Mario Bernardo was born in Venice in 1919. During the Liberation War he served as commander of a partisan unit, and in 1946 he founded Omnia Film in Bologna and, soon afterward, CREEC (Regional Syndicate of Cinema Exhibitors), thus setting up a regional distribution circuit which at one point counted 82 theatres. Meanwhile he traveled with his mobile van to the villages in the Apennines to screen 16-mm-films. He moved to Rome in the early 1950s, where he wrote scripts and treatments, but soon he ran out of money. Then he started working for BNC-Filmico, a laboratory specialized in making Italian versions of foreign films: the first fundamental step from writing to practical filming. In the mid 1950s he started his activity as cinematographer (he worked in Comizi d’amore and Uccellacci e uccellini by Pasolini). Thanks to his exceptional skills, Bernardo worked in ca 400 features, also as director, editor and producer. Bernardo, an “accidental engineer”, was also active in publishing (he founded the quarterly “Note di tecnica cinematografica”) and in teaching (he held the chair of filming for 25 years at CSC in Roma). He now lives in Lagorai. Bernardo has depositated with Cineteca di Bologna around hundred items from his films (prints, negatives, rushes, fragments…). This precious collection includes also several films made in the early 1970’s for the Republic of San Marino. In 1972, San Marino was one of the first Western Countries to established diplomatic ties with Mao’s China, and Bernardo followed the delegation sent by the small republic in their first official visit to China. Besides shooting an extraordinary reportage of the event, he also made a documentary, Contare sulle proprie forze, on historical sites in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, which offers us an unparalleled view of the most advanced phase of collectivization in the People’s Republic of China, which would lead to the Cultural revolution.

Andrea Meneghelli