Contemporary Italian Filmmaking

Contemporary Italian Filmmaking PDF Author: Manuela Gieri
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802005564
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Contemporary Italian Filmmaking is an innovative critique of Italian filmmaking in the aftermath of World War II - as it moves beyond traditional categories such as genre film and auteur cinema. Manuela Gieri demonstrates that Luigi Pirandello's revolutionary concept of humour was integral to the development of a counter-tradition in Italian filmmaking that she defines `humoristic'. She delineates a `Pirandellian genealogy' in Italian cinema, literature, and culture through her examination of the works of Federico Fellini, Ettore Scola, and many directors of the `new generation, ' such as Nanni Moretti, Gabriele Salvatores, Maurizio Nichetti, and Giuseppe Tornatore. A celebrated figure of the theatrical world, Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) is little known beyond Italy for his critical and theoretical writings on cinema and for his screenplays. Gieri brings to her reading of Pirandello's work the critical parameters offered by psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and postmodernism to develop a syncretic and transcultural vision of the history of Italian cinema. She identifies two fundamental trends of development in this tradition: the `melodramatic imagination' and the `humoristic, ' or comic, imagination. With her focus on the humoristic imagination, Gieri describes a `Pirandellian mode' derived from his revolutionary utterances on the cinema and narrative, and specifically, from his essay on humour, L'umorismo (On Humour, 1908). She traces a history of the Pirandellian mode in cinema and investigates its characteristics, demonstrating the original nature of Italian filmmaking that is particularly indebted to Pirandello's interpretation of humour.

Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema

Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema PDF Author: C. O'Rawe
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781137381460
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema is the first book to explore contemporary male stars and cinematic constructions of masculinity in Italy. Uniting star analysis with a detailed consideration of the masculinities that are dominating current Italian cinema, the study addresses the supposed crisis of masculinity.

Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema

Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema PDF Author: Laura E. Ruberto
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814333242
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
This volume addresses the influence of Italian neorealist films on world cinema well beyond the post-World War II period associated with the movement. Despite its lack of organization and relatively short life span, the Italian neorealist movement deeply influenced directors and film traditions around the world. This collection examines the impact of Italian neorealism beyond the period of 1945-52, the years conventionally connected to the movement, and beyond the postwar Italian film industry where the movement originated. Providing a refreshing aesthetic and ideological contrast to mainstream Hollywood films, neorealist filmmakers demonstrated not only how an engaging narrative technique could be brought to bear upon social issues but also how cinema could shape and redefine national identity. The fourteen essays in Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema consider films from Italy, India, Brazil, Africa, the Czech Republic, postwar Germany, Hong Kong, the United States, France, Belgium, Colombia, and Great Britain. Each essay explores neorealism's complex relationship to a different national film tradition, style, or historical period, illustrating the profound impact of neorealism and the ways it continues to complicate the relationship between ideas of nation, national cinema, and national identity. Many of the essays identify similar themes or motifs adapted from neorealism, and several essays address a politicized national film tradition that developed in opposition to a monolithic Western aesthetic. In all, Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema provides a novel critical understanding of the wide-ranging international impact of a short period in Italian cultural history. Film scholars and students of film history will appreciate this insightful text.

Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema

Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema PDF Author: Loredana Di Martino
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443862282
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
This volume explores the Italian contribution to the current global phenomenon of a “return to reality” by examining the country’s rich cultural production in literature and cinema. The focus is particularly on works from the period spanning the Nineties to the present day which offer alternatives to notions of reality as manufactured by the collusion between the neo-liberal state and the media. The book also discusses Italy’s relationship with its own cultural past by investigating how Italian authors deal with the return of the specter of Neorealism as it haunts the modern artistic imagination in this new epoch of crisis. Furthermore, the volume engages in dialogue with previous works of criticism on contemporary Italian realism, while going beyond them in devoting equal attention to cinema and literature. The resulting interactions will aid the reader in understanding how the critical arts respond to the triumph of hyperrealism in the current era of the virtual spectacle as they seek new ways to promote cognitive transformations and foster ethical interventions.

