Antonio Bigini

Roles: Director

Antonio Bigini (born 1980). After a degree in Communications Science at the University of Bologna, he worked as production assistant for Italian companies (minimum fax media, Studio Azzurro), before making his début as writer and director of films and documentaries. In 2012 he directed the episodic film Formato ridotto, born of the meeting between Home Movies archive footage and five Italian writers (Ermanno Cavazzoni, Wu Ming 2, Enrico Brizzi, Emidio Clementi and Ugo Cornia). The film was presented at various film festivals in Italy and Europe, and distributed on DVD by the Cineteca di Bologna.

The year 2012 also saw the release of Anita, a film he wrote for Luca Magi, which tells the tale of a hidden Italy based on an unmade treatment by Federico Fellini. The film was shown in competition at the 30th Turin Film Festival and the 11th edition of Doclisboa. He worked with Ermanno Cavazzoni, screenwriter for Fellini’s La voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon), on his directorial début, Vacanze al mare (Seaside Holidays), an eccentric tale of the Italian people’s summer holidays, shown in competition at the Rome International Film Festival 2013. His most recent directorial work is the montage documentary Ella Maillart – Double Journey (2015), which tells the tale of the famous journey in Afghanistan and India by one of the most important photographers and travellers of the 20th century. The film was shown in competition at various international festivals (Visions du réel, Nyon; Dokumentart, Neubrandenburg, Cinéma Vérité, Tehran), and has been purchased by Swiss TV and distributed on DVD by the Cineteca di Bologna.

Since 2014 he has worked with the Cineteca di Bologna as associate curator. He was curator for the exhibitions I vestiti dei sogni. La scuola dei costumisti italiani per il cinema on Italian costume designers for the cinema, Emilia-Romagna terra di cineasti, and Officina Pasolini, the largest exhibition ever dedicated to the great Italian poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini.

As a writer and script editor, he regularly works with various production companies (Kiné, Bologna; Eie Film, Turin; Peacock Film, Zurich). He has also taught writing for documentary films at Bottega Finzioni, the school of creative writing in Bologna run by Carlo Lucarelli. His published works include the collection of tales Tonino Guerra wants to kill me (Pendragon, Bologna, 2007), and in English, A Wrong Guide to Italy (Bucci Publishing, Zurich, 2013).