Author: Rosanna Turcinovich Giuricin

TRIESTE – Rai Studios in Trieste, a long corridor with red lights above the doors, on or off, to indicate recordings in progress. Who knows how many times Fulvio Tomizza, briefcase under his arm, walked through these spaces, gazed upon the same details, immersed in his thoughts... “Being Istrian for me is everything,” he used to say. The memory of his “voice”, warm and measured, comes to us from one of the many recordings that the screenwriter Fabio Venturin and the director Viviana Olivieri have fished out of the archives to give life to a new project of which they are making us participants. The broadcast has already been scheduled for Saturday 6 April (first episode), at 12pm, on Radio 1 for FVG. Proposed by the regional Rai headquarters for Friuli Venezia Giulia, entitled “Fulvio Tomizza: Where to Return”, or five episodes that reveal his journey: At the Roots of the Tree, Stefano's Double War, The Transfigured Mirror, The Tear, Exodus and Return. Rehearsals are underway, necessary before the recording which will begin in a little while, just enough time to catch a few lines, to reason with the screenwriter about this operation which returns Fulvio Tomizza, once again, to his audience. “Tomizza is a classic,” replies Professor Venturin, “that must be read and reread and cannot be forgotten.” But life, as we know, is made up of great escapes and periods of pause, of oblivion, nothing is taken for granted, so you have to work, study, propose… Fabio Venturin comes from the world of school, with a long experience in screenplays, from radio dramas to characters. He has curated broadcasts on the greats of music, following his passion for notes, he plays the piano. He is responsible for the series of broadcasts on Giuseppe Tartini, produced when it was still difficult to find the necessary recordings, and so one had to resort to studying the scores. There is music, even in this new work, just listen to the intertwining of the voices of the actors Gualtiero Giorgini, Adriano Giraldi, Ian Leopoli, Maria Grazia Plos, Massimo Somaglino, Mariella Terragni. Patiently listening to every passage, the program assistant, Marina Devescovi. Directed by sound engineer Carlo Morello. What is the thread that unites the five episodes? “The autobiography – answers the author Venturin –. Fulvio tells his story, intervening himself with clips from archive interviews, relating to his father and mother, the events of his life marked by the exodus, for which the boy wonders why he cannot be like all the others who live a normal life, without shocks. However, this is not the case for Istria." He tells it in his books in which writing is a world in itself, in which to pour doubts and certainties, in which to find a path. Why the radio? “Because listening, like reading a book, allows you to travel with your imagination, to imagine, to enter into the magic of words.” Writing for the radio is like composing a score… “You need musicality, rhythm, the right pauses and then there is the role of the music that comes in every now and then to underline a moment, as the protagonist and then fades away. It's a concert, gaver recia, as we would say in our dialect." Our? “My family is from Umag, so not far from Tomizza’s birthplace, where he had returned.” The theme of return is always present, even in this work, but there is no question mark in the title… “Deliberately. For a long time the question mark was obligatory: the exile has no place of return. But now we have taken it away, times have changed, the world has changed and so has the concept of return, which takes on other meanings for those who have gone far away, or for those who were born elsewhere, but feel the call of their roots. These are themes that Tomizza has tried to analyze in all their nuances and which are very topical today". The return is closely linked to the figure of the father. Why? “It’s incredible how important it is for a child to interact with his or her parents. It was the same for Fulvio, as it is for me. I dedicated the only novel I wanted to write to my father, he had been in the war, his suffering belonged to me, I had to tell it. So all our fathers place their existence on our shoulders and, at a certain point in life, we go looking for them. In the Tree of Dreams, but also in other novels, Tomizza searches for him, evokes him, meets him even after he has passed away and reflects with him and seeks advice. These are moments of dreamlike writing, of great lyricism, which we find in these episodes." Life as inspiration is always present in Tomizza… “In a conference at the Gobetti High School he stated something important that I wanted to point out. He said: I was inspired by my life, to write certain books… But at a certain point the matter needs to be organized… That is, in our life everything happens chaotically and this… we cannot propose chaos to readers… so we have to organize it, put things in order: therefore make a 'character' of ourselves, therefore not distort ourselves, but complete ourselves, if anything…”. Time is running out, the coffee break is over, the actors are ready to get back to work, focused, enthusiastic, even moved by the strength of Tomizza's thought in these dialogues. Viviana Olivieri, from the direction, like a captain from the bridge, commands the crew and everything moves, happens, she launches them and catches them, controlling their breathing. Whoever listens must feel involved. But that's not all: many of his books are untraceable, so we risk forgetting him. Interview Archive