A story handed down from generation to generation.
«I do remember that day very well», says Adriano De Angelis, «my father came closer and told me:
— now, it is your turn».

He smiles and, after a short pause, continues speaking about that 1976, about that family workshop that was passed on to him by his father. At the time, he was a sculptor, son and nephew of sculptors and he would later become father of sculptors.
He moulds sculptures and designs film sets: this is his craft.
Not an easy one, considering his predecessors: his father, Renato, worked during the Golden Age of the Italian cinema and created sets for Fellini’s films and for the greatest epic films that were shot in Rome, from War and Peace to Cleopatra.
His grandfather, Angelo, was a skilled moulder, he was gifted with such an extraordinary talent that he could reproduce live copies of the works of art kept in museums all over the world.
He was the founder of this activity, when he started to work with the glorious cinema production companies of the ’30s, such as Titanus, Minerva and Cines.
Today, Adriano, 73 years old, continues to practice his profession tirelessly and he is one of the last craftsmen left on the premises of Cinecittà.
His workshop – signposted by a sign showing the typical font of the Fascist architecture, spelling out the words ‘Plastica’ and ‘Scultura’ – is located beyond abandoned sets and closed locations. To reach it, visitors must pass by long drives, so bare and uneven, that they seem to be so badly kept on purpose, just to destroy your car suspensions.
Not far from his workshop, you can spot the statue of Christ the King featured in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (the same one that flew on a helicopter in the skies of Rome), as well as the sculptures appeared in The Fall of the Roman Empire,1964, starring Sofia Loren. Lately, just a few people seem to notice, when they rarely pass by in a hurry.
If, just for a moment, you wanted to ignore the objects in front of your eyes, you could smell fibreglass, hear the pigeons cooing constantly and persistently or the melody of a jazz song played every day just five minutes to six.
This is very difficult, though, because as soon as you cross the threshold, a feeling of growing amazement overwhelms visitors: they see more than ninety years of activity, hundreds of films made and thousands of sculptures scattered like toys in the room of a lively kid.
Almost one hundred years of history of cinema are kept in these giant warehouses with asbestos roofs.

«From the smallest little frame to the most enormous statue, we have more than 10-12 thousand pieces, we actually don’t know any more how many they are», declares Adriano, proudly, browsing though a sea of sculptures and pieces of furniture, which make the path more narrow and dusty at every step. The white floor covered in statues is surrounded by colours: a clear sign that the workshop is still up and running.
From the warm orange nuances of shellac – used as a base to let the clay stick on the polystyrene – to a shade that seems to be in-between pink and purple – a sign that the chemical reaction between catalyst (a solution of methylethyl ketone peroxide) and the cobalt octoate has started. Its function is to harden the fibreglass, which will become yellow once it has dried up.
The majority of them are just a little diversion: TV sets made up of very few objects, manufactured to achieve that sense of self-satisfaction rather than anything else. Nonetheless, also those rare occasions come about when it happens to design magnificent sculptures for prominent dramas.

Long gone are the days when the amount of work allowed keeping eighty employees and the apprentices knocked on the workshop’s door every day.
Today, the activity has decreased considerably also because the Italian cinema is on the verge of bankruptcy and there are now only three people working in the studio.

CINECITTÀ STUDIOS
The 80% of the premises hosting the studios are managed by a private consortium – IEG (Italian Entertainment Group) – composed by important names of the Italian economy such as Luigi Abete, president of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Diego Della Valle, owner of the luxury brand Tod’s, Aurelio De Laurentiis, cinema producer and owner of the production company Filmauro.
The trade unions blame the holding company for pursuing commercial purposes through an uncontrolled building policy, which in the last few years has become a common habit.
The most evident result is just the destruction of the identity of the city, as it happened in Castel Romano, on the Via Pontina, where an amusement park was built – Cinecittà World.
It is feared that the same destiny awaits the studios in via Tuscolana, where they also plan to build a similar park with a majestic luxury hotel and multi-storey car parks.
«We have already decided to delete the multiplex cinema and the shopping mall from the original plan. We are not interested in making easy money, but we want to be appealing for mega-productions […]. We do not even dream of touching the protected premises: the theatre and Adriano De Angelis’ CineArs studio are not going to be touched. The craftsman continues complaining but he is not paying the rent», claims Luigi Abete, the president of IEG, during a press conference for the presentation of the industrial plan, when he tried to deny the rumours of an alleged property speculation by the group.

At first sight, Cinecittà looks very similar to the amusement parks that bear its name – maybe, in the future, it will only have to welcome a more demanding crowd of tourists. Directors, actors, writers, craftsman and intellectuals are mobilising to raise public awareness for this issue, since the destiny awaiting the studios and the sculpture workshop – which would be more appropriate to define as a small museum – looks everything but rosy.

«In the worst case scenario, it is going to be a tough job to move all these works», says Adriano jokingly to his two sons, Angelo and Alessandro. You can hear worry in his voice, but he tries to play it down.
His life and the lives of those who preceded him were devoted to work for cinema and now their work risks to disappear or, even worse, to be destroyed or stolen, as it has already happened in the past.

The workshop is silent; the street is empty in front of those figures with cold and sparkling eyes carved on chalk faces. There is nobody, apart from some cars heading to the set of the Big Brother.
The grand films, those that employ many people and that, in the collective imagination, attract thousands of extras, are de-localized in Morocco and Tunisia.
The first streetlights go on as the evening comes, the assistants get ready to go home and Adriano starts tidying up the workshop. When he puts the bicycle inside he shares one of his wishes: one day, he would like to pass his activity down to his sons and – why not – to his nephews, in the same way that it was passed down to him.
Then smiles peacefully: maybe he remembered that history always repeats itself, in the end.