screenwriters-from-italy

"Non sono un pessimista: vedere anche il male è, a mio parere, una forma di ottimismo."

"Je ne suis pas un pessimiste: c'est une forme d'optimisme, selon moi, de voir aussi le mal."

"(About Lilli Carati) We called her the “velvet doll” because she was petite, not very tall and very beautiful. She had a well-proportioned body and was very sensual. [...] When we acted together, she was very young, while I was in my thirties or forties. She wasn't just beautiful, she was one of the few talented actresses of the time. Many of the girls who played those roles were foreigners, they were talented, but they had to struggle with the language. Each had a different kind of sensuality. She spoke well, she was very smart. I think she was also cultured, because she expressed herself correctly and demonstrated a certain level of education."

"Tenacity, tenacity to the max, especially in these times of crisis. Put on blinders like I did and say, “What the heck”: I'll suffer, I'll do a lot of things, but one day I'll get to do what I want. And if you want it, you'll do it."

"I entered the seminary at the age of eleven, in 1947 after the war, because they saw at home that I wanted to study. At that time, in peasant families, when a son wanted to study, his parents would say that this boy must become a priest or a solicitor. At the seminary, we performed sacred plays, and since I played dramatic roles, the rector got angry because people laughed when I said my lines. So I realised that my vocation was not to be a priest, but to make people laugh."

"[Purgatori replies that he wrote a spy novel for many reasons, the first being:] because, having met many spies from the East, the West and many other countries over many years of work, I also wanted to portray their human side, which is very different from what we imagine. They are women and men like us, and like us they experience emotions, feelings, joys and sorrows, and it is curious, shall we say, that they have to live them, in a way, in the shadows. Even if sometimes these feelings then undermine the carefully planned projects that are supposed to change the world order."

"During my career as a journalist, I have met too many spies to enjoy an unrealistic narrative; none of those I met looked like James Bond. Rather, I have always been fascinated by the Stasi headquarters I visited and that part of the secret archive that was destroyed. There is a black hole in our collective memory that has never been thoroughly investigated. [...] We continue to be [in the aftermath of the Cold War] up to our necks, just think of Russiagate... Or the submarine in which 14 Russian sailors recently died. It is most likely a vehicle used for special intelligence operations."

"[...] I met Fiorenzo Angelini. At the time, he was only a bishop, but already the éminence grise of Catholic healthcare, with his fingers in five hospitals in Rome, four hundred properties and eight thousand hectares of agricultural land around the capital. He was the Giulio Andreotti of the Vatican, of whom he was a close friend. I met him in Kisima or Baragoi, I don't remember exactly. Anyway, on the road -so to speak- that led to Loiyangalani, on the shores of Lake Rudolf. He emerged from the bougainvillea of a lodge wearing a shirt, a pair of khaki shorts and a camera in his hand. Imagine Alberto Sordi in Will Our Heroes Be Able to Find Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously Disappeared in Africa?. Exactly. And after introducing himself, he asked for two pieces of information: where to get a good exchange rate on the black market and whether thirty thousand lire per kilo was an acceptable price for contraband ivory. It seemed like a joke."

"My commitment will be to bring Greenpeace into national issues. To adapt our global campaigns to the emergencies we have in our territory. So, first and foremost, there will be remediation. Then agriculture, to continue our victories against GMOs and now raise awareness about the pesticides that are exterminating bees. And thirdly, coal. It is unacceptable that it is still one of our primary sources of energy."

"I have always done investigations or written screenplays. In investigations, the facts speak for themselves, while in screenplays, it is the dialogue and the actor's expressions that speak. This time, I wanted to take the reader into the minds of the characters, and you can only do that by writing a novel."

"Alberto is a friend I respect; I don't consider him a competitor. [...] We share the choice to go to places where things have happened, we share the desire to bring a story to life with cinematic writing, we share the fact that we are not looking for television controversy, that we don't have to chase interviews with the politician of the moment. Apart from Ulisse and Atlantide, I don't think there is anything similar on Italian television. His ratings are extraordinary, mine are very good. This means that the audience is there."

"There is still much to discover and report on the behaviour of the Belgian security apparatus, which, since the Charlie Hebdo attack (January 2015), had more than a suspicion to eradicate the jihadist network that subsequently attempted the massacre on the Amsterdam-Paris train (August 2015), carried out the Paris massacre (November 2015) and those in Brussels."

"I was very close friends with Ilaria's parents, and I discovered, for example, that she conducted her investigations without accompanying the troops, thus rejecting an 'embedded” point of view, and did not sleep with the other Italian journalists because she considered that place to be controlled. This alone gives an idea of the risks she exposed herself to, in addition to being a female journalist in a predominantly male world of correspondents in Somalia in 1994. But it still happens: last year alone, 80 journalists died around the world. When it happens, it almost seems like collateral damage, but it is not, because journalists are unarmed and only seek to tell the truth with their pens and cameras."

"[The job of presenter and screenwriter] They are the same thing. At Atlantide, I don't improvise anything, it's all written in the script. I have to be convinced of what I say and I have to be careful with my words. I have to be precise."

"(About the Kidnapping of Aldo Moro) On that day, 16 March 1978, and for several hours afterwards, I believe that our country felt it was facing an insurrection, a civil war, or that a coup d'état might be underway. The gravity of that kidnapping and the level of the attack, directed at the heart of the state, were such that there were fears that there could be an offensive against our democracy. An offensive which, although limited to that event, was real."

