by Marta Rosati
‘The Crimes of the Etruscan Demon’ is about to become a film. Published 11 years ago, it was presented in Terni, at the Garden hotel, by the then rector of the University of Tuscia, Marco Mancini. In front of 200 people he said that it was «the best mystery he had ever read and an exceptional tool for learning about the Etruscans»; the university sponsored it as a work of high culture. The author himself, Riccardo Cecchelin, tells it.
The journalist «I was managing the Viterbo courier, I had the Albatros editor read the draft and she told me that she had been ‘kidnapped by the story’». Hence the successful publication. We then arrive at the film with a somewhat magical story: «It was late one evening, I was with the remote control in my hand on the sofa at the end credits of the prequel to ‘The Silence of the Lambs’. At a certain point I absentmindedly read Gusmano Cesaretti’s name, do a quick online search and find his e-mail address. I attach him a synopsis of my book while I write a message like: ‘I have this story, maybe it could be of interest for a film; otherwise, congratulations on your career and long live Italy.’ Three days pass and he replies that his nephew, the screenwriter Cristiano Gazzarrini, is looking for a story about the Etruscans. And he adds: ‘Can I put you in touch?’ And so the adventure began on the set in Tarquinia with an Italian production company ‘Play entertainment’; in collaboration with a Polish company, the Ministry of Culture, the Lazio Region. The cast includes Valeria Solarino, Valeria Bilello, Michele Rosiello, Lorenzo Demour, Fortunato Cerlino, David Sebasti and many others.
Richard For Cecchelin, this is the first experience on the set of a film based on one of his novels but he knows how to juggle cameras, clothes and stage make-up very well; he who always seeks adventure and has a boundless imagination knows his way around; that imagination that meets his cultural background and gives birth to the best of his talent, the one that lives between the written lines: «Mine is a gift – he says with dreamy eyes – I have to thank nature for granting it to me» . Without a doubt he knew how to cultivate and nourish it. Not only writing skills but the ability to invent stories: «In my books I am once the murderer, once the victim, another time the investigator… There are many different characters and I tell stories and create space, but not without preparation adequate documentation”. There is. The soul of the journalist who cannot make mistakes, who takes care of sources, checks and counter-checks, always emerges in the end.
After the studies Riccardo always knew that his path was that of a reporter; with the desire, in the background, to be an explorer. And he was also the one who collected the most recent testimony from the last of the boys in via Panisperna; in Val d’Aosta, interviewed Bruno Pontecorvo. At ‘Il Giorno’ there were pens of the caliber of Morandini and Gazzanica. They told him it was the best interview ever conducted for that newspaper. «Graduated in Literature in Rome, after university I was hired by a press agency in the capital under the direction of Vittorio Schiraldi, then I worked at the Unione Sarda especially in radio broadcasts, then in Calabria and, returning to Rome, I was an assault reporter for Raffaella Carrà’s ‘Domenica In’ and off to Milan working for Il Giorno”.
War Precisely in that period the most significant experience: Riccardo worked as a war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia. He saw atrocious things and admits that he was afraid. But evidently the adrenaline was stronger in recounting a crazy conflict. Close to the wedding, he left thinking of staying away for a week, he returned only three months later. But certainly interviewing a mafia turncoat with several murders on his conscience, at night, just outside the Milan station, must have been a pretty strong experience. Riccardo Cecchelin’s CV includes a long series of books including ‘The Game of the Goose’ set in Narni, Falsa Imago, presented at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (Dario Fo was also there), Tenebrarum (with a preface by Raul Cremona and the cover by Mark Kostabi).
Cecchelin His was a life full of experiences and full of satisfaction. How many eyes crossed, how many lives dug, how much Milan to drink lived, but Riccardo is the embodiment of a personality that ‘contaminates’. In Umbria he directed newspapers and raised a generation of journalists, because he is also a talent scout with some nice motto always in his pocket. And if he himself has to say about someone who has contaminated him he says: “My father”. The foundations: love for art, culture, good food… the pillars on which he built his existence, leaving strong roots to sink into his Tarquinia, where after a long wandering he returned, with a film to which the city did not it is only the background, but it is the protagonist. Barring any problems, the film will be released next fall. But in the meantime Riccardo, ‘politically incorrect’ in life and on the radio, is not sitting idle: he already has prequels and sequels ready for ‘The Crimes of the Etruscan Demon’ and something of his literary talent is also moving towards the world of football. Tireless.
