The twentieth edition of La Valigia dell’Attore concluded on Sunday 30 July, which bestowed the Gian Maria Volonté Award on Filippo Timi. In the morning, in the spaces of the Magazzini Ilva, the actor was the protagonist of the meeting with the public coordinated by the critics Fabio Ferzetti and Boris Sollazzo who with him explored some of the salient steps of his versatile career declined in theatre, cinema and writing. On the previous evening at the I Colmi fortress, Timi received the coveted recognition from the hands of Giovanna Gravina Volonté, artistic director of the festival together with Boris Sollazzo and Fabio Ferzetti.
“In my experience as an actor – says Timi – I also learned a lot about “real” life, about knowing how to read it even during the fiction of a film set. A circumstance that also contemplates a dose of embarrassment: and it is at that juncture that something strong and credible can come out. Receiving this award gives me indescribable joy, because Volonté, the greatest in my opinion, was an inexcusable actor with his greatness. For many of us it is an essential reference, and that pain of his in his gaze, a guide.”
The motivation that the jurors elaborated for Timi’s award reads as follows: “If there is one idea we have had to come to terms with in recent years, it is that of identity. If there is an interpreter who has helped us understand how this concept was changing, it is Filippo Timi. The most versatile, the most multiple, the most reckless, therefore the most capable of calling himself into question of all our great actors. Actors-authors, never a formula was more appropriate.
From the underground films of Tonino De Bernardi, who in addition to interpreting screenplays, to Saturn against Ozpetek, in which he is one of the most unconventional characters. From Vincere by Marco Bellocchio, in which he is first a young Mussolini then his unfortunate son Benito Albino, to the problematic father of The eight mountains (by Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermersch), the occult center of the film. Until the other father, this time married to another man, from Marco Simon Puccioni’s The Invisible Thread, Timi never stopped questioning and questioning us.
Not surprisingly adding to his work as an actor a copious production of books, written the first with Edoardo Albinati (Tutt’al più morio), then alone (And let these stars fall, Worse than becoming famous). And without ever ceasing to do theatre, in an interpretative bulimia which is the other side of a continuous research work, also developed in the poetic and philosophical fields.
Orpheus and Don Giovanni, Danton and Cupid, Satan and Woyzeck, Hamlet and Odin, are just some of the great characters Timi has brought to life on stage, giving them a new and unsettling interpretation every time. Up to Mrs. Fairytale, an American housewife from the 50s, the protagonist of a film written once again by Timi himself, Favola, and directed by Sebastiano Mauri. A real Ufo in our cinema often folded on the most consolidated formulas, and one of those tests of skill that every actor dreams of.
It is worth remembering the little-known story of Gian Maria Volonté, who, hearing Carlo Lizzani propose a role in his Mamma Ebe, replied “Okay, I’ll make the film, but the role of Mamma Ebe belongs to me”. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, Lizzani would have regretted it publicly several times. Today. also thanks to Timi, he who knows how it would have ended. “
Starting tomorrow instead, the ValigiaLab will start, the laboratory of advanced artistic training on acting techniques, scheduled on the island of Caprera from 31 July to 6 August. Tutor of the eight theater and cinema students selected for the 2023 edition, the thirteenth, will be the actress Donatella Finocchiaro who, on the theme “The art of living”, will follow them in a training and improvement process, with the collaboration of Greta Vincenza Caponnetto and the coordination of prof. Fabrizio Deryu.
Valigialab 2023 enjoys the patronage of the Municipality of La Maddalena and the La Maddalena Archipelago Park Authority, and is created with the fundamental support of Nuovo IMAIE and the “Gian Maria Volonté” School of Cinematographic Art in Rome.