Gualtiero Jacopetti

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Gualtiero Jacopetti (born September 4, 1919 in Barga , † August 17, 2011 in Rome ) was an Italian director of documentaries . Together with Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi, he is considered to be the founder of the Mondo genre.

Life

Jacopetti worked as a film journalist and directed various relevant magazines. In 1959 he wrote the commentary for Europa di notte by Alessandro Blasetti , from which he made his first film, Mondo Cane developed. The shocking documentary and its successors and imitators were from now on associated with his name.

Mondo

A Mondo film usually consists of a colorful series of documentary and re-enacted scenes from manners and customs of all possible societies and cultures in the world. The directorial trio Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco E. Prosperi and Paolo Cavara went for it in areas that the beginning of the 60s the average person were completely unknown, and later they put their focus on the battlefields of the decolonization of Africa. The classic Mondos include Mondo Cane , Alle Frauen der Welt , Mondo Cane2 (whose artistic responsibility Jacopetti denies for himself) and Africa Addio . This does not include Addio Zio Tom and Mondo Candido .

Jacopetti's films are currently being re-evaluated. Jacopetti is said to have seen himself as a moralist who showed the depravity of whites and blacks in order to shake up the audience. Mondo Cane was presented using garish editing montages and provocative juxtapositions that were based on the avant-garde films of the time . Riz Ortolani's score for Mondo Cane was even nominated for an Oscar .

Jacopetti's films were box office hits - as well as public nuisances. Especially Africa Addio , whose performance in Berlin was prevented by student protests. With Addio, Uncle Tom! he left the genre of the mondo more and more without parting from his basic ideas. The last cinematic work was the Voltaire adaptation Mondo Candido .

controversy

It was alleged that the African troops of the German mercenary Kongo-Müller had been induced to shoot some prisoners “camera right” in exchange for an alcohol donation. Although Jacopetti always denied this and was acquitted in a process, he was banned from entering some countries in what was then the Third World . Again and again the accusation of racism was raised against the films by Jacopetti and Prosperi, especially against Addio, Uncle Tom and Afrika Addio. Both have resisted. At the movie Addio, Uncle Tom! he was also accused of inciting blacks against whites.

Further representatives of the Mondo genre

The Mondo films by Jacopetti and Prosperis must be distinguished from their imitators, which are predominantly of Italian origin. These clung to their first success Mondo Cane (meaning: The world - and how it gets to the dog ), but only presented "perversity revues" - where slaughterhouse scenes, executions, stoning or cruelty to animals were almost mandatory (for example, too in the extremely controversial films of the series Faces of Death , all of which are indexed in Germany and some of which are also confiscated nationwide under Section 131 of the Criminal Code ).

Filmography

  • 1954: Three sinners (Un giorno inpretura) (actor)
  • 1959: The world at night (Il mondo di notte) (narrator)
  • 1959: The biggest show in the world (Europa di notte) (screenplay)
  • 1961: Hold the bomb, darling (Che gioia vivere) (Story)
  • 1962: Mondo Cane (Mondo cane)
  • 1963: All women in the world (La donna nel mondo)
  • 1963: Mondo Cane II (Mondo cane no.2)
  • 1966: Africa Addio (Africa addio)
  • 1971: Addio, Uncle Tom! (Addio zio Tom)
  • 1975: Jacopetti: Mondo Candido (Mondo Candido)
  • 1981: Fangio - Una vita a 300 all'ora (screenplay)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Documentary filmmaker Gualtiero Jacopetti has died. In: orf.at , August 18, 2011, accessed on November 21, 2017.
  2. ^ Roberto Poppi: Dizionario del cinema italiano, I Registi, Gremese 2002, p. 232
  3. ^ Review by Roger Ebert, April 25, 1967
  4. ^ Farewell Uncle Tom Roger Ebert, 1972
  5. ^ The Godfathers of Mondo. Gov. David Gregory. Blue Underground, 2003.
  6. ^ David Duke, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding (Mandeville: Free Spech Press, 1999), 311.
  7. ^ Pauline Kael, "The Current Cinema: Notes on Black Movies," New Yorker, December 2, 1972, 163.