"Oliviero was more cultured than me, quicker to understand, better at connecting the details and symptoms of the malaise that ate away at our future, if not entirely, then at least in large part. But he had one quality: he refused to give up. And so far, the journalist, the writer. Then there was the man. Or rather, first and foremost, the man. Generous and welcoming. In his own way, which was a beautiful way. His family knows what I'm talking about, his children know what I'm talking about. His grandson will know too."

"I make films that people call ‘horror’ because I want to make films about real things that happen in the world. And most real things aren’t very nice."

"In my life, right after my parents I put scoutism They taught me two things above all. The first is that we need to give meaning to each of our days. The second is the sacredness of life, one with the sacredness of nature."

"(Referring to the scoutism) I believe I have had, in that world, experiences that neither family nor school can offer you. Like the "campfires" before going to sleep. Those were also moments of socialization. Which could be playful, cheerful, with skits and jokes. But also very serious: moments in which we discussed each other, talked about each other, confided in each other, knowing that no one would ever make fun of what they felt. If I am a person who has a certain ease in talking about himself without hiding his own weaknesses and mistakes, I owe it to those moments there, to the "campfires"."

"Dante's relationship with women is very complex, because the range of real women in Dante's life and in Dante Alighieri's imagined life is very different. There is an idealization of women that occurs when he is nine years old. He lost his real mother when he was five years old, so he is the son of a father and a stepmother. The neighbors of the Portinari family had six daughters and one of these is Beatrice, a nine-year-old girl, her age. Dante meets her gaze and from that moment he becomes almost a prisoner of that gaze, which is why nine is Beatrice's magic number, because he meets her at nine years old. The Poet follows her to Florence for another nine years, without ever receiving encouragement from her, until at eighteen, before entering the church where the girl goes every evening in Santa Margherita dei Cerchi which is the Portinari church, suddenly he decides to stop, look at him and smile at him and says "I greet you" which is the only phrase Dante will hear from Beatrice. Dante remains completely satisfied by this smile and considers it the sealing of a relationship that has had no other type of concretization, nothing else, just this look and this greeting. He tells this story in this wonderful diary which is the Vita Nova, a set of poems and prose writings that he wrote in the aftermath of Beatrice's death."

"L'importante è che la morte ci trovi vivi."

"Even in the greatest Westerns, the woman is imposed on the action, as a star, and is generally destined to be “had” by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. If you cut her out of the film, in a version which you can imagine, the film becomes much better. In the desert, the essential problem was to survive. Women were an obstacle to survival! Usually, the woman not only holds up the story, but she has no real character, no reality. She is a symbol. She is there without having any reason to be there, simply because one must have a woman, and because the hero must prove, in some way or another, that he has "sex-appeal.""

"I am showing the Old West as it really was. Cinema takes violence from life. Not the other way around. Americans treat Westerns with too much rhetoric."

"Those who are susceptible to depravity do not need cinema or theatre to mislead them. There are numerous other factors which lead to immorality."

"During this period I was constantly preoccupied with the analysis of every film, which I saw, and in considering whether I could make them here. There was no doubt whatsoever about the utility of the profession and its importance as an industry...this was the period of the Swadeshi movement and there was profuse talking and lecturing on the subject. For me personally, this led to the resignation of my comfortable government job and taking to an independent profession. I took this opportunity to explain my ideas to my friends and leaders of the Swadeshi movement. Even people who were familiar with me for 15 years found my ideas impracticable."

"While the film Life of Christ was rolling past before my eyes I was mentally visualizing the gods, Shri Krishna, Shri Ramachandra their Gokul and Ayodhya.. I was gripped by a strange spell. I bought another ticket and saw the film again. This time I felt my imagination taking shape in the screen.Could this really happen? Could we the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen. The whole night passed in this mental agony."

"Son, I don't have money even to buy poison.Please help –"

"I have to keep making films in my country so that it gets established as an industry at home."

"As Gandhi refashioned the world of protest, another man was reinventing story telling. In 1913, Dhund Raj Govind Phalke or Dadasaheb Phalke as he came to be later known as, made the first full length feature film Raja Harsihchandra. Within seven years there was a regular film industry functioning in the country with Bombay as its main player."

"He produced, directed, processed and did everything to make the first Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra. Unlike most film makers of those days, Phalke did not have the westernized audience in mind. His vision was to use the medium to narrate an Indian story to the audience."

"The inspiration for the film came from Dadasaheb Phalke. His adventure of film making is the basis of the film, says Paresh Mokashi, director and writer of the film. Harishchandrachi Factory — which faced competition from 15 films including New York and Delhi 6 — captures the first two years of Phalke's cinematic career. The two-hour-long film starts with Phalke giving up his printing business after a fight with his partner. Soon, he accidentally comes across a tent theatre, screening a silent film. An awestruck Phalke decided to make a film and was encouraged by his wife and two enthusiastic children. The Oscar-nominated film ends with Phalke delivering Indian film industry's first hit using his advertising acumen."

"He brought the first movie camera from Germany, but nobody knows what happened to it afterwards. Maybe it is lying with some antique collector. There were absolutely no film-making facilities - production or distribution - available as people believed films had no future. But, whatever he did from scratch set a precedent for the future generations of film-makers."

"Yes, there is a stamp in his honour, some roads, and Mumbai's film city is dedicated to him. There are statues in Mumbai and Nashik, besides the annual top film honour and other token international recognition. However, we think both Dadasaheb and Saraswati deserve a Bharat Ratna and we must be invited to witness the presentation. The centenary year of Indian cinema is the most appropriate occasion."