GUERRA, TONINO

(1920-)

(Born Antonio Guerra.) Poet, painter, novelist, installation artist, screenwriter. While establishing a strong reputation as a dialect poet and fiction writer in the late 1950s, Guerra also began to write for the cinema, his first collaborations being withGiuseppe De SantisonUomini e lupi(Men and Wolves, 1956) andLa strada lunga un anno(The Year Long Road, 1958). Two years later, with his screenplay forL'avventura(The Adventure, 1960), he initiated what would become a lifelong partnership withMichelangelo Antonioni, which would see him writing all of Antonioni's subsequent films (with the exception ofThe Passenger[1975]) and sharing an Oscar nomination with the director for the screenplay ofBlowup(Blow-Up, 1966).By the mid-1960s, while continuing to publish poetry and fiction, he had also instituted a similarly long and fruitful partnership withFrancesco Rosi, for whom he would write all the major films fromC'era una volta(More Than a Miracle, 1967) toLa tregua(The Truce, 1997). Only a few years later his contribution toFederico Fellini'sAmarcord(1973) earned him his second Oscar nomination for screenwriting.

During the 1980s he continued to write for Antonioni and Fellini while also collaborating withPaolo and Vittorio Tavianion several of their most acclaimed films, includingLa notte di San Lorenzo(Night of the Shooting Stars, 1982),Kaos(Chaos, 1984), andGood morning Babilonia(Good Morning, Babylon, 1987). In 1983, having acquired an international reputation, Guerra was sought out by legendary Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky to help write the screenplay forNostalghia(1983). Soon after, he also began working with eminent Greek director Theodoros Angelopoulos, with whom he would eventually make seven films, beginning withTaxidi sta Kithira(Voyage to Cythera, 1984), for which he received the Best Screenplay award at Cannes, and continuing through to the most recentTrilogia I:To Livadi pou dakryzei(Trilogy:The Weeping Meadow, 2004), which was nominated for the Golden Bear at Berlin.

After receiving a host of prizes and awards during his long career, in 2004 Guerra was also honored with the title of Best European Screen-writer at the first Festival of European Screenwriters at Strasbourg.