Francesco Calogero

Messina, Italy

 

Director
Calogero was born in 1957 in Messina. He graduated with a degree in law and worked in many film clubs. After twenty years of collaboration with the Festival in Taormina, in 1985, he founded the Messina Film Festival. Beginning in 2003, he worked with the Costa Iblea Film Festival organization, and in 2006, the Valdarno Cinema Fedic festival. He also teaches and has held film seminars and workshops all over Italy since 1995. He has been a professor at the University of Messina since 2005. After making two films in the super 8 format and a few videos, in 1987, he directed his feature film La gentilezza del tocco that won awards at many international festivals. In 1988, during a festival in Taormina, together with Ninni Bruschetta and Donald Ranvaud, he made an independently produced film called Visioni private (Private Screening), which he finished two years later. Together with Bruschetta he directed the theatre play Il battello degli amanti( 1988) and interpreted the play by Beniamino Joppolo, I carabinieri, presented in Gibellina 1994. In 1995, he directed Gaetano Donizetti’s opera, Rita ou Le mari battu, and two years later Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. He directed two operas by Vincenzo Bellini, Norma in 1998, and in 2003 La sonnambula. He also directed documentaries about the making of each of these operas. In 1992 he directed Nessuno and in 1997 Cinque giorni di tempesta which was presented in Venice and won awards in Osaka and Annecy. His last feature film is Metronotte from 2000. He made his documentary, L’implacabile tenente Rossi in 2002 for I diari della Sacher. Two years later he made In the Name of the Godfather, testimony of the places in Sicily where F. F. Coppola made his film The Godfather.

Filmography

Filmography:

1985. La caviglia di Amelia (super 8)
1986. Il ritratto ovale (mm, video)
Georgia On My Mind (cm, video)
1987. Bionda per un giorno (mm, super 8)
Syrma-Traccia d'Antigone (cm, video)
La gentilezza del tocco
1988. Lonesome (cm, video)
1990. Visioni private
1992.Nessuno
1995. Rita ou Le mari battu (video)
1997. Cavalleria rusticana (video)
Pagliacci (video)
Cinque giorni di tempesta
1998. Norma (video)
2000. Metronotte
2002. L’implacabile tenente Rossi (mm, video)
2003. La sonnambula (video)
2004. In the Name of the Godfather (mm, video)


Films by this director

La Gentilezza del Tocco

(1987)

Directed by: Francesco Calogero
PHOTOGRAPHY: Franco Lecca
Synopsis:

A young man lives in a small town and works as a reviser in the local newspaper. One day he gets interested in a positive critique of a concert published in his newspaper. He suspects that the critic had not even been at the concert and starts an investigation to find out who the real author of the article was.

color, 16 mm, 80 min

Cinque giorni di tempesta

(1997)

Directed by: Francesco Calogero
PHOTOGRAPHY: Giulio Pietromarchi
Synopsis:

Giovanni leaves Sicily and goes to Bolzano to serve in the army. In the harbor he meets Vince, his older relative who earned his fortune in Australia. He invites Giovanni to Australia and he gets there five days earlier than they had planned.

color, 94 min

L'implacambile tenente Rossi

(L'implacabile tenente Rossi, 2002)

Directed by: Francesco Calogero
PHOTOGRAPHY: Gianfilippo Corticelli
Synopsis:

After September 8, 1943, a lieutenant and his men, originally based in Greece, are taken to German concentration camps in Poland and Germany.

color, 23 min

In the Name of Godfather

(2004)

Directed by: Francesco Calogero
PHOTOGRAPHY: Giulio Pietromarchi
Synopsis:

In the beginning of the 1970s, genius American director Francis Ford Coppola set new standard for film work in Hollywood with his wildly successful Godfather saga (after a crisis during the 1960s).

digibeta, 19 min

Metronotte

(2000)

Directed by: Francesco Calogero
PHOTOGRAPHY: Giulio Pietromarchi
Synopsis:

Paolo Torregiani lives in Luccha. He has worked as a night guard for thirty years.

color, 105 min

Nessuno

(1992)

Directed by: Francesco Calogero
PHOTOGRAPHY: Roberto Meddi
Synopsis:

Nico has suffered since childhood because of his mother’s numerous love affairs. After an accident, the boy stops talking. Soon, he has to deal with a colleague that teases him.

color, 91 min

Private Screening

(Visioni private, 1990)

Directed by: Francesco Calogero
PHOTOGRAPHY: Angelo Strano
Synopsis:

The film was made as a collaboration of three directors (Francesco Calogero, Ninni Bruschetta and Donald Ranvaud), and it's story seems like a series of notes of a director in a crisis.

color, 100 min
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