Nata nel 1965, a Milano, residente a Roma, l’italo danese Barbara Melega ha cominciato il suo lavoro nel cinema come assistente alla regia. Dal 1988 ha lavorato, tra gli altri, con Ermanno Olmi per La leggenda del Santo Bevitore , con Francis Ford Coppola per Il padrino III, con Marco Tullio Giordana per La meglio gioventù. Nel 1994 ha debuttato alla regia con il cortometraggio Specchio delle mie brame, presentato al festival di Berlino. Dell' anno successivo è il suo secondo corto, Marta Singapore selezionato alla Mostra del cinema di Venezia. Si è poi dedicata alla ricerca ed alla sperimentazione del linguaggio video per la realizzazione di numerosi documentari, distribuiti dai canali tematici culturali RAI, in molti casi utilizzando lei stessa la telecamera. E’ stata responsabile per un triennio del Laboratorio Audiovisivo dell’Accademia di Francia a Roma. Come Casting Director ha collaborato alla realizzazione di film italiani come l’ultima opera del Maestro Bernardo Bertolucci, Io e Te, i molti film di Marco Tullio Giordana, appassionata anche alla ricerca del cinema di esordio di Ginevra Elkann con la sua opera prima Magari (2019). Tra gli autori internazionali, tra altri, ha collaborato come aiuto regista per Land di Babak Jalali e come casting director di Imperdonable di Andrè Tèchinè. Nel 2020 Gianni Amelio le affida il cast del suo prossimo film, Il Signore delle Formiche. Per Alessandro Angelini nel 2021 realizza il cast di una nuova serie tv- Vincenzo Malinconico Avvocato- tratta dai romanzi di Diego De Silva. Sempre nel 2021, impegnata al casting dei prossimi film di Pappi Corsicato e Ginevra Elkann.
Barbara Melega is a first assistant director, casting director and documentary filmmaker based in Rome.
Born in Milan in 1965 from a Danish mother and an Italian father, she started working in the movie business in 1985, when she was twenty, as the person responsible for the MystFest conferences (the International Mystery Film in Cattolica). Her film career began a few years later as Ermanno Olmi’s assistant in the movie La Leggenda del Santo Bevitore (winner of the Leone d’Oro at the Venice Film Festival in 1989). She continued her career as assistant and first assistant director for various Italian and international directors including Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather III, 1990), Giuseppe Bertolucci (Una Vita in Gioco, 1991, Troppo Sole 1993, Il Dolce Rumore della Vita, 1999 and L’Amore Probabilmente, 2000), Giacomo Battiato (Benvenuto Cellini, 1989) and Cesare Ferrario (La Bella di Mosca, 1999).
One of her longest and most rewarding collaborations is with movie director Marco Tullio Giordana for whom she has worked both as casting director and first assistant director. The movies they worked on together include: La Domenica Specialmente, 1991; Pasolini, un delitto italiano, 1994; I Cento Passi, 1999; La Meglio Gioventù, 2001; Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti, 2004; Sangue Pazzo, 2007; Romanzo di una Strage, 2010; Lea, 2015; I due Soldati, 2018 e Nome di Donna, 2018. In the course of the years she has also collaborated with Bernardo Bertolucci on many of his movie projects including, as casting director and first assistant director, Io e Te in 2011, his last feature film. In 2014 she worked as first assistant director on Mario Martone’s movie Il Giovane Favoloso and in 2015 on Pastorale Cilentana, by the same director.
Thanks to her fluency in several foreign languages, and particularly English, French and Danish, she has worked with international directors both in Italy - Francis Ford Coppola, Manuel Pradal e André Téchiné – and abroad: Guy Gilles (Nefertiti, 1992) in Latvia and Egypt and e Babak Jalali (Land, 2017) in Mexico. From 1997 to 2003 she has worked as associate producer for CBS’s 60 MINUTES.
In the course of her career, Barbara Melega has also worked as a movie and documentary filmmaker for RAI, the Italian Television Network, for ARTE and for the Académie de France à Rome - Villa Medici. All three institutions produced and distributed her work. Her two short movies, Specchio delle mie brame (1994) and Marta Singapore (1995), were shown at the festivals of Berlin, Venice, Turin and Locarno where they won several prizes. Her 1996 documentary Shooting on the Nile was presented at Locarno whereas La TV secondo il Cinema, shot that same year, was first shown at the Merano Film Festival. Her most recent collaboration was with Ginevra Elkann on the movie Magari (2019) that marked the Italian movie director’s debut on the international scene. Barbara Melega is currently working as a casting director on Gianni Amelio’s new movie. She is also finalizing her documentary on the political life of Samia Nkrumah in Ghana, produced by Bernardo Bertolucci and Clare Peploe.
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