special event > Tribute to Franco Nero

An evening in honor of Franco Nero, an icon of Italian cinema in the world, on the occasion of Filming Italy Los Angeles 2024.

The program includes a screening of Giorni Felici by Simone Petralia (ITA 2023, 88′ inn Italian with English subtitles), followed by a conversation with Franco Nero moderated by Prof. Gian Maria Annovi (University of Southern California).

FRANCO NERO took his first steps on the stage of Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, but soon moved to Rome to try to break through to the silver screen. With his ice-blue eyes, sculpted features and athletic physique, he perfectly embodied the prototype of the American hero. In fact, the first to notice him is U.S. director John Huston, who at that time was filming at “Cinecittà” the colossal The Bible, produced by Dino De Laurentiis. He entrusts him with the part of Abel, thus opening wide for him the doors of success. In 1966 Sergio Corbucci in fact called him to impersonate Django, the merciless gunslinger of the Spaghetti Western of the same name. The film at the time caused a scandal for its explicit violence, making him an icon. Within months Nero became an international star and in-demand sex symbol. The actor has coexisted peacefully with the Django myth throughout his career, going so far as to reprise his role as the gunslinger in 2012 for a cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. The actor continued his western adventure thanks to Fulci, Baldi, and Corbucci, while in Joshua Logan’s Camelot he became Lancelot to the beautiful Ginevra/Vanessa Redgrave, who would be a constant presence in his life and secretly become his wife in 2006. In Italy in 1968 he worked with Elio Petri (Un tranquillo posto in campagna) and Damiano Damiani (Il giorno della civetta) and Tinto Brass (La vacanza) . In the 1980s he experienced a new youth thanks to television, but without abandoning cinema. He became “The Young Toscanini” for Franco Zeffirelli and in the following decade he supported emerging directors, including his son Carlo in his debut feature “L’escluso.” Since the 1990s he has been indulging in all fields: he debuts as a director (Forever Blues), accepts parts in experimental films, appears in highly successful TV series such as “Law and Order” and appears in the action saga John Wick.