FRANCESCO ALESSI, Sets Photographer

Born in Messina in 1920, young Francesco Alessi moved to Rome to pursue his only passion: cinema. Alessi enters the gilded world of the Roman and sweet life, became photographer, takes part in major movies that run between the years 1950-1975. Twenty-five years lived intensely on more than one hundred sets, stealing shots, shots and close-ups to the most important actors, actresses and directors. Captured with his camera moments experienced by some historians of the postwar Italian cinema. Long and almost impossible to remember a list of its holdings. His dazzling close-ups in Sofia Loren, Toto, Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Ugo Tognazzi, Walter Chiari, Claudia Cardinale and many others. This intense career will be traced with an original photographic exhibition by more than one hundred shots that are equivalent to retrace virtually the adventurous history of postwar Italian cinema. The initiative also has the task of doing justice to an obscure and important protagonist of the Italian cinema, a Sicilian who has always brought with him the memory of his homeland. The initiative in Messina after the presentation will be hosted, in 2012 at the Casa del Cinema in Rome in collaboration with the National Union of Film Journalists. A catalog will accompany the exhibition.