“BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY” BY QUEEN IS NOT THE FIRST MUSIC VIDEO IN RECENT HISTORY AS WE HAVE BEEN MADE TO BELIEVE. THE VERY FIRST SHORT FOOTAGE FILM CONCEIVED TO PROMOTE SONGS WAS PRODUCED IN ITALY IN 1959 FOR THE CINEBOX WHICH WAS A REVOLUTIONARY OVERSIZED ‘VIDEO-JUKE-BOX’, THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME ALLOWED US TO LISTEN TO AND TO ACTUALLY SEE THE SINGERS OF THE SONGS.

Renato Carosone, Don Marino Barreto Junior, Peppino Di Capri and Nilla Pizzi, paved the way to the music videos of the nineteen sixties that subsequently aroused the interest and opened the doors to Italian film directors like Vito Molinari, and Enzo Trapani and up and coming new-comers such as Claude Lelouch, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman. For the first time the story is narrated in the Italian Television Documentary ‘Tg2 Dossier’ that follows the thread of the new-born concept of music videos that intertwined through a background of commercial rivalry that flared up between Italy, France and the United States, and which subsequently aroused the interests of the mafia in New York and the suppression by the forceful crackdown of Robert Kennedy’s G-Men.

“The Great-grandfather of the Music Videos” by Michele Bovi, Tg2 Dossier RAI, 16th April 2006. [SUBTITLES IN ENGLISH]

INTERVIEWS AND VIDEOS THAT APPEAR IN THE PROGRAM

Interviews
– Paolo Emilio Nistri, manager Ottico Meccanica Italiana (Rome)
– Andrée Davis-Boyer, producer and film director Scopitone (Paris)
– Bob Orlowsky, lawyer and historian of the music video (San Francisco)
– Frank Rose, journalist (New York)
– Roberto Marai, entrepreneur (Salò, Brescia)
– Ermanno Caselli, technical director of Società Internazionale di Fonovisione (Milan)
– Alberto Moro, editor (Milan)
– Roby Matano, singer (Milan)
– Clem Sacco, singer (Tenerife, Canary Islands)

Videos
– Gianni Morandi e Mary Di Pietro
– Neil Sedaka
– The Queen
– The Delta Rhythm Boys
– Paul Anka
– Brigitte Bardot
– Don Marino Barreto Junior
– I Brutos
– I Divini
– Wera Nepi
– Iva Zanicchi
– Rika Zarai
– Betty Claire
– Henry Salvador
– Gastone Parigi
– Gegè Di Giacomo
– I Campioni
– Fausto Leali
– Lilli Bonato
– Edoardo Vianello
– Pino Donaggio
– Ornella Vanoni
– Nico Fidenco
– Sergio Endrigo
– Ricky Gianco
– John Foster
– Dalida
– Rita Pavone
– Gino Paoli
– Juliette Greco
– Alice e Ellen Kessler
– Peppino Di Capri e i suoi Rockers
– Marino Marini e il suo quartetto
– Adriano Celentano
– Clem Sacco
– Johnny Hallyday
– Sylvie Vartan
– Tony Renis
– Vince Taylor
– Francoise Hardy
– The Touchdown Girls of Crazy Horse
– De Giafferi
– Marian Montgomery
– Debbie Reynolds
– Joi Lansing
– Sandy Shaw
– Miguel Cordoba
– The Procol Harum
– Nancy Sinatra
– Frank Sinatra Junior
– Skin

Giorgio Gaber testimonial of the Cinebox at the Sanremo Festival 1964.

I Divini “La Canzone del Cinebox” (Cinebox, 1962).