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1981
Volume 13, Issue 4
  • ISSN: 2047-7368
  • E-ISSN: 2047-7376

Abstract

Like François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and other directors with whom he collaborated as a cinematographer, Catalan–Cuban cineaste Néstor Almendros (1930–92) was an advocate of Italian neorealism in his youth. In the 1950s, he praised and in Havana and wrote a seminal article about neorealist cinematography for in New York. This early admiration for Italian cinema resulted in his decision to study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in 1956–57, where his connection to Italy’s film world was enhanced and transformed. This article reconstructs the formative experience of Almendros at the Centro as well as his posterior relationship with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini in Cuba. By doing so, it explores one way in which neorealism was first received – and later transplanted – to Latin America by native filmmakers at a moment when new film movements (Free Cinema, Nouvelle Vague, Direct Cinema) were rising in Europe and North America.

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2025-08-23
2026-04-17

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Un anticonformista di natura: Néstor Almendros at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (1956–57)
Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 13, 329 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1386/jicms_00324_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jicms_00324_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jicms_00324_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): Aldo Graziati; Cesare Zavattini; Cuban cinema; Direct Cinema; Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos; naturalism; neorealism; new Latin American cinema

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