The Hungarian documentary on the life of Bud Spencer called “Footsteps of Piedone” was played to a full house at the Hungarian Academy in Rome. The screening of the film directed by Levente Kiraly was attended by Spencer’s children, fellow film-makers and several visitors from Spencer’s home city of Naples, including an elderly gentleman who regularly showed up at the shooting locations of the Piedone movies in the 70s.

“As a young boy, I was very curious about Bud Spencer. He had a captivating personality. I watched him act, every single one of his moves. I remember there was always a huge crowd gathering at the filming locations, which were completely public back in those days,” the elderly gentleman recalled, adding that Spencer’s name is to be pronounced with a “ch” – as in chalk – in the Neapolitan dialect.

The film’s premier in Rome was attended by the Pedersoli family, including Spencer’s three children, Cristiana, Diamante and Giuseppe, as well as his widow, Maria Pedersoli. “While watching the film, I felt the strong aura of love that surrounds my late husband’s memory. I don’t cry any more. Life goes on, but not without Bud. While he was alive, but not at home with us, he was still with us, always there, and that’s probably why I just can’t imagine how he is not with us any more. Oftentimes I just feel that I have to keep silent because he is sleeping in the room,” said Maria Pedersoli.

His daughter talked about the talent Spencer, born Carlo Pedersoli, had for magic tricks. “Tracing back his life, the way we saw it in the film, was a perfect evocation of my father’s life,” said Cristiana Pedersoli. “What’s left off are perhaps only those memories that we, as little kids, had with our father. The games, the magic tricks and the wizardry that we have always enjoyed with our father.”

Pedersoli’s former team mate swimmer and water polo player Fofo Buonocore, a fellow member of the 1952 Helsinki and the 1956 Melbourne Olympics team, also attended the premier, as did the directors of Bud Spencer s last active filming decade and fellow actors from Odds and Evens, the Piedone movies, Banana Joe, Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure, and the rest of his cult films. “This film is a wonderful compilation on Bud Spencer. It shares a lot of details about his life that I didn’t know myself,” said Sal Borgese, who played Anulu in the film Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure. “This may sound strange, because we ve worked together so long, but I wasn’t so lucky as to be privy to every detail of his private life.”

The Hungarian documentary “Footsteps of Piedone” will also be screened in Milan, Genoa, Bologna, Naples and Sicily.

Photos by Klara Varhelyi