After the presentation at the Taormina Film Fest 2022, the film-event Franco Battiato – The Master’s Voice arrives in theaters from November 28 to December 4. Directed by Marco Spagnoli and produced by RS Productions and ITsART, the docufilm is a physical and emotional journey, from Milan to Milo, in Franco Battiato’s house, during which the record Stefano Senardi, a great friend of the singer-songwriter, collects numerous testimonials from personalities from the world of music, cinema and journalism. The interviews with Nanni Moretti, Willem Dafoe, Oliviero Toscani, Caterina Caselli, Mara Maionchi, Morgan, Alice, Carmen Consoli, Vincenzo Mollica, Andrea Scanzi, Francesco Messina, Roberto Masotti, Francesco Cattini, Alberto Radius and Carlo Guaitoli are many small pieces that manage to reconstruct a polychrome mosaic on the music and philosophy of life of one of the greatest Italian authors and composers of the twentieth century.
«This trip has a precise reason» – underlined Stefano Senardi – «Treat with care what Battiato has left us. And being able to understand the ultimate meaning of an exceptional life like his, telling it in a plural and intimate biography through the memories, anecdotes of his friends, archive materials and the wonderful songs of this extraordinary and unforgettable artist. We hope we succeeded.”
The interviews are interspersed with rare archival images and some of Battiato’s most significant live performances (among which Cuccurucucù, Permanent Center of Gravity, White Flag And The cure), with a particular focus on the perfect trilogy formed by The era of the white boar (1979), Patriots (1980) and The master’s voice (1981). Franco Battiato, always a great lover of the word at the service of music, has never stopped evolving musically in almost fifty years of career, moving wisely between pop, songwriting, classical and contemporary music. Two souls have always coexisted in him, one electronic and one introspective, in which his passions for Sufi mysticism, philosophical theory, oriental meditation and spirituality fully emerged.
After the experimental fury of the seventies and the collaborations with the violinist Giusto Pio, Battiato finds in the eighties, starting from the album The master’s voice from 1981, a perfect balance of accessibility and sophistication in blockbuster electropop jewelry such as Permanent center of gravity, White Flag and Cuccurucucù(title inspired by a famous song brought to success by Caetano Veloso). In the 1990s, the intellectual reflections of the singer-songwriter from Jonia, the result of his long conversations with his friend-philosopher Manlio Sgalambro, naturally married the trends of electronic music, combining pop and avant-garde in an absolutely original way. The documentary The Voice of the Master is not only a successful tribute to the musician’s story and his most famous album, but also a celebration of the moral and aesthetic legacy of an inimitable songwriter, who transformed pop into art.
Franco Battiato: the magic of The Master’s Voice at the cinema, the perfect pop album