Maria Adriana Prolo

Maria Adriana Prolo was a film collector and historian, and the founder of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, which she led as Director until 1985 (and served as its Honorary Director thereafter). She started collecting documents, film stills and posters and film equipment of early cinema in 1940, and a year later the idea of a cinema museum was born. In 1949, she met Henri Langlois, and these two kindred spirits became good friends and supported each other for years to come (their correspondence was published in 1992 under the title Le Dragon et l'alouette: correspondance 1948-1979).

In 1953, the Associazione Museo del Cinema was formally created and the museum was admitted as a provisional member of FIAF (it would be confirmed as a full Member the following year). The Museum, housed in the Palazzo Chiablese, finally opened to the public in 1958. Although Prolo was not part of the first core group of FIAF pioneers (she only sat briefly on the FIAF Executive Committee in the mid-1950s), she remained a highly-respected and discreetly influential figure of the FIAF community. Despite her close friendship with Langlois, she did not follow him when he left FIAF in 1960, and she hosted the 1975 FIAF Congress in Turin.