Francesco Maselli Biography
Francesco Maselli was an Italian director and documentary maker, born in Rome in 1930. After enrolling at the Experimental Center of Cinematography, he began working as an assistant director, also collaborating with Michelangelo Antonioni for the medium-length film L'amorosa menzogna in 1949. In the same year, he made his directorial debut with the documentary Bagnaia, an Italian town, the first of many documentaries directed by him which led him to stand out for his mastery of the medium and his availability towards the interpreters.
Cesare Zavattini called him to work with him in Storia di Caterina, the penultimate episode of the collective film L'amore in città, because he noticed his skills as a director. In his early works, Maselli was not so much interested in news as in the novel and the interpretation of complex stories linked to the world of the bourgeoisie. One of his films, The Sbandati, tells the story of a group of upper-class young people after 8 September 1943, in the presence of the first demonstrations of organized resistance.
Maselli has worked for television for a long time, also directing Three workers (1980), based on the novel of the same name by C. Bernari. He also conducted research in photography and electronics, but returned to cinema with a series of films in which he focused his attention on the female universe. Her film Love Story offered an unusual portrait of a young proletarian woman (Valeria Golino) in a context of alienation and marginality.
Later, Maselli directed the political apologist Chronicles of the Third Millennium (1996) and, for television, The Companion (1999), based on the novel of the same name by C. Pavese. Throughout his career, Maselli has embraced a personal expressive research, which has brought out his sensitivity to the theme of ambiguity and his aptitude for psychological excavation. He was also a trade union representative and supported Italian film authors.
