Spaghetti Western Directors, Screenwriters, Cinematographers

Spaghetti Western Director ~ Giovanni Bufalini

Giovanni Bufalini is an Italian producer, director, assistant director, writer and film actor. He works for Insolita Film. He attended VIII° Corso RAI SCRIPT in Rome and graduated in 2004.

Giovanni has had an interest in film since the age of ten. He moved from his hometown to Milan in the early 1990s where he worked as a professional illustrator. He also took up singing and began his career as an actor appearing in local theater plays.

He then began experimenting making video films and released his first film “Marasma Milano” in 2001. He graduated from Civic School of Cinema, Television and New Media in Milan and then moved to Rome where he attended the above mentioned VIII° Corso RAI SCRIPT course.

His love of westerns comes from his father where they attended the cinema for Bud & Terence. The Dollar Trilogy was seen on TV every time Leone's films were played. Add to it that Orvieto, Tuscia in particular, is the Italian Louisiana as I always say. In my youth it was therefore easy to superimpose some vintage American atmospheres with what we lived on the sunny country roads. I grew up riding horses, because we had them available in the family. Then, in adulthood, I also began to get passionate about western shooting with real vintage weapons.

Since 2001 Bufalini has directed forty-four films, written for forty-five and acted in fourteen.

Giovanni’s directed two Spaghetti westerns: “Last Light Mile” in 2014 and “Never Dies” in 2020. He also directed the Birr Alfina beer western commercial ‘Birralfina Triello’ in 2024 a takeoff on “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” showdown.

BUFALINI, Giovanni [12/11/1973, Orvieto, Italy -     ] – producer; director, assistant director, writer, film actor, married to ? (2017-    ).

Last Light Mile - 2014

Never Dies – 2020

Spaghetti Western Screenwriters ~ J. Joachim Bartsch

Julius Joachim Bartsch was born on September 13, 1903, in Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France. Bartsch is a German screenwriter, director, and editor known for his contributions to mid-20th-century German genre cinema, particularly through screenplays for crime thrillers, adventure films, and Western adaptations in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bartsch began his career in the late 1930s and 1940s by directing short films before shifting his focus primarily to screenwriting for feature productions in post-war West Germany. He became a key figure in popular series based on English author Edgar Wallace, contributing scripts to films such as “Face of the Frog” (1959), “The Terrible People” (1960), and “The Sinister Monk” (1965), which helped establish the successful Rialto Film adaptations of Wallace's mystery novels. Bartsch also played a significant role in the Karl May Western cycle, co-writing screenplays for major entries including “The Desperado Trail” (1965) and “The Last Tomahawk” (1965), which featured international stars and contributed to the genre's popularity in Europe during that era.

His work extended to other genres, including war dramas like “U47 – Kapitänleutnant Prien” (1958) and various crime and adventure pictures, reflecting the diverse output of German commercial cinema in the Wirtschaftswunder period. Bartsch died on November 23, 1965, in Munich, leaving behind a legacy of prolific contributions to escapist entertainment films that achieved widespread audience appeal.

J. Joachim Bartsch as mentioned above co-wrote the screenplays for two German Karl May Winnetou films: “Der letzte Mohikaner” (The Last Tomahawk) in 1964 with Roberto Bianchi Montero, JoséAntonio de la Loma and Giovanni Simonelli and “Winnetou III” (The Desperado Trail) in 1965 with Harald G. Peterson.

BARTSCH, J. Joachim (aka H.J. Bartsch) (Julius Joachim Bartsch) [9/13/1903, Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France – 11/23/1965, Munich, Bavaria, Germany] – director, writer, film editor.

The Last Tomahawk – 1964 (co)

The Desperado Trail – 1965 (co)

Spaghetti Western Cinematographer ~ Federico Caddeo

Federico Caddeo was born in Rome on March 27^th and is a director who works in the field of documentary and social cinema. He is interested — among other things — in themes related to the cinematic past, genre, countercultures, and films considered "cult".

Among his most important works we remember here “Around the World in 16 Years” (2016), a docufilm on Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, screened at the Lucca Film Festival.

In 2019 he shot the documentary “All the Colors of Giallo”, telling the story of the Italian thriller. “In the Name of Hate” (2025), written, produced and directed by him, is a tribute to the film “Shaved Heads” (1993, directed by Claudio Fragasso, scripted by Rossella Drudi), and is dedicated to Rossella Drudi herself. "Painted Screams" (2025) is a tribute to the film “The House with Laughing Windows” (1976) by Pupi Avati, which is considered a cult of Italian horror cinema. Among the testimonies in the documentary there is an unpublished interview with Lino Capolicchio, the lead actor of the original film, who worked with Avati.

Caddeo was a photographer on two short western related documentaries for Wild East “Vengeance Rides a Horse” in 2009 and “His Name Is Sabata” in 2013 with Francesco Biancu Biancone.

CADDEO, Federico [3/27/19??, Rome, Lazio, Italy –     ] – producer, director, writer, cinematographer, film editor, actor, founded ‘Freak-O-Rama’ [2006].

Vengeance Rides a Horse - 2009

His Name Is Sabata – 2013 (co)