In memoriam: Franco La Polla

Professor at the University of Bologna, Italy

It was with very great sadness that we learned at the SERCIA, of which he was a highly appreciated member, of the death of our friend and colleague Franco La Polla. Despite his illness, he was the organiser of the 11th Conference of SERCIA at Bologna: Europe Seen from Hollywood and America as a Mirror of European Cinema, and SERCIA will always be grateful to him for such a highly successful conference. We remember with fondness his warm welcome to Bologna and his great generosity of spirit. He had served as head of the Department of English at Bologna and also played a crucial role at the CINETECA, where the conference was held so magnificently in September 2007. Essayist and journalist, we owe him many publications on Hollywood cinema, his main intellectual interest. We also recall with great pleasure his lecture on Billy Wilder at the study day organised by SERCIA at the University of Paris 7, and an equally fascinating lecture on Hollywood comedies at the invitation of the Toulouse University School for Audiovisual Studies (E.S.A.V.) in 2004. He remains in our memory as the very model of a teacher and researcher, which is by no means to forget his great sense of humour, in spite of increasing health difficulties, always facing with vast courage the obstacles he met during the course of his life. 

All those who knew him through the SERCIA would like to come together and pay him this final homage, as well as expressing our very great gratitude to him, both as an academic and as a true gentleman.