One year after his death, Wednesday May 18 at 21:25, the first documentary is broadcast Rai 1 su Franco Battiato: an intimate portrait of the "genius" who redefined the concept of pop music in Italy. With the narrating voice of Alessandro Preziosi, the documentary - which also features scenes shot at the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Pomaia - traces the life and career of one of the most revolutionary authors of Italian music, a pioneer of new musical worlds. The project is enriched by the use of unpublished archives, as well as by the exclusive shots in the homes of Milan and Milo in Sicily.
The docufilm 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, Giada Colagrande, Marco Travaglio, Giovanni Caccamo and many others.
No one like Battiato has managed to unhinge the rules of the game in so many areas: from music to cinema, from television to the mystical and spiritual universe, voting his creativity to awaken the conscience of the public.
And it is precisely in the latter area that the testimony of the Ven. Massimo Stordi who, from the meditation room of the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute, tells the director Angelo Bozzolini about the friendship that had linked him to the singer-songwriter for years.
The monk in charge of the project Sangha Onlus and Battiato had met when, as a broad-spectrum researcher of spiritual universes, the musician had approached Tibetan Buddhism, as evidenced by his trip to Nepal and the documentary entitled "Crossing the bardo" to which they had collaborated.
Stordi says “His experimentation has led to a synthesis of great cultural and spiritual depth, evident in his latest songAnchor turning. We loved each other, we had a very direct relationship, in a dialectic of absolute mutual respect. He would tell me about his meditations of him in the morning and the various experiences he lived and saw and, as far as I could, I shared my point of view and my advice. It was a profound and fruitful exchange, I miss all of this. His physical absence is filled by his splendid musical production "and again" We saw each other here in Pomaia several times and he shared with me the vicissitudes of the construction of the monastery, which I have been following since 2004 as manager, so much so that he wrote to the mayor of the time to underline its importance for our territory and beyond ". The rest of the story in the documentary aired on Rai 1 Wednesday 18 May at 21.25pm.
The courage to be Franco, written and directed by Angelo Bozzolini and produced by Aut Aut Production in collaboration with Rai Documentari.
