Renzo Rossellini (producer)

Renzo Rossellini (born 24 August 1941), also called Rossellini Jr., is an Italian film producer.

He is the second son of costume designer Marcella De Marchis and film director Roberto Rossellini.

In 1958, Renzo Rossellini graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia with a degree in Visual Arts.

After graduation, he began working in the film industry, while studying History and Philosophy at the Sorbonne University in Paris, albeit without graduating.

In those years, he had a love story with Katherine L. O'Brien.

From their relationship, their son Alessandro is born.

From 1959 to 1977, Renzo worked with his father Roberto, as assistant director, second unit director and producer.

Together, they made a number of movies and TV mini-series, mainly documentaries for Italian state television RAI.

He then married Patrizia Mannajuolo, his first wife.

In 1962, he directed a segment of the film Love at Twenty, which gets nominated at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival.

Il the Sixties, with his San Diego Film Company, he filmed and produced newsreels on the birth of several national liberation movements, ranging from the Algerian National Liberation Front to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Mozambican Liberation Front.

Since 1964, he has produced 64 films.

In 1966, while in Cuba, he took part to the foundation of Tricontinental, the organization built by Ernesto "Che" Guevara to promote national liberation's movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, in which he represented the Algerian population.

In the early Seventies he became a member of Avanguardia operaia, an organization of the Italian new left-wing political party.

At that time he founded, with director Cesare Zavattini, actor and Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, and director Mario Monicelli the Italian National Committee against Fascism in the Mediterranean.

During those years, he lived with Chantal Personè: from their union a daughter, Rossa, is born.

In 1975 he co-founded Radio Città Futura in Rome, one of the first "free"not state-ownedradio stations in Italy.

In 1975, in Rome, he established — with publisher Giulio Savelli and the support from several Feminist groups, militants of Avanguardia operaia and of Partito di Unità Proletaria per il Comunismo — Radio Città Futura, RCF, one of the major Italian free radios.

In Italy, from the Fascist Thirties up to the Democratic Seventies, the only radios allowed to exist were those owned by the Government.

The movement's radios of Italy set up the Federation of Democratic Italian Radios, or FRED.

FRED's members, differentiating themselves from purely commercial radios, introduced the talk radio practice to the Italian audience, bringing to the forefront with interviews and live broadcasts, people and their lives' happenings.

Rossellini was subsequently elected President of FRED.

In the general political elections of June 1976, like Italian screenwriter Ugo Pirro, he endorsed the Proletarian Democracy party, a coalition representing the major groups of the Italian new left.

Over Christmas 1976, five months before dying, Roberto Rossellini wrote to his son Renzo a letter, which is both a summary of their relationship and a concise spiritual testament.

In the letter, Roberto apologizes for not having followed his son's inclinations and leaves him the task to protect and promote his audiovisual encyclopaedic project.

From 1977 to 1983 he was President of Gaumont Italy and was instrumental in the modernization of Italian film theaters, introducing multiplex structures.

In 1977, when his father Roberto passed away, he takes care of the large Rossellini family and becomes President of Gaumont Italy, the newly formed Italian branch of French-based multinational Gaumont Film Company, which he will lead for seven years, until 1983.

In 1978, due to the Aldo Moro Kidnapping, he is accused by the media to have foretold the kidnapping, live on Radio Città Futura, some two hours before it actually happened.

Rossellini explained that, on the morning of the kidnapping while reviewing and commenting the press, he just advanced an inductive political hypothesis.

He pointed out that, on the day in which the Italian Democratic Christian party was forming a government with the explicit back up of the Italian Communist Party, this new event would most certainly lead to an attack from the Red Brigades.

In January 1979, a neofascist commando from the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, assaults with automatic rifles and guns the headquarters of Radio Città Futura, wounding five women and setting fire to their offices and transmitters.

This happened just as Renzo finished reading the morning press news.

During his seven years as president of Gaumont Italy, he produced and distributed more than 100 movies, bringing some freshness to the Italian movie industry.

He produced a few movies with a number of established and distinguished Italian directors like Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli, Liliana Cavani, Marco Ferreri, Lina Wertmüller, Carlo Lizzani, Francesco Rosi, Michelangelo Antonioni and Marco Bellocchio.

He also promotes new younger talents, such as Nanni Moretti.

He encourages TV directors to try wide screen movies, as with Gianni Amelio.

In 1981, one year after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he co-founded Radio Free Kabul.

He lives in Rome and Los Angeles.

In 1984, he produced Francesca Comencini's first movie.

Following the example of the French Gaumont, he builds a company encompassing movie industry's three main branches: production, distribution, and theaters.