The exit to the biopic room Franco Battiato. The long journey of Renato De Maria (at the cinema from 2 to 4 February) represents a further dowel in the filmografia tied to the Sicilian singer, who, starting from Perduto Amor – his debut behind the camera that earned him a Silver Ribbon as Best Exortant Director in 2004 – tried to visually “translate” the ideas already contained in the texts of his songs, adopting very free approaches.
During his almost fifty-year career, the songs of Battiato were very often used in Italy by directors like Nanni Moretti – who put them in four films (Scalo a Grade in Bianca, I Trains of Tozeur in La Messa è fini, and I come to look for you in the Red Palombella and I want to see you dance in The Ride of the Future) – and Luca Guadagnino, who treats in Call me with your album More recently, in the film The master of Andrea Di Stefano, Cuccurucucù makes from musical background to a scene that sees the two protagonists of the work, Tiziano Menichelli and Pierfrancesco Favino, at the center of a moment of emotional approach among them.
The cover side was also widely used by the cinema: Alfonso Cuaròn, for The Children of Men, used the version of Battiato of the song Ruby Tuesday of the Rolling Stones, while Emma Dante, in The Sisters Macaluso, recovered Winter (originally sung by Fabrizio De André) for his story coming of age set in the same native land of the musician, Sicily. Numerous are also the presences of filmmakers and fellow musicians in his works as director, as in the case of the already mentioned Perduto amor, which sees in fact the collaboration of artists like Francesco De Gregori, Morgan, Alberto Radius and Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, alongside the actors Corrado Fortuna, Ninni Bruschetta and Donatella Finocchiaro; in Musikanten (presented in the Orizzoamanti section of the Festival of Venice of 2005).
In 2016, director Giada Colagrande included him in his film Padre, a work on a horseback between cinema, theatre and video art, along with Willem Dafoe and Marina Abramovic. The character interpreted by Battiato, or the late father of the protagonist, communicates with her from the afterlife through music, expressing all her ideas of esoteric mold that characterized the most recent reflections of the artist.
The article Franco Battiato. The long journey into the cinema comes from SentieriSelvaggi.
