's Il grande appeal (1936), Carmine Gallone's Scipione l'Africano (1937), where Annibale is, and Abuna Messias - African vendetta (1939) by Goffredo Alessandrini, in which Cardinal Massaia is. After the Second World War P. was in company with Vivi Gioi and Paolo Stoppa (1945), but also with Lilla Brignone and Gianni Santuccio (1955), as well as taking part in some installations of the Piccolo di Milano and acting around Italy in numerous classic and modern shows such as, for example, Othello, Don Giovanni, The rattle cap, The twelfth night, The giants of the mountain, Six characters in search of an author, Like the leaves. P. however continued to appear on the screen: starting in 1940 he starred in genre films, among which some particularly noteworthy, such as Palermi's La peccatrice (1940), Raphael's adventurer of the upper floor (1941) Matarazzo, Cenerentola and Signor Bonaventura (1941) by Sergio Tofano, La locandiera (1944) by Luigi Chiarini, Il tradimento (1951) by Riccardo Freda, Messalina (1951) and Casta diva (1954) by Gallone. In recent years, following his inclination towards versatility, he ranged from radio to television, participating in some great dramas such as Piccolo mondo antico (1957), Il mulino del Po (1963) and Le anime morte (1963), directed respectively by Silverio Blasi ,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CB, Actors of the moment. Camillo Pilotto , in "Cinema illustration", 1937, 37, p. 8; Puck, Gallery: Camillo Pilotto , in "Cinema", 1939, 71, p. 370.

ABATANTUONO, Diego

Abatantuono, Diego

ABBA, Marta

Abba, Marta

Abbass, Hiam

ABBOTT, Bud

Abbott, Bud

Abraham, Murray F.

ABRAHAM, Murray F.

Abrams, JJ

ABRIL, Victoria

ABULADZE, Tengiz Evgen'evič

Accórsi, Stefano

Achternbusch, Herbert

ADAM , Ken

Adams, Douglas Noël

Adamson, Andrew

ADDINSELL, Richard

Adjani, Isabelle

Adjani, Isabelle

ADJANI, Isabelle

ADLON, Percy

Adorée, Renée

ADRIAN

Affleck, Ben

Affleck, Casey

AGADŽANOVA-ŠUTKO, Nina Ferdinandovna

AGEAGEE, James

AGOSTI, Silvano

Aguilera, Christina

AIMÉE, Anouk

Akerman, Chantal

AKERMAN, Chantal

Akin, Fatih

Alba, Jessica

Albani, MarcellaAlbanése, AntonioAlberini, FiloteoALBERINI, FiloteoALBERS, HansALBERT, EddieAlcoriza, LuisALCORIZA, LuisALCOTT, JohnALDO, GRAldo, Giovanni and GiacomoAldrich, RobertALDRICH, RobertALEKAN, Henri ALEKSANDROV,Grigorij Vasil'evičAleksandrov, Grigorij Vasil´evičAlessandrini, GoffredoALESSANDRINI, GoffredoALEXÉIEFF, AlexandreAli, MahershalaALLASIO, MarisaAllegret, MarcALLEGRET, MarcAllegret, Yves

ABBA , Marta

He was born in Milan on June 25, 1900 from Pompeo, a merchant, and from Giuseppina Trabucchi.

