Remember Renè

Remembering Donato Diversi for the rest of the world, for those of us who have always loved Renè and only Renè.

From Renè Clair, the renowned director of the French New Wave... it would take too long to explain why he was also a great cinephile.

The festival has been dedicated to Donato, not in words but in hearts and souls since 2004. Every year I personally dedicate a poem to Renè, I don't know if it's beautiful, but certainly moving and heartfelt for all of us. For those of us who were there then, the poetry friends at the "Salsiccina," as the hangout in my dad's warehouse was known, and certainly not just frequented by us, half the town passed by to revel.

Boris Manuel, Massimo, Roberto, and the poetry writers, those who had been there since that winter of '91, the festival passed us by like a tram, for a thousand reasons. I honestly believe we're unique in this sense: we remember our founder and friend with poetry; we find it profound and romantic.

Of course, other friends have been there almost as long as we have, and the Pro Loco of Santa Sofia has always been there.

It would take pages to remember them all, and they're all fixed in my heart and mind. Here I'm talking about those who, for reasons of age, aside from the elder Boris, have spent their lives together, from 1982 to today; Renè only until 2004, having been born between 1959 and 1967. I repeat, not the only ones, but those who were there from the day the original idea of Donato Diversi and Massimo Sassi was born.

I met Donato before anyone else, in 1966 or perhaps 1965. We were the closest in age and in terms of logistics. I was always there at my grandmother's house in the Perilli village, on Viale Roma, the families who had always been friends. He would come down with his family from Santa Maria Maddalena, a hamlet of Occhiobello, very close to Ferrara but in the province of Rovigo, every summer and throughout the summer, including on public holidays. Their house in Santa belonged to his family, his mother from Santa Maria Maddalena, fifty meters from my grandmother's house, not in Perilli, also on Viale Roma.

Much later, during the early years of the festival, when he would tell us, "I'm from Ferrara," somewhat boastfully—at the time, Ferrara was the beacon of this colorful world in Europe, not just Italy—we would mock him, "Go on, you'd like that, you're from Rovigo, you don't even live in the region."

We celebrated him at the XX, Eventi Diversi, with his surname in the title and an installation at Milleluci, closed to the public at the time but enjoyable from outside, dedicated solely to him... at the XXV, we dedicated an entire day to him, August 16th, to him and to our indelible memories with him.

This year's poem, a chilling one for the writer, retraces the when and how of the memorable days when the idea for the festival was born. A giant photograph of it will open the celebratory photo exhibition featuring the legendary Heimo and Hamalia, heroes of that legendary first edition...