"COMUNICAZIONI SOCIALI, JOURNAL OF MEDIA, PERFORMING ARTS AND CULTURAL STUDIES", 3, september-december 2016, ITALIAN QUALITY CINEMA: Institutions, Taste, Cultural Legitimation. Edited by Claudio Bisoni, Daniele Hipkins, Paolo Noto. (original) (raw)
Related papers
CS 3/2016 - Italian Quality Cinema. Institutions, Taste, Cultural Legitimation
The goal of this new issue of CS is to define what constructs the idea of quality in contemporary Italian cinema, from 2000 up to the present. Though related debates regarding television in Italy have adopted a meaning of the term rooted in production values, in the context of cinema this question remains opaque. In legislation, in press releases, reviews, academic studies and in common discourse the idea of quality cinema is certainly present, though it overlaps with arthouse and auteur cinema, it intersects with the notion of political commitment, and it is officially defined by the category of the ‘national and cultural interest’ films promoted and supported by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism (MiBACT). Within public discourses, quality cinema, in order to function as such, demands processes of cultural legitimation. These processes rely upon the work of certain institutions, critical discourses and audience behavioural trends, all of which contribute – despite (or as well as) box office takings – to the formation of taste, the construction of shared social categories and to the successful “function” of this kind of product. Such processes are investigated in this volume, which uses a wide range of methods and considers Italian cinema in connection with other European national cinemas, as a product to be financed and marketed, as an element of the contemporary mediascape, and as a cultural asset whose value solicits the attention and intervention of different institutions.
Editorial, ITALIANIST Film Issue, 32: 2 (2012), pp. 151-53
The editorial thanks Prof Millicent Marcus of Yale for her work on the Film Issue since its founding in 2009, and goes on to discuss the condition of Italian cinema and media studies, making a polemical call for 'permanent revolution'.
For decades, Italy has been a major producer and exporter of ‘quality cinema’. This paper examines how active that role is today. It focuses on what are officially designated ‘Cultural Interest films’, which the Italian culture ministry (MiBACT) recognises for their “significant cultural, artistic or spectacular quality”. Drawing on the quantitative analysis of industry data, it is argued that Cultural Interest films – which account for about a quarter of Italian film output – are more likely than other Italian productions to display attributes associated with quality cinema, including large budgets, high production values, international co-production partners, highly regarded creative personnel, showy mise en scène, genre ambiguity, major awards, festival appearances and positive reviews. They also sell more cinema tickets in both Italy and the rest of Europe, suggesting these quality indicators have a positive impact on the box office performance and international circulation of Italian films. At the same time, the performance of Cultural Interest films outside of their domestic market is still very low compared with films produced in other major European countries. Thus, while Italy can still claim to be a major producer of quality cinema, it is no longer a significant exporter of such films. It is argued that one reason why Cultural Interest films do not circulate abroad as well as films from other major European films in terms is because international distributors tend to preferioritise those films which display conventional quality indicators (e.g. well-known director, major awards, festival appearances) at the expense of films with elements (e.g. a strongclear story with both humour and social relevance) which actually appeal to international audiences. These findings have implications for both the Italian and the wider European film industry.
INTRODUCTION The Politics of Italian Cinema: Genres, Modes and Scholarship. A Roundtable
Italianist (Film Issue), 2013
The question of politics in Italian cinema continues to exercise critics and scholars to a remarkable degree. This is demonstrated by several contemporary research initiatives, and by the continued deployment of the concept of political or social commitment (impegno) as a live and value term in the writing of Italian cinema history. Contributors to this roundtable were invited to interrogate critical assumptions about political value in Italian cinema, and to consider the various ways in which a film or genre can deal with politics or be deemed ‘political’. The roundtable is grouped roughly into three sections: the first deals with cinema and politics from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives; the second deals with different genres and modes; the third deals with individual filmmakers and their films. In this introduction I do not try to summarize the articles, which should be read on their own terms, but limit myself to gesturing at certain themes that seemed to me to emerge as important across the sections.
