austraLasia 1002
Face to face: Don Bosco and the Rector Major in lively dialogue
ROME: 17th January 2005 -- It finally happened: the Rector Major aka Pascual Chávez, met Don Bosco aka Flavio Insinna, on the evening of 17th January, 'and I think he does it much better than me', said the former, after seeing and listening to not only the latter, but the director of the successful TV series 'Don Bosco', Lodovico Gasparini as they explained the behind-the-scenes story of the mini-series.
Gasparini and Insinna, along with other key members of the Lux Vide group who funded and produced 'Don Bosco' with Rai Uno, were with the Salesians for the evening to speak about their experience in putting this successful two part series together. Viewers throughout Italy flicked across to Rai Uno over the two nights that it ran and are expected to do similarly as it reaches family sets throughout the world. One of Lux Vide's stated aims over the 170 films they have produced in a decade, has been high quality, positive value content with international involvement at every level. A number of the actors in the Don Bosco series were British or American, including most of the young people.
Gasparini and Insinna explained that this 'fiction' (a technical cinematographic term here in Italy; a biography transposed for the TV medium), was such a delight to produce and to act - it has not finished for them. They have put together a brief 'Don Bosco Backstage' clip where the actors, on-scene, take a minute or two to explain what they are doing or how they interpret things. "It was like an Oratory right there as we worked with the kids", said Gasparini. One of the successes of this series was that it had kids talking to kids - one reason why television sets throughout Italy found the entire family glued to the ever-attractive figure of Don Bosco amongst the likes of the tousled, red-head Rua and the unruly Enrico (so obviously English the one and Italian the other).
And where did the 15 or so red-heads and unrulies come from (well, except young Dom)? From English-American schools around Rome, "and", said Gasparini, "most of them hadn't ever acted before". It was all so natural, then.
Forget the fact that Don Cafasso was a deal older than in real-time and Marchioness Barolo a feistier Ms (sic) than her fleshly counterpart, "we soon found the secret to a true-to-life Don Bosco" said the film's director: "as I read the Memoirs (of the Oratory) and other material, I could see how a boy orphaned of a father, came to know God as his father and made his own the mission of bringing that Father to young people". "And then on the second evening, we brought Don Bosco's mother to the Oratory and created a family there - the motherhood as well as the fatherhood of God".
No wonder this series has touched families the way it has - as scores of letters, emails and personal testimonies demonstrate, to the point where even difficult young people, watching the film, have again been inspired to make a change. And who else might it have changed? "The world of cinema production is a tough, unbelieving world" says Matilde Bernabei, Lux Vide's Vice-Director, and a feisty lady herself: "but we are up there in prime time with Don Matteo (not quite Don Bosco!) and out there in front of the world's viewers" who, it seems, may be happier with a diet of Don Bosco than the usual death and destruction.
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