Saturday 7 September 11.00 am – Casa Guareschi, Roncole Verdi

WORLD HUMOR AWARDS

From the Small World to the Big World

Bruno Gambarotta born in Asti in 1937 is a writer, actor, who worked in Rai starting as a cameraman in the sixties and established himself as an author and as one of the characters recognizable to the general public, capable of creating innovative programs, which marked the history of public television.

In Fuori programma, my memoirs from Rai, published by the publisher Manni, Gambarotta talks about his career in Rai, navigating himself among capricious stars of the show like Celentano, working with directors in innovative programs, a fifty-year career that has accompanied the entire parable of public service, from the pedagogical Rai to the more commercial one.

In this book, a sort of autobiography that starts from childhood, Gambarotta tells everything that happened behind the scenes at Rai: Celentano’s gaffes that brought him live in prime time on Fantastico ’87 to remedy them; the break-in to retrieve a microphone in a room where Paul VI is having lunch with risotto; the intellectuals he works with and meets, from Gore Vidal to La Capria, from Pasolini to Camilleri; the candid cameras filmed on trains with Nanni Loy; the days spent in Simenon’s house to interview him; the directorial follies of Carmelo Bene; the birth in the room of a bar of Goodness them with Costanzo; the Writers’ Cooperative alongside Zavattini; the role of tench, that is, an actor who appears only once, in films with the major Italian actors and directors…

In this book Gambarotta recomposes, with grace and fun, the memoir of a man who crossed the second half of the twentieth century from a more unique than rare observatory, and gives us from the inside an original vision of the largest and most popular Italian cultural industry. And it does so with a lightness and irony of writing that entertains the reader on a fascinating and entertaining journey, also revealing a lot about Italian customs.

As a writer he made his debut with La nipote scomoda (with Massimo Felisatti), Mondadori, 1977, exploring different genres, from the comic with Enciclopedia comica del lavoro, Panini, 1996, to the detective story with tutte le scuse sono buone per morire – Garzanti, 1996, without forget Non si piange sul latte macchiato. Racconti in giallo, Manni, 2016, (Winner of the Settembrini Prize 2016 – Special Mention of the Stresa Prize 2017) to satire such as Polli per sempre, Garzanti, 2009.

Gambarotta is also a gastronomy enthusiast and a man attentive to the roots of his land and the traditions of Asti and Piedmont.

For his multifaceted activity as a writer, actor and man of culture, this year the Giovannino Guareschi 2024 award deservedly goes to Bruno Gambarotta.