Luigi Mele

Biography

Neapolitan by birth and restless by nature, Luigi Mele traded the Bay of Naples for the flicker of early Italian cinema. Between 1913 and 1914 he stepped behind and in front of the camera, guiding the sprawling historical canvas of *The Betrothed*, orchestrating the circus swirl of *Zirka*, and crowning a puppet monarch in *La regina Mezurka*. His final curtain fell in 1921, leaving only those three surviving reels to speak for a life once paced to the rhythms of Via Toledo and the clatter of hand-cranked projectors.