Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2013

This article identifies Marco Ferreri's original contribution to cinema as a gesture aimed at exposing the 'end of the world'. This expression should be understood - aside from millenarian connotations - as a reopening of sense in excess of acquired significations. Ferreri supports this gesture through images that deliberately defy conceptual validation, so that his films often move from the meticulous description of ordinary situations to the collapse of meaningful references. In order to contextualize the framework described above, the argument traces Ferreri's trajectory back to neo-realism, highlighting elements of continuity and moments of rupture. In particular, the article highlights how Ferreri delivers the humanism expressed by neo-realism to a world without thought.

Neo-fascism played a crucial role in the Italian political panorama of the second half of the twentieth century. However, despite its importance, this political movement has been significantly underrepresented in contemporary Italian cinema. Italian cinema has been traditionally characterized by a strong political commitment and left-wing film-makers have often attempted to examine issues emerging from within groups close to their own political position. While Italian cinema is characterized by a proliferation of films that focus on left wing or communist heroes, neo-fascists have been systematically excluded from screen representation or confined to the roles of one-dimensional villains: either dangerous, anti-social thugs like in Teste rasate/Skinheads (Fragasso, 1993); leaders of coup d'état associated with the military like in La polizia ringrazia/Execution Squad (Vanzina, 1972) and Vogliamo i Colonnelli/We Want the Colonels (Monicelli, 1973) or vicious psycho-killers like in San Babila ore 20: Delitto inutile/San Babila 8pm (Lizzani, 1976). However, today, twenty years after 1989 and the collapse of ideologies, Italian film-makers have started a process of historical revision that goes beyond the simplistic opposition good versus evil. This tendency is particularly apparent in recent productions such as Romanzo Criminale/Crime Novel (Placido, 2005) and particularly Mio fratello è figlio unico/My Brother Is an Only Child (Luchetti, 2007) which, while avoiding to justify or celebrate neo-fascist ideology, attempt to explore the sociocultural motivations that lie behind the political choice of Italian neo-fascists.

This article explores the relationship between censorship and comic cinema in Italy in the late 1940s and 1950s through Mario Monicelli's films starring the legendary Neapolitan actor Antonio De Curtis (Totò). Although key figures in the Christian Democrat administration and the Catholic Church expressly discouraged the production of neo-realist films, restrictions on film content also hindered the development of Italian comedy by limiting the extent to which film-makers could reference pressing social issues or satirize Italian institutions. This study closely considers the case of Totò e Carolina/Totò and Carolina (Monicelli, 1955), one of the most heavily censored films in the history of Italian cinema, and the effects of modifications to the film on the social criticism in the version approved for public screening. Despite the fact that the censors mangled Totò e Carolina, they did not entirely eliminate its attack on hypocrisy and prejudice or prevent the film from setting the stage for the bitter comedies of the commedia all'italiana/Italian style comedy associated with the economic boom that began towards the end of the decade.

This article begins by looking at the context of production of newsreels and documentaries under fascism, and offers a discussion of the most important documentaries of the fascist period devoted to the città di fondazione (New Towns) in Sardinia: Carbonia, Mussolinia and Fertilia. Attention is given to the ways in which the fascist celebration of progress constructs Sardinia as a virginal land through a Promethean narrative that grants positional superiority to the projects of the regime. The argument made in the article is that these documentary films present Sardinia as a nude territory on which the demiurge-like project of fascist modernization inscribes its own history. The films should be interpreted as examples of colonial narratives of penetration into new-found-lands in order to revivify their population and wasted soils.

The main objective of this article is to describe the medium of university radio, specifically web radio, in an Italian context through analysis of international and Italian literature on the topic. Additionally, the results of a survey submitted to Italian university radio station managers will be analysed in detail. The outcomes of the survey are used to underline specific features of Italian projects, especially the features involving the main creators, costs and reasons for creation of the stations, as well as their objectives, contents and critical aspects. The survey also helps to alleviate a lack of specific studies on this topic in the Italian scenario. Experiences that come under the term university media experiment with language and form, express a desire to communicate values, patterns and reflections and represent a new generation, a community, of young consumers and journalists. The sense of community is a strategic concept and university radio can be included in the category of community media. However, there are some particular aspects that make university radio a unique form of media. One of these aspects is education, a facet of university radio that is strongly linked to digital environments such as the Internet.

PERVERSE TITILLATION: THE EXPLOITATION CINEMA OF ITALY, SPAIN AND FRANCE, 1960-1980, DANNY SHIPKA (2011) Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 346 pp., ISBN: 978-07864-4888-3, p/bk, $49.95

POPULAR ITALIAN CINEMA. CULTURE AND POLITICS IN A POSTWAR SOCIETY, FLAVIA BRIZIO-SKOV (ED.) (2011) 1st ed., London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 283 pp., ISBN: 978 1 84515 572 4, h/bk, $95.00

THE NEW NEAPOLITAN CINEMA, ALEX MARLOW MANN (2011) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 242 pp., ISBN: 978074864066 9, h/bk, £65.00

POSTCOLONIAL CINEMA STUDIES, SANDRA PONZANESI AND MARGUERITE WALLER (ED.) (2012) New York: Routledge, 272 pp., ISBN: 9780415782296, p/bk, $39.95

MURDER MADE IN ITALY: HOMICIDE, MEDIA, AND CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN CULTURE, ELLEN NERENBERG (2012) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 384 pp., ISBN: 978-0253223098, p/bk, £29.95

BRUTAL VISION. THE NEOREALIST BODY IN POSTWAR ITALIAN CINEMA, KARL SCHOONOVER (2012) Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press, 283 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8166-7555-5, p/bk, $25

LA MASCHERA, IL POTERE, LA SOLITUDINE. IL CINEMA DI PAOLO SORRENTINO, FRANCO VIGNI (2012) Florence: Aska, 198 pp., ISBN: 9788875421779, p/bk, €20.00

ALTRA EUROPA/OTHER EUROP, DIRECTED BY ROSSELLA SCHILLACI (2011) Subsidized by Piemonte Doc Fund/Fondo Regionale per il Documentario and the Film Commission Regione Siciliana/Sicilia Film Commission. Produced by Azul (Italy), in collaboration with Laranja Azul (Portugal). Distributed by The Royal Anthropological Institute, 50 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 5BT.

FILMCRITICA: THE LONG JOURNEY BY THE ‘BAND OF OUTTSIDERS’

BIANCO E NNERO

RIVISTA DI SSTUDI IITALIANI

DUELLANTI – MONTTHLY MAGAZINE OF CINEMA AND VISUAL CULTTURE

BOBBIO WORKSHOP

PROVO.CULTAND GARGANO FILM FESTIVAL, 5TH ANNUAL GARGANO FILM FESTIVAL, 11-13 AUGUST 2012