Biography
Born in Naples, Salvatores debuted as a theatre director in 1972, founding in Milan the Teatro dell'Elfo, for which he directed several avant-garde pieces until 1989.
In that year, he directed his first feature film, Marrakech Express, which was followed in 1990 by Turné. Both films shared a group of actor-friends, including Diego Abatantuono and Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who will be present in many of his later movies. Turné was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.
In 1991, Salvatores received great international praise for Mediterraneo, which won an Academy Award as best foreign film. It also won three David di Donatello, the most important award for Italian cinema, and a Silver Ribbon.
In 1992, he released Puerto Escondido, from the eponymous novel by Pino Cacucci, in which Abatantuono and Bentivoglio were joined by another standard actor for Salvatores, Claudio Bisio. The following year he directed Sud, featuring Silvio Orlando, an attempt to denounce the political and social situation of the Mezzogiorno of Italy seen from the point of view of the unemployed and those at the margins of society.
The main themes of Salvatores' screenplays are escape from a reality that cannot be accepted or understood, nostalgia for friends, and voyages that never end. A new experimental period, however, started in 1997 with Nirvana, a science fiction/cyberpunk attempt which received mixed reviews. This was followed by the surreal Denti (Teeth, 2000), and Amnèsia (2002). Both featured Sergio Rubini.
A good success was Io non ho paura of 2003, from the Niccolò Ammaniti novel. In 2005 he directed the noir Quo Vadis, Baby?.
Read more about this topic: Gabriele Salvatores
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)