Bernardo Bertolucci, Oscar-winning director, screenwriter and film producer, died at 77 years old. Originally from Parma, he had been ill for a long time. One of the most representative and internationally known Italian film directors, his great notoriety had arrived in 1972, with a movie that - at the time - became synonymous with scandal: Last tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, which was released briefly in the theater, but was sent to the stake in Italy for it was considered pornographic, only to come back restyled in theaters this year. From being censored to winning 9 Oscars including best director and best picture for The Last Emperor, Bertolucci’s film history (16 movies) has been marked by experimental cinema, art-house cinema, popular movies, low-budget production up to Hollywood mega ones.

The last great master of the 20th century hold both the abilities to describe small Italian provincial life, and stun the world with his international poetic visions which worth him the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 64th Venice International Film Festival, and in 2011 the Honorary Golden Palm at the 64th Cannes Film Festival.

Son of a poet he was raised in the cinema world by Pier Paolo Pasolini, to whom he became assistant director at the age of 20, in 1961, the following year he made his debut as a director with La Comare secca (The Grim Reaper) based on a short story by Pasolini himself, and won two years later, with Before the Revolution, the undisputed fame of best author of a new generation of filmmakers in which creative inspiration goes hand in hand with civil commitment.

He also worked together with Spaghetti western director Sergio Leone, for whom he wrote together with Dario Argento, the screenplay of Once Upon a Time in the West, he acquired international stature in 1970 with two masterpieces: Strategy of the Spider and The Conformist from the story of his friend Alberto Moravia. Two years later he scandalized the whole world with the above mentioned erotic drama Last tango in Paris, and the famous butter scene, and in 1976, he consolidated his poetic soul, strongly tied to his native land, and his international soul, bound to the American sense of cinema understood as a marvellous wonder, signing the two-act movie Novecento, (Twentieth Century) with Robert De Niro e Gérard Depardieu.

Adopted by Hollywood, in the 80s and 90s Bertolucci produced his exotic trilogy, starting with the nine Oscars of the epic biopic The Last Emperor, the desperate journey in the Moroccan desert of The Sheltering Sky with John Malkovich e Debra Winger, and the search of inner peace of the Little Buddha starring Keanu Reeves. He directed his last film in 2012, Io e te (Me and You).