Diva Futura (the production company founded by Riccardo Schicchi in Rome in the early 1980s, the company that operated from a studio on Via Ostiense, the consular road running south from the Ostiense market toward the Laurentina and the EUR quarter, and that produced the material that made Cicciolina/Ilona Staller, Moana Pozzi, and Eva Grimaldi internationally recognized figures in the specific cultural context of Italian late-Berlusconi media permissiveness) is one of the most specifically Italian cultural phenomena of the 1980s, and the one that the Italian cultural establishment spent three decades refusing to acknowledge before the documentary "Il Caso Schicchi" (directed by Fabrizio Ferraro, 2023) and the Amazon Prime series "Supersex" (2024) made the Diva Futura story a legitimate subject of Italian cultural discussion.
The Diva Futura phenomenon is inseparable from the specific Italian media context of the 1980s: the deregulation of Italian broadcasting after the Constitutional Court ruling of 1976 (which ended the RAI television monopoly and allowed private broadcasting), the explosive growth of the Berlusconi Fininvest television empire (Canale 5, Italia 1, Rete 4, the three networks that transformed Italian television in the 1980s from a state-controlled cultural institution into a commercial entertainment platform), and the specific Italian cultural permission around sexuality in media that produced a national conversation about the relationship between entertainment, politics, and social values that Cicciolina's election to the Italian Parliament in 1987 brought to its most dramatically specific expression.
How do you want to see it?
Lazio, ItalyCompare the same experience on GetYourGuide and Viator, save what you like to My Trip, share it, and book when you’re sure. Nearest to this page first.
Diva Futura: Context and Cultural Legacy
The Riccardo Schicchi Story
Riccardo Schicchi (1952-2012, the talent agent, producer, and photographer who founded Diva Futura and who managed the careers of Cicciolina, Moana Pozzi, and the other performers associated with the agency) is the central figure of the Diva Futura story in a way that his relative historical invisibility (compared to the performers he represented) makes retrospectively striking: Schicchi was the entrepreneur who identified the specific commercial and cultural opportunity that the 1980s Italian media context created, who built the production and distribution infrastructure, and who managed the transition of Cicciolina from erotic performer to elected Member of Parliament with the Radical Party (the Partito Radicale of Marco Pannella, the libertarian-progressive party that also elected Ilona Staller as its candidate in the 1987 legislative elections, in the specific Italian political tradition of the celebrity-protest candidacy). The Schicchi story ends with bankruptcy proceedings, legal disputes, and his death in 2012.
The Cicciolina Parliamentary Episode
Ilona Staller. Cicciolina (born 1951 in Budapest, Hungarian citizen naturalized Italian, elected to the Italian Parliament in the 1987 elections as a Radical Party candidate for the Lazio constituency, serving one term 1987-1992) is the most dramatically specific element of the Diva Futura cultural legacy: the election of an adult entertainment performer to the Italian Parliament is the moment that the international press used to characterize Italian political culture in the 1980s, and that Italian political scientists have then analyzed as a genuine expression of the Radical Party's libertarian political program (the Radical Party, under Marco Pannella, had consistently used celebrity candidacies and provocative political gestures as tools for forcing political discussion of subjects the establishment preferred to ignore, divorce, abortion, drug decriminalization, euthanasia, and the Staller candidacy was explicitly framed as a statement about sexual freedom and the hypocrisy of Italian political attitudes toward sexuality).
Q&A: Diva Futura and Italian Cultural History
Where was the Diva Futura studio in Rome?
The Diva Futura production operations were based in Via Ostiense area of Rome, the industrial zone south of the Testaccio market that also hosted other media and production companies in the 1980s-1990s. The specific address isn't a tourist destination in any formal sense, but Via Ostiense itself (the road that runs from the Ostiense station toward the EUR) has undergone significant transformation since the 1990s, with the MACRO Testaccio contemporary art museum and the Centrale Montemartini archaeological museum (the ancient Roman sculptures in the setting of a decommissioned power station, one of the finest display concepts in Rome) now among the primary cultural institutions in the area.
Is there a documentary about Diva Futura?
Yes, "Il Caso Schicchi" (2023, director Fabrizio Ferraro) covers the Schicchi and Diva Futura story from a documentary perspective. The Amazon Prime series "Supersex" (2024) dramatizes the story with actors. Both have been widely distributed in Italy and internationally. The Amazon series in particular generated the renewed Italian cultural discussion about whether the Diva Futura phenomenon was a symptom of social dysfunction or a legitimate expression of the cultural libertarianism that defined a specific Italian decade.
Curiosità
Moana Pozzi (1961-1994) non morì di AIDS come si scrisse sui giornali italiani per anni, ma di un tumore al fegato diagnosticato nel 1994. La diffusione della falsa notizia (che percorse i media italiani quasi senza correzione per quasi un decennio) è uno dei casi documentati di disinformazione sistematica nell'Italia pre-internet, il prodotto della specifica combinazione di moralismo sociale, sensazionalismo giornalistico, e assenza di un sistema di verifica dei fatti. La biografia ufficiale di Moana Pozzi, basata su documenti medici verificati, fu pubblicata negli anni 2000 correggendo il record.
Internal Links
- Roma Ostiense: Il Quartiere dei Locali
- Testaccio e Ostiense: La Roma Notturna
- Roma Autentica: I Quartieri Fuori dal Centro
- Centrale Montemartini: Arte Antica nella Fabbrica
- Via Ostiense: La Trasformazione Culturale
- Roma Underground: I Locali della Controcultura
- Centri Sociali Roma: La Cultura Alternativa
