by Francesco Gallo
This "Per Lucio" documentary by Pietro Marcello is really beautiful and is now in the Special section of the 71st edition of the Berlin Film Festival all digital.
Fruit of the director's passion for Lucio Dalla ("I know all his songs by heart from an early age") and the archives ("I sometimes feel more like an archivist than a director"), Marcello combines these two loves of his, bringing out not only a biopic of the authentic and evocative Bolognese artist, but above all the most beautiful history of Italy through images of the last seventy years.
Extraordinary sequences of this peasant town, (the beautiful ones of Bologna) which slowly becomes industrial by changing attitudes and faces to Italians and betraying their true culture.
More extraordinary than all the images of Italy in the station in the first post-war period, including suitcases tied by string and cartons, and those of the Mille Miglia of '43 with the very Italian Nuvolari, his face full of smoke.
"I wanted to tell Lucio Dalla - he explains - not through the voice of his colleagues, but only through the voice of two of his friends, of his songs and with the transformation of the country that he promptly recounted".
To speak in Per Lucio are in fact only two of his friends, the trusted and spontaneous manager, Tobia (Umberto Righi), and his childhood friend, the philosopher Stefano Bonaga.
"This film is not the exact portrait of a famous singer and not even his celebration - says the director -. What I wanted was to evoke through the voice of someone who first met him as a man, friend, and then an artist at the service of poetry ".
Produced by IBC Movie with Rai Cinema in collaboration with Avventurosa and with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region, the film then dedicates a lot of space to Roberto Roversi, the Bolognese intellectual who is a great friend of the singer, his mentor and author of many of his texts.
The lunch-conversation, full of anecdotes and memories, between the manager Tobia and the philosopher Bonaga was beautiful.
Then there are the images of Lucio Dalla, a guest at the Zecchino d'oro together with his nice and self-confident mother, and, finally, Dalla who in a serious TV debate, among many authoritative guests (including Alberto Arbasino), asks Bettino Craxi why of the euro missiles.
Yet the director of MARTIN EDEN and LA BOCCA DEL LUPO does not seem entirely satisfied with his latest film: "Many songs are missing and many things should be reviewed", he stressed today in the press meeting.
The fate of this film that passes today in Berlin on the eve of Dalla's birthday?
"The hope is to see him soon in theaters", replies the CEO of Rai Cinema Paolo del Brocco, but for now, Pietro Marcello's project is still to show the Bolognese people in Piazza Grande as soon as possible.
Among the projects of the director born in Caserta in 1976, "a documentary on the Russian campaign" and another documentary, FUTURA, dedicated to young people and already under construction.
A project, the latter, shared with Francesco Munzi and Alice Rohrwacher.
Meanwhile, tomorrow on #iorestoinsala, to celebrate the birthday of the Bolognese artist, two streaming films: La piazza della mia città - Bologna and Lo Stato Sociale simultaneously with the Sanremo Festival, where the band of the same name presents the new single Combat Pop in competition .
Finally, a curiosity, this is the long list of the archives consulted by Pietro Marcello for this documentary: Istituto Luce Cinecittà, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Home Movies - National Archive of Family Film, Audiovisual Archive of the labor and democratic movement and CSC Foundation - National Archive Corporate Cinema (Ivrea).
