Leo Catozzo

Leo Catozzo (10 December 1912 – 4 March 1997) was an Italian award winning film editor. He was often credited as Leo Cattozzo. He is best known as the designer and manufacturer of the self-perforating adhesive tape film splicer known as CIR-Catozzo.

Life and career

Born in Adria, Province of Rovigo, the son of the musician Nino, Catozzo graduated in law, then in cello at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice, and finally in set design and directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome.^[1] He entered the film industry in the early 1940s as a screenwriter and later assistant director for several Mario Mattoli's comedy films.^[1] He debuted as a film editor in 1951 for Mattoli's My Heart Sings, and later worked with Alberto Lattuada, Mario Soldati and especially Federico Fellini whose films he edited during the fifties and sixties, most notably La Dolce Vita and 8½.^[1][2] In 1956 Catozzo received the American Cinema Editors Award for King Vidor's War and Peace.^[1] Being allergic to acetone, Catozzo projected and developed an innovative film splicer, later known as "CIR-Catozzo", "Pressa Catozzo" or just "Catozzo", using it for the first time in Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.^[1] The insistent demands of his colleagues forced him first to fabricate a hundred copies and later, to patent the machine which launched, in the early sixties, the mass production of the film splicer, something that gradually drew him away from his activity as an editor.^[1] In 1989 he received the Academy Scientific and Technical Award for his creation.^[3]

References

1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Stefano Masi. Nel buio della moviola: introduzione alla storia del montaggio. La Lanterna magica, 1985. pp. 142–149. 
2. ↑ Peter Bondanella. The Films of Federico Fellini. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521575737. 
3. ↑ Silvia Bizio, Claudia Laffranchi. Cinema Italian Style: Italians at the Academy Awards. Gremese, 2002. ISBN 887301500X. 

External links

• Leo Catozzo at the Internet Movie Database