Guido Aristarco(1918-1996)

He was born in Fossacesia, Chieti, Abruzzo. His father was a railway worker from Mantua, and Guido went back to his family's town a few months after his birth. He debuted as a film critic at a very young age for the newspapers "La Gazzetta di Mantova" and "Il Corriere Padano" and then for the magazine "Cinema". In 1952 he founded and directed (until his death) the film magazine "Cinema Nuovo". In 1953 he spent 45 days in Peschiera Military Prison with Renzo Renzi, the two having published a screenplay for an unrealized film called "L'Armata S'agapò". The plot was about the Italian soldiers in Greece during the Second World War, and the authors were charged for contempt towards the Italian Army. On this incident the director Pino Passalacqua has realized in 1985 the TV movie L'armata Sagapò (1985). In 1969 he became the first professor of History of Cinema in the Italian universities, initially in Turin, and later in Rome. He retired in 1989.