"Andrea Costantino: The Candor of a Visionary Honored in Rome Among Apulian Excellence" di Carlo Coppola
From Rome comes recognition that celebrates not merely a single work, but a path built with rigor, vision, and intellectual freedom. The music video Sto benone by Gaia Gentile, produced by BoBo Studios and directed by Andrea Costantino, has been selected for incontrArti by the Network of Artists for Innovation in Entertainment, scheduled for December 15th at the Auditorium of Ara Pacis. This national distinction confirms the stature of an artist who moves naturally between cinema, theater, music, and cultural enterprise, never bending to trends, political alignments, or the politics of art itself.
Andrea Costantino carries a distinguished name. He is the son of the late Prof. Michele Costantino, a luminary of private law, a master and "guiding star" of the Faculty of Law at the University of Bari, and a reference point for generations of legal scholars. This ethical and cultural inheritance shaped in Andrea a profound sense of public responsibility and personal rigor. From that school emerged a professional who never improvises, never settles, never seeks shortcuts: he builds with purpose, yet remains capable of deconstructing and reconstructing himself, always guided by ethics as an indispensable categorical imperative.
Over more than twenty years of activity, he has created a unique cultural ecosystem in Southern Italy. AncheCinema S.r.l., recognized since 2021 by the Ministry of Culture as a multidisciplinary programming organization, manages four multifunctional theaters in Apulia: AncheCinema Theater in Bari, Luciani Municipal Theater in Acquaviva delle Fonti, Peace Amphitheater of Bari, and the future Jolly Theater in Bari. The organization generates qualified employment—26 staff members for over 2,100 annual working days—reclaims abandoned spaces like the former Cinema Royal and former Cinema Jolly, and returns them to the community. The AncheCinema Theater, Italy's first multifunctional venue in terms of structure and purpose, integrates theater, cinema, concert hall, event space, and training center. It demonstrates his ability to envision what does not yet exist and make it possible, blending experiences of cultural training and cultural enterprise with culture in doing business. The platform for 36 wheelchairs, presented in 2016 at the Chamber of Deputies as a unique case in Europe for accessibility, speaks to the civic dimension of his work.
Yet his independence—artistic and cultural—often makes him an uncomfortable figure in local circuits. While recognition arrives from Rome, Venice, and major festivals, Andrea Costantino continues to operate with a determination that combines artistic vision with zen-like discipline.
Perhaps it is time for Apulia to recognize what the nation has already seen: an authentic innovator who transforms culture into future, starting from dreams, from small things, and from the candor of a visionary whom all those making art in the South should know.
