Donda retrieved. Inquiry into a disappearance

Ellis Donda (1947–2023) was a Friulian writer and film director who withdrew from the public eye in the 1980s. This first monograph on the author uncovers a crucial yet neglected episode of 1970s Italian independent cinema history by examining an untapped archive of documents, unmade projects, films and videos. Born in Terzo d’Aquileia, Donda was an interdisciplinary author active in the Italian cultural landscape of the late twentieth century. After studying sociology in Trento during the events of 1968, he wrote his first essays, focusing on the social phenomenon of dance halls in the Case del Popolo of Friuli Venezia Giulia. He later studied at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia under Roberto Rossellini. For RAI he was a refined communicator (as well as the last journalist to interview Roland Barthes), producing fiction, documentaries and experimental radio programmes. He collaborated with the 1976 Venice Biennale and with circles of the artistic avant-garde in Rome. He wrote numerous essays on cinema, psychoanalysis, music, politics, sociology and anthropology. In the 2000s he devoted himself to teaching cinema in schools, an experience from which his final films emerged.