[2] He knew Russian and German and translated the works of Heinrich von Kleist, Mikhail Bulgakov and Frank Wedekind into Italian.
He made additional translations into Italian of the writings of theorists of cinema, including Vsevolod Pudovkin, Sergej Mikhailovich Eisenstein, Rudolf Arnheim and Béla Balázs.
[4] In 1945 Barbaro was appointed Special Commissioner by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a position he held until 1947, when it was removed for political reasons.
Barbaro began his filmmaking debut as writer, in 1933 with a documentary, Cantieri dell'Adriatico followed by his only full-length film, L'ultima nemica.
Barbaro was a film critic for L'Unità, the weekly Vie Nuove e a Filmcritica, and the fortnightly L'Eco del cinema magazines.