Italian National Cinema: The Cinepanettone
The Italian Cinema Book, edited by Peter Bondanella, pp. 261-7, 2014
I have published a lot already on the 'cinepanettoni' (‘film-Christmas-cakes’), a series of farcical Italian comedies, one or two of which were released annually in time for the Christmas holidays until 2011. What I add in this article is a consideration of comedy as a politics of ‘defence’ and mode of belonging, something that leads me to make a claim that the cinepanettone should be considered Italy’s quintessential ‘national’ cinema. To argue as much is to challenge the conventional idea that Italian national cinema is comprised of realist and auteurist works that have been appreciated outside Italy itself. It is also to refuse the idea that Italian national cinema is best conceived of as a kind of diplomatic project intended to represent the ‘best’ of the country’s cinematic culture at an international level. It may seem a paradoxical gesture given the contested quality and status of the cinepanettoni, but I argue that it is an essential to place the films not at the margins but at the centre of discourse about Italian cinema.
INTERNATIONAL RECEPTION OF ITALIAN CINEMA PDF
2019
In this paper I mean to examine the case of the Italian director Mario Bava and his crucial influence not only in the Italian context, but also and most of all in the international one. In the case of Bava, all of his films influenced so much great cinema classics and even whole genres that he is still one of the most quoted directors in a wide range of cinema genres in what we define as postmodern pastiche. For a series of motivations, it is not wrong to say that he is the forerunner of the pop culture in cinema and he could also be described as 'terrorista dei generi'.
History, 2017
A History of Italian Cinema, 2nd edition is the much anticipated update from the author of the bestselling Italian Cinema – which has been published in four landmark editions and will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2018. Building upon decades of research, Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni reorganize the current History in order to keep the book fresh and responsive not only to the actual films being created in Italy in the twenty-first century but also to the rapidly changing priorities of Italian film studies and film scholars. The new edition brings the definitive history of the subject, from the birth of cinema to the present day, up to date with a revised filmography as well as more focused attention on the melodrama, the crime film, and the historical drama. The book is expanded to include a new generation of directors as well as to highlight themes such as gender issues, immigration, and media politics. Accessible, comprehensive, and heavily illustrated throughout, this is an essential purchase for any fan of Italian film.
Italian Cinema in the Twenty- First Century: Representing the Precarious Subject
Italian Industrial Literature and Film, Edited by C. Baghetti, J. Carter and L. Marmo, Peter Lang, Oxford-New York, 2021
This book explores the representation of industrial labor in Italian literature and film from the 1950s through the 1970s. The first article of the postwar Italian Constitution states that the Republic is founded on labor. Forces across the political spectrum, from Catholic to communist, invested labor with the power to build a new national community after Fascism and war. The 1950s-1970s saw dramatic transformations, in economic, social and cultural terms, as labor moved from agriculture to industry and a whole generation of Italian writers and filmmakers used literature and cinema to interpretand influence-these changes and to capture the new experiences of industrial labor. The essays in this book offer a comprehensive panorama of this generation's work, examining key questions and texts, set against the context of history and theory, gender and class, geography and the environment, as well as their precursors and present-day successors. Carlo Baghetti is a postdoctoral fellow at the Casa Velázquez in Madrid (École des Hautes Études Hispaniques et Ibériques). He holds a PhD in Italian Studies from Aix-Marseille Université and l'Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma. He is the editor of Il lavoro raccontato. Studi su letteratura e cinema italiani dal postmodernismo all'ipermodernismo (2020) and a special issue of Costellazioni (2020) dedicated to representations of work in Europe. Jim Carter is Lecturer of Italian at Boston University. His articles on Italian industrial culture, especially at the Olivetti company, have appeared in journals like Modern Italy and Italian Culture. In 2018-2019, he won a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. Lorenzo Marmo is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Universitas Mercatorum and also teaches at the Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale." In 2017, he was Lauro de Bosis Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of Roma e il cinema del dopoguerra. Neorealismo melodramma noir (2018).