TRAINING AND BEGINNINGS

Born with the century, at the age of fourteen Abba showed up at the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan, but, too young to be admitted, she had to wait a year before being able to access it (with a tear to the regulation that provided for the minimum age of sixteen years for registration). He attended it for three years, under the guidance of Ofelia Mazzoni and Enrico Reinach, graduating with honors and obtaining the Castiglioni prize. After the initial performances in drama companies, the influential playwright Sabatino Lopez was able to overcome the resistance of the family and wrote her at the Teatro del Popolo in Milan, chaired by him, where in 1923 he made his debut with the company directed by Ettore Paladini, alongside the famous actress Esperia Sperani. In his first steps in professional theater, Abba measured himself against an eclectic repertoire,boulevardiers , up to the brilliant French import comedies, much appreciated by the public of the time. In 1924 he joined the company of Virgilio Talli, head of the comedian counted among the forerunners of the theater of direction in Italy, for his skills in the concertation of the actors and the care of the staging. At the Manzoni Theater, where the company performed in the Gabbianoby Anton Čechov, Abba, in the role of Nina, was noted by Marco Praga, who, while not appreciating the work of the Russian playwright, praised her as a revelation of the evening: «There is a temper of actress in this young woman and, I add , as a primattress. His beautiful stage figure, his mask, his voice which is very sweet and at the same time the hottest, the intelligence he has shown in this protagonist part of the Czech drama, his safety and his ease, the they show that they were born for the stage, and immediately mature to face the great role "(see M. Praga, Cronache teatrali 1924 , Milano 1925, p. 103).

THE MEETING WITH PIRANDELLO

The first to accept the report was Luigi Pirandello, in his new role as chief cook, committed to creating the Teatro d'Arte in Rome, at Palazzo Odescalchi. His assistant, Guido Salvini, was sent to Milan, and despite the exorbitant financial demands for a young actress, the agreement was concluded and Abba was hired as the first actress with a pay of 170 lire a day (Lamberto Picasso, first actor of the company, in took 160).

The debut at the Teatro d'Arte in Rome took place on April 22, 1925 with a novelty by Massimo Bontempelli, Nostra Goddess, "modern comedy" in 4 acts which has as its protagonist a charming and fickle woman, whose singular peculiarity consists in changing personality depending on the dress she wears. The character allowed the actress to demonstrate the versatility of her talent, forged by the varied repertoire interpreted at the time of her Milanese apprenticeship, giving life, in the short span of the show, to a gallery of wide-ranging characters, from comedian to perfidious : "[...] we have known time to time" - wrote Silvio d'Amico, the most authoritative critic of the capital - "an abba monella, passive, sweet, dreamy, perfidious, accomplished, imploring, and so on. Essays, given the nature of the farce, of an external character, but, if not all original, all excellent; and which make us hope with all the more confidence in the revelation of the spirit of this new actress of ours "(S. d'Amico,Chronicles 1914/1955 , edited by A. d'Amico - L. Vito, introd. by G. Pedullà, Palermo 2002, p. 502).

Our Goddess, totaling 17 performances, was the most replicated show at the Art Theater, the only non-Pirandellian text to remain on the bill afterwards during the three years of the Company's life. According to Federico Vittore Nardelli, author of the only Pirandellian biography written when the writer was still alive: «Here, for Pirandello, it is life. If the statue moves, and moves with a woman's body, how do you want the artist not to tenderness, not to take it by the throat, that does not move him to the point of delirium? It is life for him. His days are filled with voices, looks, footsteps, laughter, tears. That's life. Here, this was, for Pirandello, Marta Abba: life "(FV Nardelli, The Secret Man. Life and crosses by Luigi Pirandello , Milan 1944 2, p. 277).

The arrival of Marta Abba disturbed the harmony at the Art Theater. As the ascendant exercised by the young actress over the master was growing, the mood of colleagues and collaborators increased: «In short» - recalls Virgilio Marchi, scenographer of Pirandello - «Abba became the center of attraction of the Company, the powerful instinct , the curiosity of the new interpreter, the attentions given to her by the Maestro, won over the general intelligence of her art companions, also dominating over the acute and cultured intelligence of that shrewd and profound actor who responds to the name of Picasso. […] The suggestive creature which embodied the life of the characters significantly distanced the Master from our confidence "(A. d'Amico - A. Tinterri, Pirandello chief cook , Palermo 1987, pp. 413 f.).

THE PIRANDELLIAN INTERPRETER

Arrived when the repertoire was for the most part already set, after the triumphant debut and the leading role in a controversial novelty by Italian author, Paulette by Eugenio Giovannetti, in the short Roman season at the Odescalchi Theater (April 2 - June 3, 1925) Abba he had to wait until May 18, the date of the first of the Six characters in search of an author, so that that encounter with the Pirandellian dramaturgy that would have conditioned his artistic career and his entire existence was accomplished. As the stepdaughter, the actress was praised by critics for her artistic maturity, characterized by a passionate adhesion to the character. Thus her transformation into Pirandellian interpreter was announced, a convinced follower of the teachings of the Master, zealous to the point of posting on the dressing room door, instead of her name of actress, the name of the character in turn, in order to underline her total cancellation in the part.

