Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies - Italian Ecomedia: Archaeologies, Theories, Perspectives, Apr 2026

In the late 1930s, the Società Nazionale Industria Applicazioni Viscosa (National Company for the Industrial Application of Viscose) (SNIA Viscosa) was the leading Italian company manufacturing artificial fibres. Drawing on Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality, this article explores the relationship between media, bodies and environments by focusing on audio-visuals shot in two SNIA sites, Torviscosa and Rome, between 1939 and 2015. The analysis of an Istituto Luce’s newsreel reveals the gendered and racialized embodiments produced in fascist industrial environments. In partial continuity with pre-war industrial aesthetics, Michelangelo Antonioni's documentary Sette canne, un vestito (Seven Reeds, One Suit), makes visible chemical agencies but leaves off-screen their effects on factory workers. Recent music videos shot at the ex-SNIA in Rome call attention to socio-ecologically harmful projects while also visualizing reparative trans-corporealities. Taken together, these media artefacts provide aesthetic and political insights into socio-environmental problems and ways of addressing them.

This article brings theories of eco-cinema to bear on the filmic text and production history of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) to demonstrate that the film foregrounds the often-disregarded connection between cultural experiences and their environmental costs. On the one hand, popular visual culture mostly conceals this connection behind narratives grounded in conceptions of human subjects as detached from the environment-object at their disposal. On the other hand, I argue that Zabriskie Point simultaneously emphasizes the ethical significance of cultural experiences by envisioning an environmental ethics that questions subject–object dichotomies while also problematizing this significance by self-reflexively foregrounding the unsustainability of its own production, the film industry and, more broadly, consumer society. Zabriskie Point therefore historically responds to coeval environmental concerns, but it also delivers a compelling reflection that speaks to current shifts towards sustainability-driven economies and lifestyles.

The article proposes a comparative discussion from an ecocritical perspective of two Italian and two Japanese films produced between the end of the Second World War and the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962): La terra trema by Visconti (1948), Stromboli by Rossellini (1950), Hadaka no shima by Shindō (1960) and Suna no onna by Teshigahara (1964). The analysis focuses on the relationship between the filmic representation of a harsh natural environment and the hardships of the characters who interact with it. This representation is not limited to an oppositional function; it is rather a layered model of the agency of the environment towards humans, and vice versa. The idea of nature proposed in these films contributes to the further isolation of characters who are already on the fringe of society, offering a metaphor for the struggle to define our place in the surrounding environment and society.

This article analyses three of Matteo Garrone’s films, L’imbalsamatore (The Embalmer) (2002), Gomorra (Gomorrah) (2008) and Dogman (2018), exploring how the drab, non-functional, run-down environment in which the protagonists live influences the way they behave, determines their perception of ethical boundaries and choices, and turns even the mildest of them into monsters. All the protagonists of these three films are victims not just of their specific situations, but also of the perceived lawlessness of their environment. ‘Eco-monsters’ contribute to the oppressive, claustrophobic feel of these films, in which characters seem caged and forced to become obsessive and desensitized to the value of human life.

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a set of documentaries shot in Campania, particularly in the areas north of Naples and Caserta, narrated the destruction of a fertile land at the hands of the ‘ecomafie’. This article intends to reflect on the representation of the Land of Fires as a new model to explore how media studies can contribute to the critical evaluation of environmental problems. The focus of the analysis will be on identifying the types of narrative rhetoric constructed by filmic discourse. The selected films show that one of the main problems connected with the Land of Fires is the absence of accurate information, which in turn distorts the perception of the damage done to nature and humans. Finally, the subversive power of these film images provides these lands with a new visual perception.

This article aims to detect and analyse televisual discourses about nature and landscape, relying on a qualitative sample of programmes from Italian public service broadcasting collected in November 2022. The focus lies in how the Italian landscape is expressed through socio-narrative representations. In this context, the position in the schedule, the narrative structure, and the actors and themes are considered. The article also questions whether and how environmental issues are handled in the sample programmes, investigating the presence of such issues and the type of discourse in which they are embodied. Overall, the socio-narrative representation of landscape in the sample reveals the structure of a journey through the Italian territory; it also highlights three main thematic features: nature, environmental issues and tradition. Moreover, three modes of presenting nature are found: nature as a background, as a topic and as a problem.

Environmental sustainability has become a priority issue for the European audio-visual industry following years of experiments and negotiations between institutions and industry seeking to implement green public policy. Italy has emerged as a leader in this process. This article investigates the concept of ‘Italian ecocinema’ with attention to Italian legislative practices and the materialities of the film industry. Like other cultural industries, in Europe the audio-visual sector is highly regulated. It is financed by public institutions by virtue of the ‘Principle of Cultural Exception’, a model which allows public policy to impact the behaviour of industry. Drawing on interviews and case studies, we detail the process that led the Italian State to recognize and reward the application of green production protocols and explain what these commitments entail. We then describe the work being done to extend this model to the European level.