Joe D'Amato occupation cinematographer
Aristide Massaccesi (15 December 1936 – 23 January 1999), known professionally as Joe D'Amato, was an Italian film director, producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter who worked in many genres (westerns, decamerotici, peplum, war films, swashbuckler, comedy, fantasy, postapocalyptic film, and erotic thriller) but is best known for his horror, erotic and adult films.D'Amato worked in the 1950s as electric and set photographer, in the 1960s as camera operator, and from 1969 onwards as cinematographer. Starting in 1972, he directed and co-directed around 200 films under numerous pseudonyms, regularly acting as cinematographer as well. Starting in the early 1980s, D'Amato produced many of his own and other directors' genre films through the companies he founded or co-founded, the best known being Filmirage. From 1979 to 1982 and from 1993 to 1999, D'Amato also produced and directed about 120 adult films.
Among his best known erotic films are his five entries into the Black Emanuelle series of films starring Laura Gemser (1976–1978) and his horror/pornography crossover films Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust (both shot in Santo Domingo in 1979). In the horror genre, he is above all remembered for his films Beyond the Darkness (1979) and Antropophagus (1980), which have gained cult status, as well as Absurd (1981).Biography
Early life and work (1936–1969)
Joe D'Amato was born on 15 December 1936 in Rome, Italy. His father was Renato Massaccesi, who after an incident on a ship had been declared a war invalid and had started to work at the Istituto Luce in Rome first as electrician, fixing power generators left by the United States army at Cinecittà, and then as chief photographic technician. In 1950, at the age of 14, D'Amato joined his father at work together with his brothers Carlo and Fernando (called Nando). Being the most enterprising of the three sons, D'Amato took on the task of delivering the movie cameras his father sold. D'Amato also assisted in the dubbing of Italian film productions and designed title and end credits with Eugenio Bava, cutting the letters out by hand. In 1952, D'Amato worked as a still photographer on the set of The Golden Coach, later as electric. In the 1960s, D'Amato eventually moved on to work as a camera operator on numerous films including Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World.
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