Fulvio Lucisano

Prolific film producer and Italian national treasure Fulvio Lucisano spent his career bringing films directly into the lives of his countrymen--both as a filmmaker and theater mogul. He began work in the domestic film industry in his twenties after attending Rome's La Sapienza University. Soon he was producing on his own, starting with a few shorts and documentaries during the early 1950s. By the middle of the decade he had released his first feature length film, "The Four Jet Thunder." In 1958, he started his production house, Italian International Film (IIF), which went on to produce over 130 films, with Lucisano serving the company as president. Lucisano briefly tried his hand at script-writing with "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs." Throughout the 1970s, the company released a number of notable films into the Italian marketplace, including 1972's sexy thriller "What Have You Done to Solange?" and the episodic "Three Tigers Against Three Tigers" in 1977. Releasing dozens of features in the second half of the century, Lucisano's IIF began to produce for television in the 1990s and opened a number of successful multiplexes in central Rome. In 2007, the Italian government honored Lucisano with the title of Cavaliere del Lavoro.