In the tour that followed, in London and Paris, Abba immediately had the opportunity to increase her gallery of Pirandellian interpretations, performing as Ersilia Drei in Dressing the Nudes , Mrs. Frola in So it is (if you like) and Agata Renni in The pleasure of honesty . In the 1926-27 season she was joined by her younger sister Celestina (Milan, 25 May 1923 - 1 January 1992), enrolled in the Pirandello company, in which she appeared first with the pseudonym of Tiziana Maloberti and then with various stage names (Cele , Tina).

From then on, with the ever more frequent appearance of Pirandellian dramaturgy in the repertoire of the Compagnia del Teatro d'Arte, Abba's progressive affirmation as Pirandellian interpreter tout court also underwent a decisive acceleration, until it became the inspiring muse of a part. significant of the dramatic production of Pirandello. From Diana and Tuda  (1927) to L'amica delle mogli (1927), to La nuova colonia (1928) it is a fact that during the three-year life of the Compagnia directed by him (1925-28) the new dramaturgical productions of Pirandello, all declined in the feminine, have the face of Marta Abba.

With Diana and Tuda Abba for the first time she found herself embodying a Pirandellian character written especially for her (until she reproduced her appearance, lyrically exalted in the first Bemporad edition of 1927: "She is very young and of wonderful beauty. Fawn, curly hair, green, long, large and shiny eyes that now become cloudy like lake water in passion; now, in serenity, they stop to look clear and sweet like a moonrise; now, in sadness, have the painful opacity of turquoise ", L. Pirandello, Maschere nude , III, edited by A. d'Amico, with the collaboration of A. Tinterri, Milan 2007, pp. 593 and 960), enjoying a success of esteem, to be shared with the author. Things got better withThe friend of the wives , whose protagonist conceived once again in the likeness of Abba, starting from the name of Marta Tolosani, is described by Pirandello as "beautiful: tawny; sea ​​eyes, liquid, full of light ». The sentiment grew to such an extent that, in 1926, in a holographic will, Pirandello appointed her heir for a sixth, in addition to leaving her the rights of the works written after their meeting (in the aftermath of the disappearance of the writer, a dispute arose with family members, which ended in 1962 with a sentence of the Court of Cassation which, on February 21, 1969, recognized to the Pirandello Heirs the right to include in the Opera omnia of the writer the theatrical texts owned by Marta Abba: The Italian Forum, December 1969, vol. XCII, coll. 3265-78).

The experience of the Compagnia di Pirandello ended on August 15, 1928 in Viareggio, but, in fact, it had already closed a few months earlier, with the première at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, on March 24, of La nuova colonia, a novelty that inaugurated the trilogy of Pirandellian "myths", in which the protagonist, La Spera, a prostitute redeemed from motherhood, was left alone on a rock with the creature in her arms, surviving the tsunami that overwhelms the island. Abba's interpretation gave the right to an attentive and sensitive critic like Alberto Cecchi for an unusually detailed criticism, which drew a severe, regretted balance of the three years the actress spent in the Company: «this actress of whom, all , at her appearance, we sang the praises, she stopped at her first character, that of Our Goddess by Massimo Bontempelli, which she played three years ago, at the Odescalchi theater. The first-rate qualities that it undoubtedly possessed are drowning in a now mechanical way, for which, the Abba says his parts with a hasty voice, eating his words, becoming unintelligible most of the time, and singing according to one of those cadences that are known in art under the name of birignao. The physical agility of which he shows continuously results in a kind of obstinate and unreasonable dance, which excites the nerves of the spectators. It is really sad to see a show like that of the decline of an actress in which great hopes had been put and that, precisely on these hopes signed in white, everyone continued to admire on purpose. On the other hand, it is now impossible to continue keeping your eyes closed and, if there is anything to save, the only way is perhaps to talk about it brutally, as we do to our pain. The fact is that on Saturday night, in the part of the Spera, which is beautiful, very human and very poetic, a quality actress would have found just enough to make the work even triumph, instead of disastrously leading it to the final contrasts "(seePirandello chief cook , cit., Pp. 279 s.).

