Virgilio Tosi

Virgilio Tosi (born November 29, 1925, in Milan) is an Italian documentary filmmaker and historian of early film.

On June 10, 1940, the day Italy entered World War II, Tosi started working as apprentice invoice-clerk at the Milan seat of a German firm dealing in steel products, while pursuing his studies in his spare time.

At the end of 1942 Tosi was noticed at an international youth meeting on theatre, and offered a position in the newly instituted Italian Theatrical Institute (Ente Teatrale Italiano), which had been created to run theatres and theatrical companies and was established in Rome.

Meanwhile, he had engaged himself not to drop out of his studies, and passed his final secondary school exams in classical studies as an external student in 1943, in adventurous circumstances owing to Italy’s division in the war.

At the end of World War II, having left the Italian Theatrical Institute, Tosi started working as theatre and cinema critic while studying philosophy at university. In 1946 he was among the promoters of the Theatre Association “Il Diogene”, where he worked as executive secretary; other members of the managing board were Mario Apollonio, Paolo Grassi and Giorgio Strehler.

The following year, he participated in the creation of the Piccolo Teatro della Città di Milano. The town’s City Council designated him, along with Grassi, Strehler and Apollonio, as member of the first managing committee of the theatre, responsible for the technical and artistic management.

Tosi became increasingly interested in cinema. He was a founding member of the Cineteca Italiana in Milan and participated in the Filmclubs movement of the period; in 1947, he was among the promoters of the founding of the Italian Film Societies Federation (Federazione Italiana dei Circoli del Cinema), where he occupied executive positions between 1949 and 1952. Meanwhile, he started working as scriptwriter for fiction films, his professional apprenticeship in this area greatly increased by the cooperation with Cesare Zavattini.

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