Art historian, but also author and director of documentaries and docudramas, pioneer in the search for original narrative methods for television recognized nationally and internationally. It is all this, and much more Anna Zanoli, the illustrious Cesena native who these days “returns” to her favorite Cesena home, the Malatestiana Library. Yesterday, Thursday 28 March, Zanoli’s personal archive was donated by her family, represented by the art historian, as well as her husband, Carlo Bertelli, to the Municipality of Cesena. It is a valuable collection that includes working notes, manuscripts and typescripts regarding the RAI programs for which he worked, documentaries and television programs edited as director; correspondences; books from the personal library with historical, artistic, literary and philosophical topics; audiovisual documents, including films, recordings of programs made by you during your professional career and now transferred to digital media; photographs relating to study and professional activities. Overall it is an archive-library of around 2000 volumes.
“The acquisition of this archive of inestimable value – comments the Councilor for Culture Carlo Verona – not only increases the cultural heritage of the Malatestiana Library, and of Cesena, but gives us the opportunity to reflect on channels of promotion and public use of this material which certainly deserves to be known by all. The family’s only request is that these materials be made available to art, cinema and television lovers for consultation purposes, and that they be displayed and reproduced digitally in order to enhance this important study and research work. The city of Cesena – continues the Councilor – owes a lot to Anna Zanoli, a great popularizer and fellow citizen who passed away in 2020, the year in which her family, through her husband Carlo Bertelli, expressed the desire to create a relationship between the memory of this illustrious fellow citizen of ours and her city of origin. Since yesterday, this immense work built over the course of forty years has been kept in the Malatestiana waiting to be cataloged and placed”. The delivery of the Zanoli collection took place in the house in Milan in the presence of the scientific director of the Malatestiana Library Paolo Zanfini and Carlo Bertelli.
The Malatestiana, a public reading and conservation library, constitutes a resource of excellence for the entire reference territory, both in terms of quantity and quality of its collections and preserved documentation. This donation, as well as the other recently acquired archives (Galli/Pedrelli), constitutes an element of integration and substantial enrichment of the archival book heritage of the Malatestiana Library also with a view to its progressive and constant development for the benefit of the entire community. In this regard, the municipal administration, once the overall work of cataloging the acquired material has been completed, will identify the most suitable channel to make this content, in some ways unpublished, accessible (such as Anna Zanoli’s interviews with Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giorgio De Chirico) and of great value (think of the documentary made in 2003 and dedicated to “Malatesta Novello magnificent gentleman” on the occasion of the 550th anniversary of our Malatestiana Library).
Anna Zanoli (30 June 1934-October 2020) He grew up in Cesena, with his parents, in the difficult years of the war; great friends are the “desired, hidden, loved” books, the radio, the opera which she was introduced to by Bianca, an elderly neighbor. The first enchantment for that cinema / painting combination that will become her life occurs at 12 years old, in the middle of the war, in the darkness of the cinema in her city. She is a well-known author of art programs and documentaries for Rai, in which she had worked for 40 years in Rome and Milan, she had been assistant director in variety programmes, music, prose and above all cultural programmes, in particular ‘I’m landing. Producer and screenwriter, she was part of the Rai General Management as deputy head of service in the Literature and Arts sector. She had to her credit biographies of artists and portraits of protagonists of the 20th century. In 2013 the Municipality of Cesena awarded her the Malatestiana Novello Prize for the refined and wise work of cultural dissemination of which she was the creator with her activity as a television director and author, demonstrating profound sensitivity and competence.