CAPOCOMICA

Having dissolved the company, Pirandello retired into a sort of voluntary exile in Berlin, in the hope that the thriving German cinema could open up new fruitful prospects. Abba joined him and stayed in the German capital until March 1929, when, realizing that the master's film projects had no real possibility of being realized, he preferred to return to Italy. At the head of his own company, consecrated at first to a uniquely Pirandellian repertoire, on December 7, 1929 at the Turin Theater, he staged for the first time in Italy Lazzaro , according to Pirandello's "myth", which satisfied the public, but dissatisfied the audience. critical. On February 18, 1930 at the Filodrammatici in Milan he created another Pirandellian novelty,As you want me , in which she again played a character created for her, the Unknown, who made Alberto Cecchi exclaim: «What a strange actress! Two years ago it was in full decline, on a road that seemed to us to lead it without disaster to disaster. Last night, so alone, self-taught, without a manager, without a company that keeps her up, but only by dint of nerves, intelligence, momentum, passion, she seemed to us one of the greatest actresses we have "(cf. L Pirandello, Maschere nude , IV, edited by A. d'Amico, with the collaboration of A. Tinterri, Milan 2007, p. 407). The following year, however, Abba varied the repertoire to introduce a scenic transposition of the novel by Lev Tolstoj Anna Karenina. From 1931 his activity became more discontinuous and, after a long period of rest, he successfully recited in Paris in French Man, the beast and virtue . Returning to Italy, she performed in the Goldonian shrewd Widow , and then held on baptism at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples, November 4, 1932, Finding herself , Pirandellian portrait of the torments of an actress, who risks losing her way beyond the labile border between reality and fiction. Success of esteem for the author, but full and warm consecration for the actress, welcomed at each stage of the tour , from Rome to Turin, by warm consensus.

In 1933 Abba seemed to have found a stable venue for his company at the theater of the Casino Municipale di San Remo, where on November 7 of that year the first Italian performance of the Pirandellian When someone is was held . The call to life for the old poet, who wants to escape fame to find a second youth in love, has the name Veroccia and, once again, the face of Marta Abba. However, the illusion of being able to renew the dream of a company with a permanent headquarters in the theater of the coastal city did not last long.

CINEMA: A SHORT STORY

Between 1933 and 1934 his attempt to open a path in the cinema was consummated: «A tenacious, even humble struggle - returned to Italy underwent auditions of voice, make-up, photogenic - destined to continuous, disappointing defeats. Starting with Acciaio , directed by Walter Ruttmann and inspired by a subject signed by Pirandello who was unable to impose it against Isa Pola. Thanks to Mussolini's recommendation, she will be the female protagonist of a film with little commitment The Haller case , a remake of a German crime novel "(LF d'Amico,  The man of contradictions. Pirandello seen up close , Palermo, 2007, pp. 128 s.). In the Haller case (1933), a remake of Der Andere(1931) by Robert Wiene directed by Alessandro Blasetti, Abba (in the role of the prostitute) starred alongside Memo Benassi (Haller) and Camillo Pilotto (the leader of the gang). Filippo Sacchi, the most important film critic of the time, wrote of his interpretation «The main interest of the film is given by the presence of Marta Abba, who for the first time shows herself on the screen. His very personal art and his powerful mask manage to have reason for the false atmosphere of the drama, that débauche of manner, that stretched conflict, and to give soul and meaning to its part "( Corriere della Sera , February 14, 1934). We find it, next to Nerio Bernardi (Federico Confalonieri), in Teresa Confalonieri (1934), Risorgimento film by Guido Brignone winner of the Mussolini cup at the Venice Film Festival for best Italian film. Filippo Sacchi wrote again of Abba's interpretation as Countess Confalonieri: «Marta Abba has given this character all the warmest and most beautiful accents of her sagacious and very personal art. It is a complete interpretation of balance, firmness and at the same time intimate fire, agitated emotion. Even from the cinematographic aspect, some of his gestures of slow despair, certain 'close-ups' radiating dreamy fervor, are photogenic perfect "(Corriere della Sera, 27 October 1934).

