Italian film critic Goffredo Fofi dies at 88

Intellectual Goffredo Fofi, one of the best-known film critics and writers in Italian culture and the press, died this Friday (11), aged 88.

The information was announced by the Italian's family, who did not reveal the cause of death or disclose funeral details.

Throughout his career, Fofi worked for several publishers in the European country, including Einaudi and Feltrinelli, and was considered an independent public intellectual who did not adhere to liberal or conservative schools of thought, but followed his own path.

He rose to prominence with his career as an activist on the Italian left during the 20th century, regularly writing reviews for Internazionale.

Born in Umbria on April 15, 1937, Fofi left for Palermo at the age of 18 to follow the struggles of the philosopher and anti-Mafia activist Danilo Dolci, inspired by Gandhian pacifism, for the liberation of the unemployed and the less fortunate.

In the first half of the 1960s, he moved to Paris and worked for the film magazine Positif. Already an essayist, journalist, and critic of film, literature, and theater, he returned to Italy years later and founded "Quaderni Piacentini" with Piergiorgio Bellocchio and Grazia Cherchi.

During this period, Fofi was also close to the student movements and the extra-parliamentary left and became one of the best-known Italian intellectuals and critics, among other things for his studies and his re-evaluations of Totò, to whom he dedicated the 1977 essay, "Totò. The Man and the Mask".

He later founded several magazines, from "Ombre rosse" to "Lo Straniero", which he published until the end of 2016, became a contributor to several newspapers, from "Avvenire" to "Il Manifesto", "L'Unità" and "Il Sole24 Ore", and wrote dozens of books.

The Italian spoke extensively about cinema, with particular sensitivity and attention to the influence of art on political action and collective thought.

In one of his most recent works, "A Brief History of Militant Cinema," published in 2023, Fofi wrote about how the films of the most famous activist directors of the 1960s, including French director Chris Marker, attracted a young audience "thirsty for knowledge and understanding," both militant and otherwise.

Italy's Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli mourned the intellectual's death, noting that "through his work as a cultural promoter and organizer, Goffredo Fofi had a profound impact on contemporary Italian debate like few others, raising issues of great interest through an approach that fosters new meanings."

Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfred said Fofi was a "lucid voice in our culture, radical and always against the current." "A friend of Naples and the Neapolitans, he was decisive in restoring Totò's deserved greatness. A rare guide, who will be greatly missed," he concluded.