Giuseppe Tornatore Biography
Giuseppe Tornatore (1956 - ) was born and raised in Bagheria (outside Palermo). He began working as a photographer at a very young age, publishing in various photographic magazines. At the age of sixteen he staged two comedies by Pirandello and De Filippo. For cinema he has made several documentaries, including Il Carretto, acclaimed at various regional and national film festivals in Italy. In 1979 he began a long collaboration with RAI (Italian national television network), for which he directed several programs. From 1978 to 1985 he was president of the CLCT Cooperative, which produced the film One Hundred Days in Palermo by Giuseppe Ferrara, with Lino Ventura. Tornatore also co-wrote the screenplay and directed the second unit. In 1986 he made his feature film debut with Il Cammorrista ("The Gangster"), with which Tornatore won a Golden Globe as best debut director. Rural life is a hallmark of Tornatore's "Sicilian" films. Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, set in a small Sicilian town, was the film that put Tornatore on the map of international audiences. It won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1990. Written and directed in 1988, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso is considered one of the most famous and influential Italian films. Through a long flashback, Tornatore brings to the stage the life of the protagonist, Salvatore Di Vita, recalling his childhood and adolescence. The man is an established director who has lived in Rome for more than thirty years and has never returned to his hometown, Giancaldo, in Sicily. The death of Alfredo, the only film projectionist in the town and also his mentor, forces Salvatore to retrace his entire life and return to Giancaldo after many years. The soundtrack is also memorable, composed by Ennio Morricone, in his first collaboration with Giuseppe Tornatore. The Star Maker, set in post-war Sicily, released in 1995, also received an Oscar nomination in 1996. Tornatore directed Malèna in 2000. This received numerous nominations at both the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the BAFTA awards and the Donatello's David. He won the Nastro d'Argento in 2001 for the soundtrack directed by Ennio Morricone.