FAREWELL TO THE SCENES

In October 1934 it was Mila di Codro next to Ruggero Ruggeri, who returned to play the role of Aligi in a special edition of D'Annunzio's Daughter of Iorio with the direction of Pirandello and the scenes of Giorgio de Chirico, representation offered to the international audience defendant in Rome for the Volta on theater conference, organized under the aegis of the Academy of Italy. In July he was Porzia in the Merchant of Venice directed by Max Reinhardt (Venice Film Festival, Campo San Trovaso). And in December of the same year in Paris, she, who had recited Man, the beast and virtue in French, was the only Italian to parade in stage costume together with all the French interpreters, who over time had dressed Pirandellian clothes, on a celebratory evening dedicated to Pirandello, just awarded the Nobel Prize. Pirandello, for his part, had always advised her to study languages ​​and, after a few months spent in London to learn English, in April 1936 Abba accepted the offer of an American impresario to act on Broadway Tovarich, a comedy by Jacques Deval (in the adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood), whose protagonist, a Russian aristocrat who escaped the revolution and took refuge in Paris, where to live is forced to be a maid, was the ideal part to justify her imperfect pronunciation. After a break-in period in Brighton and around London, he embarked for the United States on September 17 and, after a few performances in Philadelphia and Baltimore, on October 5 he could finally make his debut at the Plymouth Theater on Broadway. Here she was reached by the news of Pirandello's death, which occurred on December 10 of that year, consumed in a few days by pneumonia.

The last letter of the writer addressed to her is dated December 4 and ended as follows: «If I think of the distance, I immediately feel I fall into my atrocious solitude, as in an abyss of despair. But don't think about it! I hug you tightly with everything, all my heart. Your Master »(L. Pirandello, Letters to Marta Abba, edited by B. Ortolani, Milan 1995, p. 1392). Regarding the large correspondence between Pirandello and Abba, Pietro Frassica observes: «There is therefore a sort of functional leap between the two letters, not given by the obvious difference in literary quality, but by the presence of two different 'speeches', the one passionate and 'useless', the other plan is entirely informative, perfectly deaf to the desperate appeals, implicit or explicit, of the revered interlocutor "(M. Abba, Dear Maestro ... Letters to Luigi Pirandello (1926-1936) , Milan 1994, p. 10).

When leaving for the American tour , Abba entrusted to the fortnightly magazine of Lucio Ridenti Il dramma an autobiographical memory, proud and resentful, entitled Marta Abba. My life as an actress (see Drama, XII [1936], resp. nn. 237, July 1st, pp. 2-5; 238, July 15, pp. 2-5; 239, August 1, pp. 2-5), which ended with a denunciation of the precarious conditions of Italian theater and which, in retrospect, sounds like a farewell to an ungrateful Italy, stingy with those awards, which would have come to it from the United States. In July 1937 she was awarded the third prize of the American dramatic league and on January 28, 1938 she married Cleveland (OH) Severance A. Millikin, the grandson of a steel tycoon, effectively retiring from the scene. After the divorce, which occurred in 1952, and the consequent return to Italy, Abba formed a short-lived company with the actor Piero Carnabuci, still made some sporadic reappearance on the stage, to finally finally retire and isolate himself in his villa near from Aulla, baptized by her to find herself. In recent years, affected by paresis, she lived in San Pellegrino Terme. Marta Abba died in Milan, in the Santa Rita clinic, on June 14, 1988.

The voice Abba , with which Leonardo Sciascia 's Pirandellian Alphabet opens , ends with a sort of epitaph: "Creature, character, actress of inalienable Pirandellian condition: like all the lives of those who with Pirandello' s life have had to do. Lives of victims of which Pirandello was a victim ».

