Armando

Ceste

Armando Ceste was born in Turin in 1942. After gaining experience as a photojournalist and in the underground scene (La lezione and Metropolix), he co-founded the Collettivo Cinema Militante di Torino (CCM) in the late 60s, along with Arnaldo Graglia and Osvaldo Marini. He documented workers' struggles primarily on film and using early video systems. Together with Gianfranco Torri, he opened Extrastudio in 1975 and published the illustrated book La storia della lotta per la casa (Savelli) that same year, a collection of comics for children with an introduction by worker Franco Platania.

The following year, again for Savelli, Ceste and Torri published a graphic novel for children ante litteram, La storia degli arditi del popolo, about the victorious anti-fascist battle in Parma in 1922. With Extrasudio, Ceste designed graphic projects for cultural institutions such as the Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani (now Turin Film Festival), Settembre Musica (now MiTo), the Goethe Institut, etc.

Since the mid-80s he has made numerous experimental short films, in collaboration with his wife Petra Probst (I still have my hands, Three bafut songs and The gurling sings a bumper harvest song), and films starring the former worker Donato D'Ambrosio (Il rock mi ha salvare la vita, Donato and Morire d'amore).

Since the early 90s, he began to rework the themes and materials collected during the CCM years, which he had always carefully preserved, unlike other similar experiences in Italy that over the years have dismembered, lost, or sold them off to RAI. During this phase, he began collaborating with the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers' and Democratic Movement in Rome and with Pier Milanese's Index (Endgame, March 1973. The Days of Fiat, Air of a Coup, and Never Late). During the same period, his great love for cinema emerged, thanks to several portraits such as Jean-Marie Straub: The Resistance of Cinema, Anna Karina. The Face of the Nouvelle Vague, and Jean-Marie Straub: A Lesson in Cinema, and citing Godard, Dreyer, Monicelli, and the historical avant-gardes in his works.

"For me today, it's easier to make a film than to live the life I'd like to live. If I could live the life I believe I have the right to live, I don't think I'd make films or art..." thus philosophized the master Jean-Luc Godard... Perhaps he's right, as always, even if (for me) today it's no easier to make a film than to "live one's life." Meditating on the thought of the great old man, I try to continue working while remaining loyal to the reasons of those years." Armando Ceste

After making Mai tardi, about the memory of the partisans, he founded the Valsusa Filmfest in 1997, directing its first editions. In the late 90s, thanks also to the advent of digital technology, he began the final phase of his cinema, dedicated to the urgent needs of our present, denouncing injustices, often accompanied by the face and body of his friend and actor Beppe Rosso (Rosso/Askatasuna, Abdellah and His Brothers, Libera Terra, Fiatamlet, Porca miseria, and Movimento).

In 2000, with Maurizio Poletto, he published Storyboard, words and images (Ananke), a work that won the Garcìa Lorca national poetry competition the following year. In 2006, he published the book and DVD Porca miseria. A journey into the new poverty (Edizioni Gruppo Abele). In April 2004, the exhibition Terroristen opened at the Circolo Amantes in Turin, which began with the mugshots of members of the RAF and the Baader-Meinhof Gang; this subject is the focus of the author's last ever screenplay, entitled è così e non è così. In 2008, he was among the main promoters of the collective project Walls and Borders, coordinated by Claudio Paletto and Maddalena Merlino, which saw the participation of eighty-three directors; and in December 2008, he received the Torino Set Lifetime Achievement Award from the Film Commission Torino Piemonte. He passed away on April 15, 2009. He is buried in the Monumental Cemetery of Turin, where a moved crowd greeted him by spontaneously singing the song Bella Ciao twice during the short walk from the entrance to the crematorium.