Vittorio De Seta

The scion of an aristocratic family, Vittorio De Seta originally intended to become an architect but switched to making documentaries shorts in the 1950s, most filmed in and around his native Sicily. He segued to fiction with the starkly shot, minimalist "Banditi a Orgosolo/Bandits of Orgosolo" (1961), for which he received a prize at the Venice Film Festival. The feature employed documentary techniques to examine the flight of a shepherd who unwittingly becomes embroiled in a murder. Filmed in black and white, "Banditi a Orgosolo" was set in the hills of Sardinia and De Seta's fine camerawork established the appropriate mood for the piece.