Ciprì and Maresco's look at Italy in the 1990s, a key decade of cultural change, was an "abysmal" look (Enrico Ghezzi), a long, impassive and ferocious overview, capable of making people laugh in a disturbing and new way. The series was broadcast on Rai 3, and was then circulated in fragments, in the following years, by Fuori Orario and Blob. Loved or hated series, capable of provoking heated repulsions and equally heated intellectual debates: on trash, on the aesthetics of the ugly, on postmodern, post-historical, the end of humanity. Palermo, Italy: a refined black and white full of clouds conflicts with the disheveled bodies, with the squalor of a universe populated by borderline characters, that is, beyond every limit of the ordinary visible. It was the crooked world of the cyclist Francesco Tirone, of the petomanic Giuseppe Paviglianiti, of the failed singer Giovanni Lo Giudice, of the 'human rubbish' Carlo and Pietro Giordano, of the aphasic man in his underwear Miranda, of the bespectacled Giuseppe Filangeri...
Daniele Ciprì: Born in Palermo in August 1962. Together with Franco Maresco, he created the Cinico TV series between the 80s and 90s, broadcast on the third Rai network. They are short, cutting films that explode the image of a deformed and weakened humanity, groping in a landscape of crumbling wrecks, desolate areas, dazzling skies, silences and solitude. What emerges is a picture of raw compassion that extends far beyond the Palermo suburbs where the filming takes place and which becomes a metaphor for an anthropological drift hidden behind the scenes of contemporary society. Using the same grotesque-surreal style, tinged with references to the historical avant-garde, Ciprì created, again together with Maresco, but paying particular attention to photography, the feature films Lo zio di Brooklyn (1995), Totò che visse due volte (1998), Il ritorno di Cagliostro (2003) and Come inguaiammo il cinema italiano (2004). As director of photography he also works on the films of Roberta Torre (Tano da morire, Sud Side Story, Mare nero), Marco Bellocchio (Vincere) and Ascanio Celestini (La pecora nera). He recently finished filming his next feature film, È stato il figlio.