“Acqua e zucchero – Carlo Di Palma, i colori della vita” (“Water and Sugar: Carlo Di Palma, the Colours of Life”), a docufilm by Fariborz Kamkari realised in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Regional Authority of Lazio, the Istituto Luce Cinecittà, and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, was presented at the Bari International Film Festival and in Rome. Produced by Adriana Chiesa, through a co-production with ACEK s.r.l. Faram, e.MAGINE, Cinefinance Italia, Rai Cinema and MIBACT, the documentary is dedicated to Carlo Di Palma, one of the major directors of photography in Italy and in the world. The film explores dozens of the masterpieces of Italian cinematography linked through the fine eye of Carlo Di Palma. He started to work when he was very young on the set of the first neorealist film, Obsession by Visconti, and then went on to work on the set of Roma città aperta (“Rome, Open City”), the film-manifesto of the movement, and then again with Rossellini in Paisà, and with De Sica in Sciuscià and Ladri di biciclette (“Bicycle Thieves”). Put in a nutshell: the fundamental sets of the time. Di Palma then moved on to the set of what the great film critic Noël Burch defined as the first modern film: Antonioni’s Cronaca di un amore (“Story of a Love Affair”). In partnership with the Ferrara-born film director, Di Palma would paint with colour and images the first post-modern masterpieces: Deserto rosso (“Red Desert”) and Blow up. He directed the photography of unforgettable films by Germi (Divorce Italian Style), Monicelli (L’armata Brancaleone, The Girl with the Pistol), Petri (The assassin), and Bernardo Bertolucci (Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man). In the ’80s he brought the best of European film-making to the USA in the work of a contemporary genius like Woody Allen, with another series of heart-touching films: starting with Hannah and Her Sisters, to Radio Days, September,Manhattan Murder Mystery, Alice…
Within the renewed integrated promotion action of the Foreign Ministry, the documentary – after the world previews in Venice and Toronto, followed by the screening in Berlin, Tel Aviv, Madrid and Sofia, and after winning the Nastro d’Argento for Best Documentary on Cinema and Entertainment and being nominated for the Best Documentary for the David di Donatello Awards – will again become the focus of attention of international audiences through its circulation by the network of Italian Embassies and Italian Cultural Institutes abroad.
