Born in the Romagnole town of Santarcangelo di Romagna in 1920, Antonio (Tonino) Guerra spent his long life of 92 years in joyful creativity that encompassed dialect poetry, prose fiction, civic initiatives, the pictorial arts, and screenwriting.
The preeminent Italian screenwriter of the latter half of the twentieth century, Guerra collaborated with most of the distinguished Italian film directors of his time, including Antonioni, Fellini, Rosi, the Taviani brothers, Petri, De Sica, and Monicelli; he also worked with the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, and the Greek director Theo Angelopoulos. The history of Italian cinema cannot be written without taking into account Guerra's exceptional contributions; he was not only a writer of screenplays but also, and more importantly, a close collaborator with most of the directors with whom he worked. His deeply poetic sensibility and his strong preference for the visual image over a plot-driven conception of filmmaking can be seen in such films as Fellini's Amarcord or Antonioni's Blow-Up, two of the numerous enduring classics of Italian cinema which were shaped in great part by the poet from Santarcangelo.

Based in large part on personal interviews with Guerra, this lecture by Professor Rebecca West (University of Chicago) focuses on his own view of the screenwriter's role in the highly collaborative art of filmmaking.
Great cinema is one of modern Italy's most glorious achievements, and Tonino Guerra is without a doubt one of its most distinguished protagonists. He is a genuine "national treasure."
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