13/06/2013 - Marco Raffaini, Marco Mello and Giuni Ligabue’s documentary, presented in competition at the Bologna Biografilm, tells the extraordinary success of Italian popular singers in the USSR

Robertino Loreti is a bit like an Italian version of Sixto Rodriguez. Just like the main character in Oscar winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man [+see also:
trailer
film profile], about a musician ignored at home and idolised in South Africa, Loreti (photo) was all but unknown in Italy when he started singing as a teenager in the 1960s. There was one country though where everyone sang his songs, where he was greeted with more enthusiasm than John Lennon: the Soviet Union. Together with other popular Italian singers such as Albano, Toto Cutugno and Pupo, acclaimed in the USSR, he is the subject of hilarious documentary by Marco Raffaini, Marco Mello and Giuni Ligabue, presented during the Biografilm Festival in Bologna (7-17 June), in the competition section reserved for Italian films.

For the Italian spectator, many of the anecdotes told in the documentary seem incredible. In the Soviet Union, where everything coming from the West was subject to censure, only one western programme was widely screened and advertised: the Sanremo Festival. The Italian song festival in the 1980s was filled with singers such as Albano, Toto Cutugno and Pupo, who managed to enter Russians’ homes and hearts.

The documentary is full of surprising discoveries. The ballo del qua qua (literally the quack quack dance, by Albano and Romina) would be played in Soviet summer camps for children. The first woman cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, wanted one thing only to hold her company when she was in space: Robertino’s songs. The man was renamed as a result “the singer of the stars.”

Italian music was the symbol of light freedom, but also of a Russian-Italian friendship which benefitted from singer-songwriters Paolo Conte, Angelo Branduardi and Fabrizio De Andrè, as well as the strong communist party presence in Italy. Mentioning Adriano Celentano to the interviewees makes their eyes light up. These Russian fans, with their friendliness, are the main draw in this documentary. “Italian singers are in the background,” Rafaini explained, “the film is especially a homage to the Russians, a beautiful social slice of Soviet Russia.” Italiani veri will be presented at the next Saint Petersburg Festival in September. “We also want to bring it to Kazakhstan,” he said, “where Son Pascal also became a pop star.” Son Pascal is 27 and his real name is Pasquale Caprino. He is Italian, obviously. 

(Translated from Italian)