Goffredo Fofi, a central figure in the Italian cultural scene of the second half of the 20th century, has died. Born in Gubbio on April 15, 1937, Fofi was an essayist, journalist, film, literary and theater critic, but above all an independent intellectual committed to building an alternative to consumerism and cultural standardization. Growing up in Umbria, he moved to Sicily when he was only eighteen, where he collaborated with sociologist and activist Danilo Dolci in the fight against the Mafia and for the rights of the unemployed. It was an experience that profoundly marked his path, shaping a thought based on pacifism, social justice and cultural militancy.

In the 1960s he moved to Paris, where he worked for the film magazine Positif. Back in Italy, he started Quaderni piacentini, one of the liveliest and most critical journals of the time, and published the investigation L'immigrazione meridionale a Torino, a fundamental text for understanding the social dynamics of industrial Italy. In 1967 he founded Ombre rosse, a magazine that combined cinema, politics and culture, and helped shape generations of readers and scholars. Throughout his long career he wrote articles and essays on cinema and literature, signing such works as Il cinema italiano: servi e padroni (1975) and Sotto l'ulivo. In 1997 he started a new publishing project: Lo straniero, a magazine dedicated to art, culture and society, always attentive to marginal spaces and voices outside the chorus.