The director died in Rome, with his brother he made films such as Father Master and The Night of San Lorenzo
Director Paolo Taviani he died in Rome, in the Villa Pia clinic, at the age of 92, after a short illness. Next to him were his wife Lina Nerli Taviani and his children Ermanno and Valentina. The secular funeral ceremony will take place on Monday 4 March in the Promototheca room of the Capitol.
the Taviani brothers
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Together with his brother Vittorio, who passed away in 2018, Paolo Taviani has marked the history of Italian auteur cinema, telling our story and the contradictions of society. Era born in San Miniato in the province of Pisa on 8 November 1931. The Taviani brothers, as everyone has always known them, were the sons of an anti-fascist lawyer. They abandoned their law studies to dedicate themselves to cinema, starting from social documentaries with which in the 50s and 60s they told of the transformations of Italy. Among the first documentaries there was San Miniato July ’44 written by Cesare Zavattini, while in 1960 together with Joris Ivens they directed Italy is not a poor country.
the 60s
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A Man to Burn from 1962, with Gian Maria Volontè, represented their debut on the big screen. At the center was the story of Salvatore Carnevale, a labourer, socialist from Palermo, trade unionist and exponent of the peasant movement, brutally killed in 1955. In the 1960s the Taviani brothers brought their socio-political commitment to the screen with films such as The Outlaws of Marriage on the topic of divorce e The Subversives in which the echoes of the ’68 revolts can be felt. In the seventies their filmography turned to telling the story. In 1977 with Master father based on the novel by Gavino Ledda, the Taviani brothers achieved international fame by also winning the Palme d’Or in Cannes. Five years later with The Night of San Lorenzo they won the Grand Jury Prize, telling the story of the massacre of the inhabitants of a small Tuscan village at the hands of the Nazis.
the 80s
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Between the 80s and 90s they then made adaptations of novels by Luigi Pirandello, Goethe and Tolstoy. In 2012 with the film Caesar must die, a docudrama starring the inmates of the Rebibbia prison in Rome, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival. The last film made as a couple is A private matter of 2017 based on the novel by Beppe Fenoglio. Leonora Goodbye 2022 is Paolo Taviani’s last film, directed alone even though his brother’s contribution to his direction was always evident.
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