Photos by Massimo Siragusa; text by Tonino Guerra
 When autumn began and
leaves from the chestnut trees covered the road between the station and the square,
a moment would come when I would open the window overlooking our vegetable garden
and see with delight the tent of the little circus which had been pitched on the
village green overnight.When I opened the same window in springtime, my surprise came from the cherry tree, bursting with white blossoms. I was a small boy then, full of excitement at discovering the big top which had gone up in front of our house. The evening air was filled with the sounds of trumpets and the rumble of drums. It was usually the same circus that Federico Fellini had applauded before me in Rimini, the chief town of the Adriatic Riviera, near the village where I was born—Santarcangelo di Romagna. I remember how Fellini and I often talked about it during the shooting of Amarcord, the film in which he remembered his youth in Rimini. By then, both of us had been living in Rome for many years. On Sunday mornings, Fellini would often drive me to Cinecittà1. He just loved to be there when it was deserted and quiet. He would ask for the keys to Set no. 5 and we would make our way to that dank, empty place. Let the show begin! As soon as we arrived, he would say in a voice charged with emotion: “Let the show begin!” and would start to switch on the lights one by one. We watched the fuzzy glow from the dusty bulbs dotted all around the huge drab area, and the sounds and images of shows we had seen as children came flooding back. On days when the circus was in town, even my mother Penelope joined in the fun. Every morning, she would ask the keeper of the African animals for the droppings of the giraffes and the old lion, and would use them to work wonders on the flowers she grew in old saucepans. The beautiful photos by Massimo Siragusa which illustrate this scrapbook of golden memories take me back to those childhood days as well as my long visits with the prodigious Fellini to Set no. 5 (one of 16) at Cinecittà. For him this set was the real Via Veneto, the Via Veneto of La Dolce Vita. Set no. 5 served as the backdrop when the coffin with the great director’s body was displayed to the public for the last time on November 1, 1993. These memories also take me back to Russia, one of the countries I’ve loved most, and bring to mind the time when I worked for the director Andrei Khryanovsky. A few years ago, I gave him the script of a cartoon story called The Grey-Bearded Lion. A film was recently made of it which tells the story of a little circus whose main attraction is an unusual lion called Amedeo, or Teo to his friends. As the years go by and he gets older, divisions grow among the small family of circus folk. The great Popov I also remember, like so many coloured bubbles, the times when I met the great Russian clowns, especially Karandash, who was so short that when he stood behind a table, he seemed to be sitting at it. And Popov, the great Popov who performed his finest routine one day when he was in Amsterdam. He entered the ring and prepared to eat a meal in a small spotlight which lit up part of the ground. When he finished, he gathered up the light with his hands, as if it were breadcrumbs, a trick he’d worked out with the lighting technician. Just as he was leaving the ring, he put the light in a shopping bag. He received so much applause that he stopped and threw the bag towards the audience, which was then flooded with light. I can’t forget either the statues that Ilario Fioravanti, an old sculptor from Cesena, shaped with hesitant child-like hands. In Pennabilli (the village in the Marches region of Italy between Pesaro and Urbina where I’ve lived for the past decade), he assembled all the statues which reminded him of the circus and circus life. They are still in the rooms of an old palazzo in the heart of the ancient village, the Bargello. In cells which once held prisoners, Fioravanti’s statues now stand as if waiting for a round of applause that might break out at any moment, applause suspended in mid-air. There’s something irresistible about this world that floods my memory with joy but also fills me with melancholy—the last notes of the music we heard in the village as the circus caravans prepared to leave and then went on their way. The sounds trailed away in the fog and became a kind of poignant lament that, standing on the tips of our toes, we strained to hear until the very last note. Afterwards, we would gather on the patch of ground where the circus ring had been. Sometimes we’d plant candles and create a ring of light around us. 1. The centre of the Italian film industry, founded 62 years ago on the Via Tuscolana just outside Rome. |
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Under the big top of Italy’s Embell Riva Circus, an equestrian act prepares to go through its paces. The circus, owned by the Bellucci family, tours mainly in southern Italy. |
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A lonesome clown looks into a mirror before going into the ring. |
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A tightrope walker with the Roncalli Circus treads the high wire in Vienna (Austria). The Roncalli is a German circus, but most of its performers are Italian. |
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Flying trapeze artists of the American Circus. |
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An elephant of the Embell Riva Circus gives its trainer a ride. |
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Poet, story-teller and scriptwriter The Italian poet Tonino Guerra, who was born
in Santarcangelo di Romagna in 1923, graduated in education studies from the University
of Urbina and is a world-famous scriptwriter. He has written over 100 screenplays,
which have been made into films by directors including Michelangelo Antonioni (with
whom he has just written L’Aquilone, an illustrated story for the third millennium,
published by Editoriale Delfi, Cassina, Milan), Andrei Tarkovsky, the Taviani brothers,
Federico Fellini, Francesco Rosi and Vittorio de Sica. |