GUISEPPE TORNATORE PARADISE IN SICILY

Tornatore was born on May 27, 1956 in Bagheria, a small town outside Palermo in Sicily. At the age of sixteen, he directed two stage works: Luigi Pirandello's Bella Vita and L'Arte della Commedia. That same year he made a short film entitled Il Carretto (The Wagon) which brought him to the attention of RAI television, with which he began a close collaboration in 1979. Several TV films followed in rapid succession. In 1982, Tornatore won a prize for Best Documentary at the Salerno Film Festival for Ethnic Minorities in Sicily.
Tornatore made his feature film debut with an adaptation of Giuseppe Marazzo's novel Il Camorrista, about an Italian journalist's valiant struggle against the mob, starring Ben Gazzara and Laura Del Sol. The film won that year's Nastro d'Argento (Silver Film Award) and the Italian Golden Globe for the Best Young Director.
With the collaboration of Franco Cristaldi, on what was to be Tornatore's second, and breakthrough, feature, CINEMA PARADISO. It also marked the first time Ennio Morricone did the score for a Tornatore film - a collaboration which has continued to this day.
The film went on to win the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival in 1989, the Golden Globe awarded by the foreign press in Hollywood in 1989, and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture in 1990. It also won a special prize at the Felix awards, the 1991 BAFTA prize, and become an international success.
Starting in 1990, Tornatore became one of the founding members of the Philip Morris Cinema Project, dedicated to the restoration of classics of Italian cinema. Over the following years he participated in restoration work on such films as Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema, De Sica's Shoeshine, Alberto Lattuada's Il Cappotto and Mauro Bolognini's Il Bell'Antonio. They also restored more than a dozen rare short films.
In 1991, he founded a production company in Rome (Sciarlo) with his older brother Francesco, producing several Italian features. During the academic year 1992-93, Tornatore taught a course in Aesthetics at the University of Palermo.
Tornatore came out with his fourth feature in 1994: A Pure Formality, starring Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski and Sergio Rubini. In, 1995 Tornatore made The Starmaker. At that year's Venice Film Festival it won the Special Jury Prize, and later was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Film. The film also won numerous Silver Ribbon awards that year in Italy: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Photography and Best Production Design; as well as three Donatello awards.
That same year, directing for his own company Sciarlo and for Istituto Luce, he made a film anthology entitled Lo Schermo a Tre Punte, a compilation of cinematic references to Sicily. In 1998, Tornatore was made a Commendatore of the Italian Republic (one of Italy's highest awards) for his contribution to cinema. One of his most watched films internationally include Malèna, starting Monica Belluci, another magical story about the power of fantasy and the perils of growing up.

FILMOGRAPHY

1986: The Professor (Il camorrista)
1988: Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso)
1990: Everybody's Fine (Stanno tutti bene)
1991: Especially on Sunday (segment "Il cane blu")
1994: A Pure Formality (Una pura formalità)
1995: The Star Maker (L'uomo delle stelle)
1995: Lo schermo a tre punte (documentary)
1996: Ritratti d'autore: seconda serie documentary)
1998: The Legend of 1900 (La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano)
2000: Malèna
2006: The Unknown Woman (La sconosciuta)
2009: Baarìa
2013: The Best Offer

SOURCE: INTERNET