Nelo Risi is a Director and Scriptwriter Italien born on 21 april 1920 at Milan (Italie)
Nelo Risi
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Nationality ItalieBirth 21 april 1920 at Milan (
Italie)
Death 17 september 2015 (at 95 years)
Nelo Risi (born 1920 in Milan) is an Italian poet, film director, translator and screenwriter, brother of cinematographer Fernando Risi and director Dino Risi.
Born in Milan, he graduated in medicine as his brother Dino, then with the outbreak of the Second World War he fought on the Russian front and was interned in Switzerland. He started his poetical production in 1941, with the collection Le opere e i giorni. With the end of the war he moved to Paris where he joined a group of filmmakers, led by the Americans Richard Leacock and John Ferno, engaged in documenting the disaster of the war in Europe through a series of human-geography documentary films. During this time Risi also published his second collection of poems (L'esperienza, 1948) and worked as a translator of poetry works by Pierre Jean Jouve, Constantine P. Cavafy, Sophocles, Jules Laforgue and others.
Back in Italy in 1954 he directed a dozen of documentary films on popular figures and moments in the history of the twentieth century. He made his feature film debut in 1961, with a segment of the film Le italiane e l'amore; the same year he started his long collaboration with RAI TV. During his film career Risi won two Silver Ribbons, in 1960 for the direction of the short film The Brothers Rosselli (1959) and in 1970 for the screenplay of Diary of a Schizophrenic Girl. In 1970 he also won the Viareggio Prize for his poetry collection Di certe cose che dette in versi suonano meglio che in prosa. His poetry style is referred as "poetics of the usual" ("poetica dell'usuale"), in reference of the attempt of grasping the contradictions and the mystifications of everyday life through a basic, simple language, close to a diaristic style. Biography
Diplômé en médecine, comme son frère aîné Dino Risi, Nelo Risi est également poète et écrivain. Son activité cinématographique commence à Paris en 1948, où il collabore avec le documentariste d'origine britannique Richard Leacock. Entre 1949 et 1963, il dirige d'ailleurs dix-neuf documentaires, courts et moyens métrages abordant tour à tour des sujets sociaux et historiques. On citera notamment : Ritorno nella valle (1949), Il delitto Matteotti (1956), I fratelli Rosselli (couronné d'un Nastro d'argent) en 1959 et La Firenze di Pratolini (1963). Il travaille aussi pour la télévision et en 1961 réalise l'épisode Le ragazze madri (Filles-mères) du film collectif Les femmes accusent (Le italiane e l'amore), inspiré par une idée générale de Cesare Zavattini.
Son premier long métrage date de 1965 : Le Dernier Train (Andremo in città) est l'histoire tragique d'une Juive déportée en Yougoslavie, adapté du roman autobiographique écrit par son épouse, Edith Bruck. C'est toutefois avec Journal d'une schizophrène (1968) qu'il parvient à une relative renommée. En 1971, il met en scène une biographie filmée d’Arthur Rimbaud : Une saison en enfer.
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