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to La mia vita di actress , and the correspondence in the editions mentioned above (for which reference is made to L. Pirandello, Letters to Marta Abba , cit., And to M. Abba, Dear Master ... Letters to Luigi Pirandello (1926-1936) , edited by P. Frassica, cit.), among the writings of Marta Abba it is worth mentioning Ten years of theater with Luigi Pirandello (in Il dramma , XLII [1966], n. 362-363, November-December, pp. 45-58), the first glimpse of the copious Pirandellian correspondence which, preserved at the University of Princeton (NJ) and published almost entirely in the edition of the works which appeared in the Meridians Mondadori allows us to better understand the complex intertwining of psychological and artistic motivations that linked Pirandello and Abba.

Among the items dedicated to her in encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries are those contained in contemporary publications such as Enc. biographical and bibliogr. «Italian» ; N. Leonelli, tragic actors comic actors , Milan 1940, I, pp. 14-18; M. Corsi, Who is on stage? , Milan 1946, pp. 25-30 (with significant title: An exile: MA ); the lemma present in the Encyclopaedia of the Show is still valid, I, Rome 1954, coll. 4-6 (A. Fiocco); the entry prepared by KL Angioletti for the multimedia archive of Italian actors (AMAt.I.), project of the theatrical database of the University of Florence (http.//www.fupress.com) is analytical and extensive; short, like her film career, but detailed, the voice dedicated to her in the Filmlexicon , Rome 1958, ad vocem (EG Laura). Finally, see MA (1900-1988) , in Italiane , II, From the First World War to the Second World War , edited by E. Roccella - L. Scaraffia, Rome 2004, pp. 3-6 (F. Merlo).

Of the vast Pirandellian bibliography, in which A. occupies a prominent place, we limit ourselves to selecting the biography of FV Nardelli cit. (Milan 1932, 1944 2 ), published when the writer was still alive, and the ponderous Pirandello by G. Giudice (Turin 1975), which appeared in the prestigious series The social life of the new Italy . Limited to the three-year period 1925-28, central to the relationship between Pirandello and Abba, please refer to A. d'Amico - A. Tinterri, Pirandello chief cook , cit .; Abba speaks widely about Luigi Filippo d'Amico, film director and husband of Lietta (daughter of Lietta Pirandello and Manuel Aguirre), in his The man of contradictions. Pirandello seen up close, Palermo 2007. Finally, the reference to the informed News , contained in the third and fourth volume of Luigi Pirandello, Nude masks , edited by A. d'Amico, with the collaboration of A Tinterri, Milan 2004 and 2007, is a must.

Abatantuono, Diego . - Italian actor ( Milan 1955). Reached success with  Eccezzziunale ... really (1982; the sequel was released in 2006), he became a protagonist of Italian cinema also thanks to directors who have been able to enhance his multifaceted talent. Among the films worth mentioning are: A boy from Calabria (1887), Mediterranean (1992), The bull (1994), Unfair competition (2001), Dinner to make them known (2007), The monsters today (2009), The friends of the bar Margherita (2009), Happy family (2010), Things from another world(2011), Good day (2012), The worst Christmas of my life (2012), Guess who is coming for Christmas? (2013), La gente che bene (2014), Soap Opera (2014), Belli di papà (2015), I Babysitter (2016), Mister happiness (2017), You can kiss the groom (2018), An enemy that will he wants well and (2018), Compromessi sposi (2019), All my crazy love (2019), My band plays pop (2020). In 2012 he made his directorial debut, in collaboration with A. Trivellini, with the television film Paradise area . He won three Silver Ribbons: for best leading actor for Puerto Escondido (1992); for best supporting actor in 1987 for Christmas present (1986), and in 2003 for I am not afraid . In 2013 the actor published, in collaboration with G. Terruzzi, the autobiographical text Ladri di cotolette . In 2014 he conducted the comedy program Colorado on Italy 1 , which he also designed, and from 2016 to 2017 he was judge of the talent show on La7 for aspiring comedians Exceptionally truly .