Franco Maresco

Filming on Franco Maresco's film about Carmelo Bene is abruptly halted after yet another on-set accident. Producer Andrea Occhipinti pulls the plug, exasperated by the endless takes and repeated delays. Angered, the director simply disappears. Maresco's friend, Umberto Cantone, attempts to mend the rift by calling witnesses from all those involved in the project, in an investigation that offers an opportunity to retrace the personality and ideas of the most corrosive and apocalyptic auteur in Italian cinema.

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Twenty minutes of excerpts from the film, still in progress, that Franco Maresco dedicates to his dearest mentor, Goffredo Fofi, who passed away last July. Pressed by the director, the intellectual from Gubbio, Umbria, in central Italy — who considered Palermo his university of life and activism — lets out a courageous confession, recalling the crucial moments of his unparalleled human, cultural and political experience.

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Maresco returns to speak not only about Jazz, but about the double thread that connects jazz with Italy, or more precisely, with Sicily.

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Franco Maresco presents his two work-in-progress movies: "Lovano Supreme" and "Goffredo Felicissimo?"

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Franco Maresco celebrates the heritage of Pier Paolo Pasolini on the 99th anniversary of his birth through a series of exchanges with renowned intellectuals which were involved or influenced by his works and ideas.

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Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.

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Short introductory clip to the series taken from the unreleased pilot. Contained in the box set “Cinico TV - Volume Three 1998-2007.”

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A short homage and portrait that Franco Maresco dedicates to his friend Letizia Battaglia, a world-famous photographer and symbol of the committed, indignant and anti-Mafia side of Palermo.

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Franco scaldati - died in 2013 - was one of the most important autors of italian theatre plays, Maresco describes his role in the cultural and social field. Through his opera we can observe Italy from another point of view.

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This film tells the story of three defeats: Berlusconi’s political and human defeat in his “twilight”, the one of Ciccio Mirra, Berlusconi’s unconditional supporter, deeply rooted in an ancient culture that dies hard, and the director’s artistic defeat in an Italy that recognised itself in this “Berlusconian culture” for a long time, and probably still does.

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Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

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A heartfelt tribute, ten years after his death, to Franco Scaldati, a project curated by director Franco Maresco, thanks to the collaboration with the Lumpen Association of Palermo.

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Several figures associated with Cinico TV talk about its inception, its rise, and the context in which it took place.

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Comments on the work of Ciprì and Maresco by Emma Dante, Emiliano Morreale, and Giuseppe Lo Bianco

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A Sicilian boy tries to expose the meaning of some proverbs that risk being forgotten.

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"I migliori nani" simulates the television programs that have dominated much of Italian programming since the 1990s: a studio and a series of what in conventional television would be called "reports," but which are actually excursions into a twisted, mutilated, and discordant world.

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In the Sicily of the late 1940s, two brother sculptors, tired of selling madonnas to the local churches, finally realize their dream, and set up a Sicilian production company, thanks to the help of a local bishop. They start producing one box-office failure Z-movie after the other, all with terribly bad local non-pros as actors. Covered in debts, they finally have their great chance, when a local nobleman obsessed by magic decides to invest all his wealth in the making of a movie about Cagliostro, just one year after Orson Welles' Black Magic (1949). They hire a famous American actor (Robert Englund) and start shooting "The Return of Cagliostro".

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A montage dedicated to friends, actors and companions who have passed away over the years: from Francesco Tirone to Paviglianiti, two leading figures in the famous Cinico TV series, from Tommaso Lauria to Carmelo Bene. This journey down memory lane (and through pain), created especially for Fuori Orario, was broadcast on the night of Ferragosto.

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Technical test on the apocalypse in Palermo. There are some men in a cave while we hear explositions outside, far away. Perhaps a war, which nobody knows about. Some of the few survivors move on a desolated and uninhabited land. Images of cemeteries and deserted landscapes pass by, while the survivors start behaving absurdly like animals.

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Aired on Fuori Orario on September 8th, 2025. Fulvio Baglivi and Franco Maresco talk about Maresco's latest movie, Bravo Bene!

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Filming on Franco Maresco's film about Carmelo Bene is abruptly halted after yet another on-set accident. Producer Andrea Occhipinti pulls the plug, exasperated by the endless takes and repeated delays. Angered, the director simply disappears. Maresco's friend, Umberto Cantone, attempts to mend the rift by calling witnesses from all those involved in the project, in an investigation that offers an opportunity to retrace the personality and ideas of the most corrosive and apocalyptic auteur in Italian cinema.

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In 1999, on the occasion of the centenary of Ellington's birth, Franco Maresco commissioned Steve Lacy to perform ten songs by the Duke, which were recorded and filmed in Palermo. In 2024, twenty years after Lacy's death and fifty years after that of Ellington, that unpublished material re-emerges from the archive of the great Sicilian director and becomes a documentary.

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Maresco returns to speak not only about Jazz, but about the double thread that connects jazz with Italy, or more precisely, with Sicily.

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Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.

Open details →

Filming on Franco Maresco's film about Carmelo Bene is abruptly halted after yet another on-set accident. Producer Andrea Occhipinti pulls the plug, exasperated by the endless takes and repeated delays. Angered, the director simply disappears. Maresco's friend, Umberto Cantone, attempts to mend the rift by calling witnesses from all those involved in the project, in an investigation that offers an opportunity to retrace the personality and ideas of the most corrosive and apocalyptic auteur in Italian cinema.

Open details →

Maresco returns to speak not only about Jazz, but about the double thread that connects jazz with Italy, or more precisely, with Sicily.

Open details →

Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.

Open details →

Franco scaldati - died in 2013 - was one of the most important autors of italian theatre plays, Maresco describes his role in the cultural and social field. Through his opera we can observe Italy from another point of view.

Open details →

This film tells the story of three defeats: Berlusconi’s political and human defeat in his “twilight”, the one of Ciccio Mirra, Berlusconi’s unconditional supporter, deeply rooted in an ancient culture that dies hard, and the director’s artistic defeat in an Italy that recognised itself in this “Berlusconian culture” for a long time, and probably still does.

Open details →