Antonioni was born on September 29, 1912. He received a university degree in economics and soon began writing critiques for cinema magazines. When he was 30, he began work on his first film, a documentary about the tough life of river people, but by the time Gente del Po was done, it was 1947, and directors were working in a new and vigorous artistic movement called Neorealism. Films like Rome Open City by Roberto Rossellini were depicting with ground-breaking vividness, the rawness of Italian society in the aftermath of World War II.

But Antonioni was more interested in depicting his characters’ internal turmoil. This induced critics to call his cinema “internal” Neorealism. “If I hadn’t become a director,” Antonioni once said, “I would have been an architect, or maybe a painter. I think I’m someone who has things to show rather than things to say.”

‘Austere, Elegant, Enigmatic, Haunting’

• Graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in economics.

• In 1940, he moved to Rome, where he worked with Cinema, the official Fascist film magazine edited by Benito Mussolini’s son, Vittorio. He was fired a few months later.

• His first real involvement in filmmaking came when he helped write the script of Roberto Rossellini’s Fascist-sponsored Una Pilota Ritorna in 1942.

• In 1972, at the invitation of the Chinese government in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Antonioni visited China and made the documentary Chung Kuo/Cina.

AWARDS

• 1995: Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement

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