The Italian Cinema Book

The Italian Cinema Book PDF Author: Peter Bondanella
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1839020245
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 707

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Book Description
THE ITALIAN CINEMA BOOK is an essential guide to the most important historical, aesthetic and cultural aspects of Italian cinema, from 1895 to the present day. With contributions from 39 leading international scholars, the book is structured around six chronologically organised sections: THE SILENT ERA (1895–22) THE BIRTH OF THE TALKIES AND THE FASCIST ERA (1922–45) POSTWAR CINEMATIC CULTURE (1945–59) THE GOLDEN AGE OF ITALIAN CINEMA (1960–80) AN AGE OF CRISIS, TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION (1981 TO THE PRESENT) NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL APPROACHES TO ITALIAN CINEMA Acutely aware of the contemporary 'rethinking' of Italian cinema history, Peter Bondanella has brought together a diverse range of essays which represent the cutting edge of Italian film theory and criticism. This provocative collection will provide the film student, scholar or enthusiast with a comprehensive understanding of the major developments in what might be called twentieth-century Italy's greatest and most original art form.

After Fellini

After Fellini PDF Author: Millicent Joy Marcus
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801868474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
In this work, Marcus interprets a body of work that managed to transcend the decline of Italian cinema's prominence within the industry during the last two decades of the 20th-century.

Italian Political Cinema

Italian Political Cinema PDF Author: Giancarlo Lombardi
Publisher: Italian Modernities
ISBN: 9783034322171
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Despite recent societal anti-political sentiments, Italian cinema has continued to address politics, including reflections on public life, memory, and national identity. This is done via (1) thematic approaches discussing contemporary political film, (2) analyses of prominent directors currently engaged in filone, and (3) case studies of selected films.

Terrorism, Italian Style

Terrorism, Italian Style PDF Author: Ruth S. Glynn
Publisher: Igrs, University of London
ISBN: 9780854572281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The legacy of Italy's experience of political violence and terrorism in the anni di piombo ('years of lead', c. 1969-83) continues to exercise the Italian imagination to an extraordinary degree. Cinema has played a particularly prominent role in articulating the ongoing impact of the anni di piombo and in defining the ways in which Italians remember and work through the atrocities and traumas of those years. Terrorism, Italian Style brings together some of the most important scholars contributing to the study of cinematic representations of the anni di piombo. Drawing on a comparative approach and a broad range of critical perspectives (including genre theory, family and gender issues, trauma theory and ethics), the book addresses an extensive range of films produced between the 1970s and the present and articulates their significance and relevance to contemporary Italian society and culture. Ruth Glynn is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol.Giancarlo Lombardi is Professor of Italian Literature at the City University of New York. Alan O'Leary is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Leeds.

Experimental and Independent Italian Cinema

Experimental and Independent Italian Cinema PDF Author: Cristiano Anthony Cristiano
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474474055
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Discussing a variety of independent and experimental Italian films, this book gives voice to a critcically neglected form of Italian cinema. By examining the work of directors such as Marinella Pirelli, Mirko Locatelli and Cesrae Zavattini, the book defines, inspects and studies the cinematic panorama of Italy through a new lens. It thereby explores the character of independent films and their related practices within the Italian historical, cultural and cinematic landscape.

Reframing Italy

Reframing Italy PDF Author: Bernadette Luciano
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1612492959
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In recent years, Italian cinema has experienced a quiet revolution: the proliferation of films by women. But their thought-provoking work has not yet received the attention it deserves. Reframing Italy fills this gap. The book introduces readers to films and documentaries by recognized women directors such as Cristina Comencini, Wilma Labate, Alina Marazzi, Antonietta De Lillo, Marina Spada, and Francesca Comencini, as well as to filmmakers whose work has so far been undeservedly ignored. Through a thematically based analysis supported by case studies, Luciano and Scarparo argue that Italian women filmmakers, while not overtly feminist, are producing work that increasingly foregrounds female subjectivity from a variety of social, political, and cultural positions. This book, with its accompanying video interviews, explores the filmmakers’ challenging relationship with a highly patriarchal cinema industry. The incisive readings of individual films demonstrate how women’s rich cinematic production reframes the aesthetic of their cinematic fathers, re-positions relationships between mothers and daughters, functions as a space for remembering women’s (hi)stories, and highlights pressing social issues such as immigration and workplace discrimination. This original and timely study makes an invaluable contribution to film studies and to the study of gender and culture in the early twenty-first century.