Arturo Ambrosio
About
Biography
Biography
Founding father of the Italian film industry. Ambrosio moved from photography to cinematography in the first years of the century, making his country's first documentaries (with Roberto Omegna) in 1904 and setting up a small studio in his backyard soon after. In 1906 he ventured into fiction filmmaking and, over the course of his career, produced over 1000 films. Ambrosio earned his greatest international fame--and put the Italian cinema on the map--with several historical epics such as "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1908) and "The Slave of Carthage" (1910).
Having sired his own country's industry, Ambrosio was called northeast to do the same for Czarist Russia. By the early 1920s, due both to losses suffered from WWI and several big-budget flops, his active filmmaking career had come to an end. Ambrosio did, however, work for a time as a production manager on a number of films between 1939 and 1943 before retiring for good.
Life Events
