Happy Birthday, Gualtiero Jacopetti! Born today in 1919, this Italian documentary film director is considered the originator of mondo films, also called "shockumentaries".
This was along with Italian screenwriter and film director Paolo Cavara and Italian writer and film director Franco Prosperi.
Jacopetti started as a commentator and narrator of documentary films in the late 1950s. Later in life, he became a celebrated journalist.
During World War II, Jacopetti served in the Italian Resistance to then Prime Minister and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
After the war, on the advice of his friend and mentor Italian journalist and historian Indro Montanelli, Jacopetti began to work as a journalist.
In 1953, he co-founded the influential liberal newsweekly Cronache (considered to be a direct predecessor to the Italian weekly news magazine l'Espresso.
However, the company was forced to shut down production after publishing risque photographs of Italian film actress and singer Sophia Loren.
This caused the paper to be charged with manufacturing and trading pornographic material (a charge which also earned Jacopetti a year-long prison sentence).
Upon his release, Jacopetti subsequently worked as a journalist, editor, newsreel writer, actor and short-subject filmmaker. He also worked on screenplays for French film director and screenwriter René Clément ('Forbidden Games').
In 1960, Jacopetti approached his colleagues Prosperi and Cavara with the unusual idea of making an "anti-documentary".
The result, (which premiered two years later), was the 1962 Italian Technicolor horror documentary film 'Mondo Cane' (which roughly translates to 'A Dog's World,' a minor curse in Italian), a non-narrative compilation of shocking and unusual footage from around the world.
The film premiered at the 15th Cannes Film Festival in May of that same year. it was well-received and even nominated for the Palme d'Or.
The following year, the theme song "More" by Italian film composer Riz Ortolani was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song the year of its premiere in the United States. However, it didn't win. This occurred at the 35th Academy Awards in early April 1963.
Despite this, the success of 'Mondo Cane' inspired an entire genre of documentaries featuring lurid or shocking subjects, which came to be known as mondo film.
Jacopetti and Prosperi (who would become filmmaking partners for the remainder of Jacopetti's directorial career) went on to make several more entries into this genre.
In the early 1960s, this included directing the 1963 Italian Tecnicolor mondo documentary film 'La donna nel mondo' ('Women of the World', with Cavara), and the 1963 Italian Technicolor horror documentary film 'Mondo Cane 2'.
In the late 1960s, this included the 1966 Italian Technicolor mondo horror documentary film 'Africa Addio' (also known as 'Africa Blood and Guts' in the United States and 'Farewell Africa' in the United Kingdom).
In the early 1970s, this included the 1971 Italian mondo drama/blaxploitation faux-documentary film 'Goodbye Uncle Tom'.
The film had been adapted from American novelist and essayist William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning historical biographical fiction novel The Confessions of Nat Turner.
In the American editor, producer and director David Gregory's 2003 American documentary film 'The Godfathers of Mondo', Jacopetti describes the style he and Prosperi used to make these films:
"Slip in, ask, never pay, never reenact." The film takes a look at the careers of Jacopetti and Prosperi, who invented the mondo genre. It follows their career until their split in following the making of 'Goodbye Uncle Tom'."
Jacopetti passed in Rome, Lazio, Italy on August 17, 2011. He was 91.
Italian press articles had reported that he wished to be buried next to his girlfriend, English actress Belinda Lee, who passed on March 12, 1961 in a car accident in which Jacopetti was also hurt.
Jacopetti had been active from 1962–1975.
#borntodirect
#Cineriz
@nytimes
@theguardian
@iffrotterdam
@Amazon
@tubi
No comments:
Post a Comment