Carmelo Pompilio Realino Antonio Bene (1 September 1937 – 16 March 2002) was an Italian actor, poet,

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

, and

screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...

. He was an important exponent of the Italian

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

theatre and cinema. In 1968, his movie Our Lady of the Turks won the Special Jury Prize (Venice Film Festival) at the Venice Film Festival. He died of a heart ailment in 2002.

Works

Literature

In 1979 he wrote, in collaboration with French philosopher

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

, the essay "Superpositions". In 1984 his play ''Adelchi'' was published. In 1970 he wrote the screenplay '' A Boccaperta''. * ''I Appeared to the Madonna'', translated with a preface by Carole Viers-Andronico (Contra Mundum Press: 2020)

Partial filmography

* ''

Oedipus Rex ''Oedipus Rex'', also known by its Greek title, ''Oedipus Tyrannus'' (, ), or ''Oedipus the King'', is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles. While some scholars have argued that the play was first performed , this is highly uncertain. Originally, to ...

'' (1967, directed by

Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist ...

) - Creonte * '' Nostra Signora dei Turchi - Our Lady of the Turks'' (1968, director, Venice Film Festival Special Jury Prize) - The Man / Narrator * '' Catch as Catch Can'' (1968) - Priest * ''Capricci'' (1969, director) - Poet * '' The Syndicate: A Death in the Family'' (1970) - Billy Desco * ''

Don Giovanni ''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; full title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legen ...

'' (1970, director) - Don Giovanni * ''Necropolis'' (1970) * ''Tre nel mille'' (1971) * '' Salomè'' (1972, director) - Erode Antipa / Onorio * '' One Hamlet Less'' (1973, director) - Hamlet * ''Claro'' (1975)

Selected bibliography in English

* Carmelo Bene, ''I Appeared to the Madonna'', tr. with a preface by Carole Viers-Andronico (New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2020). * Carmelo Bene, "I am Non-Existent: Therefore I am," tr. by Carole Viers Andronico, ''Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics'', Vol. VIII, No. 1 (spring 2014) 37–44. * Carmelo Bene, “Being in Abandonment: Reading as Non-Memory,” tr. by Rainer J. Hanshe, ''Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics'', Vol. VIII, No. 1 (spring 2014) 45–49. * Carmelo Bene, "Well, yes, Gilles Deleuze!," tr. by Rainer J. Hanshe, ''Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics'', Vol. VIII, No. 1 (spring 2014) 50–57. * Carmelo Bene, ''Our Lady of the Turks'', tr. with a preface by Carole Viers-Andronico (New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2021). * Gilles Deleuze, "One Manifesto Less," tr. by Alan Orenstein. ''The Deleuze Reader,'' ed. by Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia UP, 1993) 204–222. * Gilles Deleuze, "Cinema, body and brain, thought," in ''Cinema 2: The Time-Image'', tr. by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1989) 190–191; 220. * Gilles Deleuze, "''Manfred'': an Extraordinary Renewal," in ''Two Regimes of Madness'', tr. by Ames Hodges & Mike Taormina (New York: Semiotext(e), 2006) 188-189. * Tristan Grünberg, "Outrageous Salome: Grace and Fury in Carmelo Bene’s ''Salomè'' and Ken Russell’s ''Salome’s Last Dance''," in ''Performing Salome, Revealing Stories,'' ed. by Clair Rowden (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2016) 171–189. * Emilio Villa, "Litany for Carmelo Bene," tr. by Dominic Siracusa, ''Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics'', Vol. VIII, No. 1 (spring 2014) 58–67. * Amos Vogel, "''Capricci''," in ''Film as Subversive Art'' (New York: Random House, 1976). * Amos Vogel, "''Our Lady of the Turks''," in ''Film as Subversive Art'' (New York: Random House, 1976). * Amos Vogel, "''Don Giovanni''," in ''Film as Subversive Art'' (New York: Random House, 1976).

References

Sources

* Umberto Artioli - Carmelo Bene, ''Un dio assente. Monologo a due voci'', Antonio Attisani and Marco Dotti eds., Medusa, Milan, 2006. * Giuseppe Leone, "D'in su la vetta della torre antica. Giacomo Leopardi e Carmelo Bene sospesi fra silenzio e voce", Edizioni Il Melabò, Lecco, 2015. *Giuseppe Leone, "D'in su la vetta della torre antica. Giacomo Leopardi e Carmelo Bene sospesi fra silenzio e voce", II Edizione, Grafiche Rusconi, Bellano-Lecco, 2016. *Carlo Alberto Petruzzi, ''Carmelo Bene. Una bibliografia (1959-2018)'', Damocle edizioni, 2018, 182 pp.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bene, Carmelo 1937 births 2002 deaths Italian atheists Italian male stage actors Italian male film actors Italian film directors Italian male screenwriters 20th-century Italian screenwriters 20th-century Italian male actors Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico alumni Deaths from cancer in Lazio People from the Province of Lecce Male actors from Apulia 20th-century Italian male writers