One year after Franco Battiato’s death, Rai Documentari dedicates a prime time to him with “The courage to be Franco” broadcast on May 18, at 21.20 on Rai 1. Written and directed by Angelo Bozzolini and produced by Aut Aut Production in collaboration with Rai Documentari, the film traces the life and career of one of the most revolutionary authors of Italian music, a pioneer of new musical worlds. With the narrating voice of Alessandro Preziosi, the documentary also tries to return an intimate portrait of the artist, thanks to the story of his niece Cristina Battiato and the unpublished material from the photographic archives of the family, Rai, Cineteca di Bologna, Universal Music, as well as the exclusive shootings in the homes of Milan and Milo in Sicily, as well as in the places of the spirituality so deeply dear to Battiato. Among the unpublished documents, the autographed texts of 1966 and the exclusive photos of his first duo with Gregorio Alicata, “Gli ambulanti”, together with a song never heard before. No one like Battiato has managed to unhinge the rules of the game in so many areas, from music, film and television, but also mystical and spiritual, by voting for his creativity to awaken the conscience of the public. Even today we speak of the “genius of Battiato”, as the one who redesigned the concept of pop music in Italy. Never before him had it been possible to climb the charts by telling stories according to a new grammar, inspired by content outside the mainstream and the continuous search for a sacred dimension of art. From the beginning of his career to the encounter with electronic music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, from the first album “Fetus” (1972), up to “La Voce del Padrone” (1981), the best-selling album in Italy. In addition to timeless successes such as “The era of the white boar”, “La Cura”, “Permanent center of gravity”, “Cuccurucucù”. Battiato has lived many lives, he said of himself that he was never born and therefore never died. And perhaps for this reason he has managed in every decade of his life to give us a new character. His music is also a journey through our country: from post-war Sicily, still full of Christian values, to Milan in the 1960s and the economic boom, up to the encounter with oriental philosophies and Buddhism. The documentary is enriched by the testimonies of artists and personalities who have contributed most to Battiato’s success, each representative of an artistic world on which he expressed himself in the first person: among others, Alice, Luca Madonia, Sonia Bergamasco, Willem Dafoe, Antonio Scurati, Giovanni Caccamo, Vittorio Sgarbi, Marco Travaglio. And Morgan, who premiered “Battiato breaks my heart”, the piece composed on the occasion of Battiato’s illness. “I don’t want to command and I don’t want to be commanded”: this is one of the mottos that represents the essence of Franco Battiato, his constant inner research and the desire to affirm his innovative concept of music under the banner of contamination. It was impossible to catalog it or insert it into any genre, precisely because of the ease with which it was able to range from rock to pop, from electronic to opera. It is no coincidence, in fact, that music was his life partner. “We are happy to be able to take up the challenge of proposing a documentary for the prime time of Rai 1, thanks to this project so successful and so comprehensive and thorough in the hatching of the human and artistic path of the late Franco Battiato “- declares Fabrizio Zappi, director of Rai Documentari.” The docufilm is enriched by the participation of the actor Alessandro Preziosi who tells , comments and accompanies the viewer on a journey that is never banal and full of emotions, sounds, colors and reflections “.
