The Italian film producer and writer Martino Sclavi, who has died aged 47, will be best remembered for his 2017 memoir The Finch in My Brain. The book begins in 2011 with Martino on the brink of a Hollywood career but suffering from terrible headaches. After he collapses, his doctors discover a malignant brain tumour, saying there is a 98% chance he will die within 18 months.
His friend the comedian Russell Brand wrote in the foreword of the book: “In the years that followed I watched with wonder as Martino repaired the tissue in his mind, learned to live without being able to read, went from a highly cultured, over-educated, five-language-speaking, three-degrees-in-everything to a gentle, mindful shaman.”
Born in Brescia, Italy, Martino was the son of Gastone Sclavi, a union leader, and Marianella Pirzio Biroli, a professor of urban anthropology. His family history included colourful tales of Venetian merchants losing fortunes, colonial administrators in occupied Eritrea and ancient bakeries the Sclavis owned in medieval Siena.
Martino studied political science in Oberlin, Ohio, then at Cambridge University and Humboldt in Berlin, where he also played bass in a punk band. He switched to film, training at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, turning up to classes although never actually enrolling there.
In 2001, Martino founded the TV production company Vanity Projects with Brand. In 2002 he worked alongside the producer Marco Müller for Downtown Pictures. With his own company 2 Many Executives, he made the films The Truth (2006), Ruins (2004) and the The Man in the Road (2009).
The glioblastoma multiforme diagnosis cut his film career short. From then on he concentrated on the young son, Miro, he shared with his former partner of 14 years, Margarita Aleksievska, and on his writing. Unable to read, with no short-term memory and failing vocabulary, he was immensely proud of finishing the book.
Speaking to people was much easier and he reached out to other sufferers. Hugh Adams, the head of stakeholder relations at Brain Tumour Research, said: “Whether talking about fatherhood, fashion or faith, Martino’s perspective was always captivating.”
Friends since 1998, he and I knew each other the best over the past five years when he had one foot in London with his new partner, the artist Kerry Brewer, and the other in Rome with his son.
Tall, dressed in stylish clothes he made himself, with a big beard, he was known by Romans as Il Grande. Always zen, he had only one complaint: that a strict diet meant he could no longer order risotto, a terrible deprivation for his Venetian DNA.
Martino is survived by Kerry, Miro, his sister, Bianca, and Marianella.
