Adriano Aprà dies (his colleague Pedro Armocida announced it on his social media), at the height of his creative, critical and analytical maturity. At 84 it may seem like a provocation and it is towards those colleagues – critics, essayists and scholars – who have had a more or less brief parable of artistic and intellectual enlightenment. But limited.
Adriano Aprà no, he has never stopped being in great shape, at least on a mental level. With that somewhat angry manner, always ready for indignation, because nothing is marginal in the creation of meaning and imagination, in which he participated in every role.
Adriano Aprà, a multifaceted career
As an exegete and as a director (Olimpia to friendspresented in Locarno, e Rossellini seen by Rossellini), as selector and director of festivals (Salso Film & Tv for 12 years; the Mostra del Nuovo Cinema of Pesaro for 8 and for which he was able to create wonderful sections also under the direction of Pedro Armocida, a festival duo among the best of last decades; finally four years at the helm of the National Film Library).
As a university professor, because few will forget his demanding generosity as a professor, especially his students.
But always, and above all, as an always lateral, experimental, never condescending gaze.
Adriano Aprà wasn’t an easy guy. He was a fighter, those who knew him best remember him as passionate and always passionate – when not angry -, with the ability to scream, never rude but always imposing if he didn’t like something. Never inclined to compromise, always confrontational, even rough.
Ready to contest, because the eras he passed through, his nature and talent prevented him from being moderate, rebellious inside and out, eclectic like few others: just scan his bibliography to find essays ranging from Warhol to Matarazzo, from Godard to Rossellini (which without him we would have understood much less and very badly), from Straub and Huillet to Blasetti, from Bazin to Germi, so as not to forget Stars and Stripesa wonderful look at more than half a century of American cinema up to one of the last writings, Out of the normwhich is not just a look at Italian neo-experimental cinema but, perhaps, the title that could be given to a life and a career, his.
The words of Marco Bellocchio
To remember him as he deserves is our most rebellious and courageous director, like him. Marco Bellocchio. “With the death of Adriano Aprà, the pure breed of great critics risks becoming extinct. He was someone who criticized using his imagination, a rare quality in the category, and he maintained his passion until the end, an even rarer feeling. We will miss him.”
His exploits as an actor
But it is perhaps a small book, some would say smaller, that also tells of the irony, the ability to look beyond and elsewhere, that is Brief but truthful history of documentary, from real cinema to non-fictionin which competence and wit are accompanied in every line, with a claim to depth but also to lightness that was not immediately evident, in his character and in his analysis, but which was there.
And you see it in the acting game he indulged in at the end of the 60s (but not only) with Schifano, Ferreri (in Dillinger is dead he is actually a film critic) and Bertolucci (but also for Archibugi con Matter of the heart, in which, uncredited, he is a psychoanalyst). And it was right, because with that charisma and that face, in his youth, he remembered Renzo Montagnani de The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob with the legendary Louis de Funés, if he only wanted he would have come a long way on the set too.
Cinema is lonelier without Adriano Aprà. Without those who knew how to understand him better than others, without those who expected him to be a high art and full of opportunities, without giving in. Without those who generously gave themselves to improve it, prod it, seek it even in its craziest and most bizarre forms.
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