Early activities
The first appearance of my researches on Desideri came with a documentary, whose author, the late and lamented director Massimo Prevedello (1963-2002), I helped as historical consultant and finding financing support. This documentary, Desideri, realized by Prevedello with the assistance of Giandomenico Bosa, was produced by Ethnos in Bologna (production manager Elisa Mereghetti) with the contributions of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia and the Editrice Missionaria Italiana of Bologna. It was presented at Palazzo dei Vescovi in Pistoia on 8th June 2001 by the director with introductions from Ivano Paci (chairman of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia) and Lido Scarpetti (then mayor of Pistoia) followed by speeches by Natale Rauty (Società Pistoiese di Storia Patria) and Gherardo Gnoli (chairman of the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente).
The documentary was presented and met with
success at various film festivals including “Religion
Today” (Trento and
Jerusalem 2001) where it won the Don Silvio
Franch prize for interreligious
dialogue. It was warmly greeted in
Jerusalem “where it was applauded and
discussed for two hours in a cinema full of people shaken by war. In it they
found a foothold, a hope of a dream, a journey of peace” (Lia G.
Beltrami,
Ricordo di Max, “L’Adige”, 9.8.2002). The
documentary has been shown on various occasions and is available online, in
Italian, from the
website of the
Mediatetca Regionale Toscana:
http://www.mediatecatoscana.net/archivi_tematici_desideri.html.
In English, here.
The research I was pursuing about Desideri and the early results were extensively quoted in a fundamental work by Antonio Attisani on Tibetan theatre and culture (A ce lha mo. Studio sulle forme della teatralità tibetana, Leo S. Olschki Editore, Firenze 2001).
When the first research phase was completed at the end of 2003, the first work was published.
Connected pages:
António de Andrade
Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi
Luigi Foscolo Benedetto
Giotto Dainelli
Filippo De Filippi
Angelo De Gubernatis
Manoel Freyre
Gherardo Nerucci
Luciano Petech
Carlo Puini
Giuseppe Toscano
Giuseppe Tucci