Mario Amura

After graduating in International Law at Naples University, Amura attended cinematography classes at Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (Experimental film centre or Italian National film school), in Rome. His career as a photographer started in 1993. In 1999 Studio d’Arte Memoli in Milan published the first catalogue of his photographic collected works. His debut as a professional cinematographer was in 2003 with Maurizio Fiume's full feature E io ti seguo (I will follow you), a selection at Montreal World Film Festival. Amongst some of his other major credits since 2003 is his collaboration with the Italian film director Vincenzo Marra, three documentaries (Pasaggio a Sud, L’udienza è aperta, Il grande progetto) and the 2004 fictional full feature movie Vento di terra (Earth Wind), awarded at the 61st Venice Film Festival by Fipresci as most innovative movie. Amura's cinematography of Vento di Terra has been awarded with Giuseppe Rotunno award. With film director Paolo Sorrentino, Amura worked on the TV version of Eduardo De Filippo’s drama Sabato, domenica e lunedì, the short movie La notte lunga and the documentary La primavera del 2002. L’Italia protesta. L’Italia si ferma. In 2004 Amura worked with Luca Guadagnino at Cuoco contadino (Farmer chef), and the following year for the full feature movie Melissa P. In 2005 he worked at Nessun messaggio in segreteria by Paolo Genovese and Luca Miniero. With Luca Miniero Amura also shot several advertising spots. In 2007 he worked at Saverio Costanzo’s movie In memoria di me (in memory of me), for whose cinematography Amura was once again awarded with the Giuseppe Rotunno award and nominated for the Ciak d’oro award. In 2010 Amura worked on Sabina Guzzanti’s documentary Draquila, Alessandro Aronadio’s Due vite per caso (One life, maybe two), and Paola Randi’s Into paradiso. His list of collaboration with Italian film directors also includes Nina Di Maio, Volfango De Biasi, and Serafino Murri.

As a film director in 2003 Amura shot Racconto di guerra (A War's tale), a short movie set in Sarajevo during the Balkan war. The short movie was awarded with David di Donatello for best short movie in 2003 and Ciak d'oro for best short movie in 2004.

Since 2007 Amura has been working on a photographic live-performance project, StopEmotion, now developed by Emoticron s.r.l. as a special software to live-edit real time videos from sequences of pictures played on music. In November 2014 Amura founded and became CCO of Emoticron s.r.l., an innovative startup based in Naples, Italy. Its mission is simplifying and reinventing photo/video sharing through a software enabling users to ‘play images as music notes’, live-recording and editing sequences of pre-selected pictures on a chosen musical score. Since then, Emoticron has developed, and patent-pending, a web application and mobile app, StopEmotion.

• David di Donatello:

2003: best short movie (won) ''Racconto di guerra''

• Giuseppe Rotunno Award

2005: best cinematography (won) – Vento di terra

2007: best cinematography (won) – In memoria di me

• Ciak d'oro

2004: best short movie (won) – ''Racconto di guerra''

2007: best cinematography (nominated) In memoria di me

• Stefano Masi, Dizionario mondiale dei direttori della fotografia, Recco, Le Mani, 2007. ISBN 88-8012-387-4 pp. 34–35
• Edoardo Bruno"FILMCRITICA", l'Occhio umile",Roma, Tip. Visigalli-Pasetti, 2007. pp. 09–11
• Cinecittà Personaggi

• Official Site
• Mario Amura on IMDb
• Emoticron Official Site