Angelo Guglielmi died in the night at the age of 93. He died in his sleep. Historical director of Rai3, he launched programs that have made the history of the network and public TV, as well as characters such as Corrado Augias, Michele Santoro, Serena Dandini and Fabio Fazio. In addition to being an executive, he was a literary critic, essayist and journalist.
“Angelo Guglielmi changed TV making it contemporary and imposing a rigorous narrative line on the things he did: TV as a story of reality. I owe him a lot”. So Fabio Fazio comments on Guglielmi’s disappearance on Twitter. “Culture is not a thing but a way of doing things” – writes Fazio -. This is the most important lesson of him “.
Originally from Arona, in the province of Novara, where he was born on April 2, 1929, in his long and very active life at least four are hidden: that of the literary critic, the director of the third television network, the president of the Istituto Luce and finally Councilor for Culture for the Municipality of Bologna, as well as an established columnist and prolific writer. He joined Rai in 1955, he directed Rai3 from 1987 to 1994, giving life to a daring and innovative network and creating what has been called reality TV.
Under his direction, programs such as Samarkand, Blob, Yellow Telephone, Quelli che il calcio, Girls’ TV, Avanzi, Mi Manda Lubrano, Who saw him ?, Last minute and A day in the district court were born and characters like Michele were launched. Santoro, Serena Dandini, Fabio Fazio, Piero Chiambretti, Giuliano Ferrara and Daniele Luttazzi. The average share of the network went from less than 1% to over 10% in a few years. From 1995 to 2001 Guglielmi was also president and CEO of the Istituto Luce. From 2004 to 2009 he was called by Sergio Cofferati to the Bologna city council as councilor for culture. He was a member from 2001 to 2004 of the Advisory Committee of the Encyclopedia of cinema published by the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, Guglielmi had friends who made the history of the 20th century, he was one of the founders of the neo-avant-garde literary collective Gruppo 63 with Umberto Eco and Edoardo Sanguineti, Beniamino Placido, Alberto Arbasino. He wrote for Paese Sera and for Corriere della Sera, as well as for numerous magazines.
For years, a literary critic for L’Espresso, he wrote until old age for Tuttolibri – La Stampa and had a blog in the last years of his life on the website of Il Fatto Quotidiano. Numerous publications, some of which co-authored with Stefano Balassone, his deputy at the helm of Rai 3. The trilogy, which he wrote in the 1960s, dedicated to Michelangelo, Dante and Cavour, is particularly famous. Among other works Avant-garde and experimentalism (1964), Twenty years of impatience (1965); True and False (1968); The savings literature (1973); Printed paper (1978); The pleasure of literature (1981); Thirty Years of Intolerance (mine) (1995); The novel and reality (2010). On the occasion of his 90th birthday, his latest literary work (published by La Nave di Teseo), ‘Challenge to recognize me-Stories scattered’, was published. A tale full of literary and personal encounters: from Gadda to Arbasino, from Calvino to Eco, from Moravia to Pasolini from Neorealism to reality TV.
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