Frammenti della vita di una coppia
I film di famiglia di una coppia di intellettuali e artisti: il giornalista e poeta, più tardi regista e video artista, Gianni Toti (Roma, 1924-2007) e la pittrice Marinka Dallos, sua prima moglie. La maggior parte dei film a contenuto familiare, girati da entrambi i coniugi, è stata realizzata tra l’Ungheria, paese natale di Marinka, e Roma, loro città di residenza. In particolare le riprese in Ungheria si riferiscono ai viaggi organizzati dalla coppia in visita ai famigliari di Marinka Dallos a Lorinci, e a gite organizzate in altre località ungheresi. Molti di questi filmati vedono protagonisti Gianni Toti con il nipote di Marinka, Csaba. Si distingue poi un nucleo di pellicole di viaggi effettuati dalla coppia in vacanza in varie località: in Tunisia, a Bulla Regia, Tunisi, Kairouan, Gerba, Houmt Souk, in Spagna a Pamplona per la festività di San Firmino, a Barcellona, Siviglia e Granada, a Parigi, a Belfast durante la Parata degli Orangemen, a Padova, a Venezia, e a Roma e dintorni, ad Ostia Lido, Fregene, Nemi, al mercato di Porta Portese e all’aeroporto di Fiumicino. Un altro nucleo di film si riferisce ai sopralluoghi che Gianni Toti fece nel 1972 in Siria per il film E di Shaul e dei sicari sulle vie da Damasco e ai provini ad attori in una terrazza romana del fotografo Rolla. Altre pellicole sono state invece girate da Gianni Toti in veste di inviato speciale per la rivista «Vie Nuove»: girate il 1° maggio 1964 in Piazza della Rivoluzione a L’Avana (Cuba). Sei anni di indipendenza cubana celebrati con una grande parata con riprese della folla durante il discorso di Fidel Castro. Compare Che Guevara.
L’utente può esplorare il fondo filmico attraverso un’ampia selezione delle sequenze girate da Gianni Toti e Marinka Dallos. È possibile visionare i materiali filmici digitalizzati in ordine cronologico o tramite il menu. I brevi testi, inseriti nei titoli, nelle didascalie o sovrapposti alle immagini, introducono, contestualizzano e danno indicazioni precise sulle persone, sui luoghi e sulle situazioni. Le informazioni sono state raccolte attraverso un accurato lavoro di ricerca, documentazione e catalogazione. Il montaggio e l’edizione video sono stati realizzati con il software Klynt.
(testi a cura di Karianne Fiorini)
Main characters
Gianni Toti was born in Rome June 24th 1924. BA in Law, he was a partisan for the GAP army during the Resistance, and after the Liberation he will move to Milan to work in the newspaper «L’Unità». In 1949, during the World’s Communist Youth Meeting in Budapest, Toti met Marinka Dallos, born in Lorinci in 1929. They got married the following year and moved to Milan. In 1960 they move again to Rome and together they translate many hungarian poets, such as Attila Jòzsef and Miklòs Radnoti. In the early 60s, in order to curve Gianni’s hiperactivity (he was a poet, a director of the CGIL magazine «Lavoro», a journalist and a correspondent for «Vie Nuove», «Paese Sera» and a militant cinema and literature critic) Marinka buys some brushes and colors and takes him on a tour through several italian villages to paint.
She took this opportunity as an incentive: Marinka will be a painter since then.
Marinka publishes in 1974 a collection of essays about the naïfs and creates, together with other roman painters (Amelia Pardo, Graziolina Rotunno, Alfredo Ruggeri and Maria Vicentini) the “Gruppo dei Romanaïfs”; she exhibits her paintins in Italy and then in Paris, Budapest, Nice… Some of her work is in the collections of several museums (such as Les Halles St. Pierre in Paris, the Anatole Jakovsky Museum of Nice, the Mayar Naïf Muveszek of Kecskernet, the Museo de Arte Naïf of Spain and the Naïf Museum of Luzzara) and private collections. Marinka Dallos died in 1992. Toti, meanwhile, has developed an interest in electronic arts since the early 80s.
Creator of numerous VideoPoemOpere, writer of dozens of poetical collections, several tales collections and two novels, founder of magazines and editorial collections, unstoppable literary and audiovisual critic and theorist, Gianni Toti died January 8th 2007 in Rome.
The collection
The Gianni Toti Collection was donated by Pia Abelli to the National Home Movies Archive on August 3rd 2012. The films were kept until then in Toti’s home and were filmed in 16 and 8mm. After purchasing the material, the films were restored and digitalized. The films were organized with the help of Pia Abelli Toti, second wife of Gianni Toti, trough the information given by her during several meetings between 2012 and 2013, and Silvia Moretti, a researcher who studies the work of Gianni Toti.
The collection consists in 35 rolls in 16 and 8 mm filmed during the 60s and 70s, and its total length is approximately 3 hours.
Most of them are home movies, in which we can see many of the Gianni Toti’s and Marinka Dallos’ friends and family. Those movies were filmed by themselves between Hungary, country of origin of Marinka, and Rome, the city in which they lived. The scenes from Hungary were taken during a trip to visit Marinka Dallos’ family in Lorinci and other hungarian cities (such as Keszthely, Gyenesdiàs, Szigliget, el Lago Balaton o Bekes). Many of these films are focused in Gianni Toti and Marinka’s nephew, Csaba. Another group of movies describe the trips the couple made to Tunisia (Bulla Regia, Kairuán, Gerba, Houmt Souk), Spain (Pamplona during the San Fermin party, Barcelona, Seville and Granada), Paris, Belfast (during the Orange walk), Padua, Venice, Rome and its surrounding area (Ostia Lido, Fregene, Nemi, the market of Porta Portese and the Fiumicino airport). Another block is dedicated to the trip around Syria that Gianni Toti made in order to prepare his film “E di Shaul e dei sicari sulle vie da Damasco” and the castings for this film in a roman terrace made by the photographer Rollatra, in which the actors Tonio Damia and Alessandro Haber participated. Other films were made by Gianni Toti as special correspondent for the magazine «Vie Nuove»: filmed on May 1st 1964 in the Plaza de la Revolución of Havana (Cuba). Six years of cuban independence celebrated with a great parade, in which we can see the masses attending Fidel Castro’s speech. Che Guevara is there too.
Among the many films of the collection there is a short experimental film directed by Gianni Toti, starred by Marinka Dallos in a beach, and a documentary directed by Michele Gandin about the naïf painter Marinka Dallos.