In the year that celebrates the 80th anniversary of his birth and a few days after the 25th anniversary of his death on 9 September 1998, the docufilm entitled “Lucio per Amico” arrives on Rai1 in prime time, Wednesday 13 September. Remembering Baptists”.
«When I started this job as a great fan of Lucio Battisti – she tells Ansa Maite Carpio, who created and wrote the docufilm, produced by Garbo Produzioni in collaboration with Rai Documentari – I asked myself what new things I could tell about him that people didn’t already know. It was a challenge and we did a great deal of work on the archives, including international ones, to recover unpublished material, such as some of his appearances in Spain and Germany or some Super8 footage of his first tour with Roberto Matano. As a documentarian, the added value was to collect in a single product what is scattered in many small contributions.”
But “Lucio per Amico” is not just a gallery of old images now blurred over time, it is the vivid memory of those who marked the history of Italian music, it is the story of Battisti’s human and artistic adventure, also through the words of those who knew him, first of all Mogol, his companion in art and adventure. «I was very interested in the most intimate part of Battisti, investigating the relationship with Mogol – Carpio continues – and why it broke off. Theirs was a great meeting, magical and unique in the history of music. Perhaps only John Lennon and Paul McCartney can be compared to them: there is no Battisti without Mogol and vice versa. After the breakup, the second life of Battisti who began collaborating with Pasquale Panella remains less known.”
And then the testimonies of Pietruccio Montalbetti, Roby Matano, Gianni Dall’Aglio, Mario Lavezzi, Franco Daldello, Mara Maionchi, Caterina Caselli, Adriano Pappalardo, Franco Mussida and Tony Cicco: each of them accompanies the viewer to discover the “Baptisti mystery” , a central figure in the musical culture of an entire country, who rejected stardom and visibility to remain true to himself. «The family is missing, which has had a very coherent position for a long time: not to expose itself, not to speak and also to preserve its musical heritage. They keep Battisti’s will alive who at a certain point decided to retire from the stage.”
The story of the docufilm is punctuated by the songs that revolutionized the Italian musical panorama, many performed by the voice of Battisti himself, others with the exclusive performances of Gianluca Grignani, Noemi, Giovanni Caccamo and Giusy Ferreri. Under the artistic direction of Maestro Enrico Melozzi, they will interpret, each with their own unique and personal style, four songs (Il tempo di mori, Amarsi un po’, Emozioni and Io Vivrò).