GIUSEPPE TORNATORE
(Director)
Giuseppe Tornatore was born in 1956 in Bagheria near Palermo, Sicily. At an early age, he took up photography and won many prizes in national competitions. He made his directorial debut at sixteen, with the short film "Il Carretto," which brought him to the attention of RAI television, with which he began a close collaberation in 1979. Several TV films followed in rapid succession: "Portrait of a Thief," "Meeting with Francesco Rosi," "Sicilian Writers and Films: Giovanni Verga, Luigi Pirandello, Vitaliano Brancati and Leonardo Sciascia" and "Il Diario di Guttuso." In 1982, he won a prize for Best Documentary at the Salerno Film Festival for "Ethnic Minorities in Sicily."
From 1978 to 1985, he was the president of the CLTC filmmaking cooperative. On the CLTC-produced "A Hundred Days in Palermo," starring Lino Ventura, Tornatore served as co-scriptwriter and second unit director.
He made his feature film debut in 1986 with "Il Camorrista" ("The Professor"), adapted from Giuseppe Marazzo's novel and starring Ben Gazzarra and Laura del Sol. His next film, "Cinema Paradiso," starring Philippe Noiret, shot on location in his hometown of Bagheria, Sicily, brought him international fame.
Giuseppe Tornatore's third feature, "Everybody's Fine" ("Stanno Tutti Bene") stars Marcello Mastroianni as an elderly Sicilian patriarch who travels throughout Italy on a private mission to bring his five grown children together around one table. It was successfully released in the U.S. in 1991. Since then, he contributed a segment, "The Blue Dog," starring Philippe Noiret, to the the 1991 omnibus film "Especially on Sunday," which also included films by Giuseppe Bertolucci and Marco Tullio Giordana.
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