A teacher at the beginning of his career is sent to a school at Tiburtino
III, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome. Most of his students skip
class and the teacher, as he hunts them down, becomes acquainted
with the hard family circumstances of the young people. He realizes
that traditional teaching methods aren’t going to have any effect on
the students so he tries out a form of teaching based on dialog and
research. But the experiment, which is considered bothersome and risky,
isn’t looked upon favorably by the principal and the other teachers.
Biography
film director
Vittorio De Seta
Vittorio De Seta (Palermo, 1923) debuted as a director with Pasqua in Sicilia, which he co-directed with Vito Pandolfi, and between 1954 and 1955 he shot six documentaries in Sicily. Of these, Isola di fuoco won first prize for best documentary at the Festival of Cannes in 1955 and Contadini del mare won at Mannheim in 1956. He directed his first feature film in 1961, Banditi a Orgosolo. He switched to television in the 1970s, the start of a collaboration with RAI that resulted in the series Diario di un maestro (1973). He has recently made the documentary Dedicato ad Antonino Uccello (2002) and has finished shooting the feature film Lettere dal Sahara.
FILMOGRAFIA
Lu tempu di li pisci spata (cm, doc., 1954), Isole di fuoco (cm, doc., 1954), Surfarara (cm, doc., 1955), Parabola d'oro (cm, doc., 1955), Pasqua in Sicilia (cm, doc., 1956), Contadini del mare (cm, doc., 1956), Pescherecci (cm, doc., 1958), Pastori a Orgosolo (cm, doc., 1958), Un giorno in Barbagia (cm, doc., 1958), I dimenticati (cm, doc., 1959), Banditi a Orgosolo (1960), Un uomo a metà (1966), L'invitata (1969), Diario di un maestro (TV, 1973), Un anno a Pietralata (TV, 1974), In Calabria (1993), Dedicato ad Antonino Uccello (2002), Lettere dal Sahara (2005).
Declaration
film director
“I made Diary of a Teacher by chance, dictated by a need for work.
I hadn’t even read don Milani! In the beginning, I knew absolutely
nothing about schools and their problems. I was the coordinator of
the film, but there were at least four or five indispensable people.
For example, the cameraman Tovoli did extraordinary work: to shoot
some of those situations with a hand-held camera, live, means knowing
where to go, hearing what they say, guessing what to do next.”
Cast
& Credits
soggetto/story dal libro/from the book Un anno a Pietralata di/by Albino Bernardini
fotografia/cinematography Luciano Tovoli
montaggio/film editing Cleofe Conversi
musica/music Fiorenzo Carpi
interpreti e personaggi/ cast and characters
Bruno Cirino (il maestro/Teacher), Massimo Bonini, Luciano Del Croce, Romano Di Mascio, Giorgio Mennuni, Franco Munzi, Sergio Piazza, Fabrizio Ranuzzi, Renzo Sacco,
Stefano Scafati, Marco Speranza, Remo Tamasco, Franco Tomasso, Giancarlo Valente
produzione/production RAI, Bavaria Film, Miro Film