Alessandro Maresca

Born in Roma, to his roman (and Tuscan's) beloved mother Edda Zonzi, an independent worker as a tailor and a costume designer and his beloved father Antonio (from Naples), a great independent worker with the gift for music and poetry. The third of four brothers, Alessandro grew up healthy among the popular areas of Quadraro (where he was born), Cinecittà, Appio Latino, Tormarancia and Garbatella of Rome (before moving to greener and southern Roma70), spending a lot of time at school and on the streets, studying, playing, looking for adventures and discoveries and always being very passionate about music, cinema, theatre, literature, radio, photography and graphic arts, since he was a child. He started acting very soon at home (making funny parodies about all his relatives) and in theatre comedies during the years of the elementary schools; He was a special guest in a roman TV at the age of eight, winning several times a quiz show about contemporary songs and music. He began writing poetry and first texts for songs in the junior high school years and then he went on improving his self taught way of composing poems and images through sketches and photographic pictures, during the years of the roman scientific lyceum "Francesco Borromini" where he took his degree in 1988. After the military service (1989/1990) he finally has an official debut as an actor in cinema at the end of 1990 and the film "La ballata di Ren Ham" by M. Angeloni, will be released through Italian cinemas in 1991. Between 1990 and 1992 he was on national RAI TV and also on national radios as an imitator-comedian, writing his own monologues and in 1992 (until 1994) he started attending the screenwriting encounters with the very popular and awarded screenwriter Leo Benvenuti at "A.N.A.C." (National cinema authors association), while fondly studying at the Cinema and arts department of the Roman University "La Sapienza". Being already a student-worker, for family reasons, mostly due to his father's premature death in 1993, he left his Uni studies; although, he never gave up studying and making his own artistic research a goal for his professional improvement and achievements. After the TV experiences (where he has to face the delusion of the Italian TV system, not allowing most of the young talented people to have a chance to go on without a recommendation), he acts in a few cinema films among which "Cuori al verde - aka Pennyless hearts" (directed by awarded director Giuseppe Piccioni ) and dedicates his research mostly to independent cinema and theatre, producing and directing a couple of mockumentary films about his friends, between 1993 and 1995, and a few other experimental video and short documentaries from his video travel diaries. While funding his own cine-theatrical company "Diario di Bordo" ("Ship's Log"), in September 1996, he starts his own official career as a director with an official debut both in theatre and cinema between 1997 and 1999, getting a good immediate response and winning awards in Italian festivals; first, with his written and directed theatre comedy "Racconto di Natale (Christmas Tale)" and then with his debut short film "La cabina (aka The photo booth)" produced in 1999. In between the two years, he was shot on a leg by a junkie, in the summer of 1998, and he got lucky to get out alive of a roman suburban bar, just the night before he was starting shooting his first short film. The bullet stopped "3mm" away from his femoral artery and caused several damages and a long time to recover. In January 2000 his company becomes officially a Cultural Association and he starts teaching cinema in roman public schools while producing the national short film festival "Percorti" whose quality will lead him to represent most of the Italian independent new cinema "in short" in the year 2002, also in Berlin, where he organizes and lately directs the Italian competitive section of "Immaginale" until 2004, when he resigns, to go back to filmmaking and he also moves from Berlin to Oxford, while producing, mainly in Rome, a couple of very significant short films among others: "Last Wish" and (the already mentioned story) "3mm" and getting more and more awards and international connections before going definitely back to Rome in 2007. Since 2006 he produced a few other cine-theatrical works and projects of cultural activities in roman schools and in theatre schools, he shot a music video clip in 2011 with Liam O' Maonlai (from Hothouse Flowers) and re-united his former lyceum rock band (The breaking point - at first called "The WayOut" and now called "TAOS" (The Art Of Science") with the purpose of mixing his love for music and for films in multimedia projects played also in theatre, starting a very intriguing cine-theatrical work about Shakespeare called "Shake-inspired", mixing Cinema and Theatre, bringing the big screen on theatre stage. During 2013 and 2014 he went back to be a guest on the radio as an imitator/comedian and cinema expert, and he started producing three different cinema independent projects and post-producing a short film-music video. His last short film about William Shakespeare called "Ultime Notizie (Same Old News)" has been screened as a premiere and awarded in the only Elizabethan Theatre of Italy, the Globe Theatre of Rome, in September 2014, by popular actor and director Gigi Proietti. In the same year 2014, while preparing the pre-production of a new documentary about ancient Rome ruins, he starts running an educational cinema project with some roman schools (including the making of a few short films with students) and pre-producing his first feature film scenes in 2015/2016 with the project title "In the name of love". Actually working on several projects with his company "Diario di Bordo" among which, a short film called "Aliyah" (involving several students and schools of Rome)", the making of the video "I believe in miracles" (from a song of the new cd project "Rain and Sun" by his band TAOS) and the feature film "In the name of love" which will be hopefully shot during Spring/Summer 2018.