Italian Cinematographer and director Mario Masini who was the cinematographer for Haile Gerima’s much-celebrated Teza died at the age of 84. His daughter Paolo Masini announced his death in a statement. The experimental cinematographer who died in Germany where he lived for several decades has collaborated with Haile Gerima in producing Teza, a story of an Ethiopian idealist young man, Anberber, who returns home to Ethiopia after studying medicine in Germany. The film won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2008 and the top prize at the 40th pan-African FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso in 2009. He loved to talk about the experience he had with Haile Gerima, his daughter said.

Mario Masini was an active figure of Roman experimental cinema; alongside Paolo Brunatto, Alberto Grifi and Alfredo Leonardi, his biography reads. Masini collaborated with Italian playwright and filmmaker Carmelo Bene on the cinematography of Nostra Signora dei Turchi (Our Lady of the Turks) (1968).