CALL FOR PAPERS

1949 was the year in which Law no. 958/49 known as the “Andreotti Law” was passed. The aim of the new law was to incentivise Italian productions and rebalance the relationship between the circulation of American and Italian films in Italy. 1976 was the year in which the Constitutional Court ruled on the “liberalisation of the airwaves” and changed the history of Italian television forever. These two dates mark two momentous turning points for audio-visual production in Italy (Comand, Venturini 2021) and constitute the terms a quo and ad quem of the XXVIII International Film Studies Conference “Italian film production practices 1949-1976. The exception and the rule”, and of the Prin Project “Modes, memories and cultures of film production in Italy (1949-1976)” of which the Conference is part.

Between these two dates, numerous historical and cultural processes transformed the Italian film system and determined the establishment of a “rule” - or of several rules - according to which a series of dominant production models that followed one another during this thirty-year period took shape. Fundamental in this sense is Law no. 1213 of 1965 (the “Corona Law”), which was the first major intervention in the field of film legislation after the Andreotti Law of 1949 and subsequent amendments made in 1956 and 1959, which continued to be the reference law for forty years, until the Urbani Decree was passed in 2004.

The legislative framework (Cucco, Manzoli 2017) is crucial if we are to try to define the Italian film industry after the Second World War, which was founded on completely different mechanisms and procedures to the Hollywood standard of the Majors. State support has always been fundamental in the Italian film industry, allowing certain entrepreneurs to build a loosely structured industry that was not based on a “system” logic which they were able to benefit from (Corsi, 2001). This process ended up determining standards (economic, format, running time, censorship) that gradually became decisive for the circulation of films and their access to movie theaters.

Alongside and around productions designed for theatrical release, alternative production models also flourished as “exceptions” to a rule aimed at guaranteeing as much commercial exploitation of the films as possible. This meant that there was an almost invisible (or barely visible) film industry, not designed for theatrical release or cut off from the main distribution channels because - by design or by accident - it did not comply with the standards imposed by the rule. We could call it an ante-litteram “fuori norma” cinema (Aprà, 2013).

Based on these assumptions, the aim of this Conference is to bring together scholars working on the development of primary and secondary sources in the light of new research perspectives on the production models of Italian films from 1949 to 1976, via both methodological reflections and the proposal of individual case studies. With this in mind, the intention is to understand the relationship between the functioning of the dominant Italian production system and the broader, heterogeneous cultures of production and distribution (Caldwell 2008; Szczepanik, Vonderau, 2013; Barra, Bonini, Splendore 2016) in order to identify the elements that qualify an Italian film as inside or outside the enclosure of a “norm” or a “standard”. More specifically, we ask ourselves which factors (of a legislative, geographical, cultural or strictly technical-productive nature) make it possible to frame the existence of an exception to the aforementioned rule.

Specifically experimental cinema must certainly be taken into account, but not only that. The rule excludes all productions related to corporate, educational, scientific and religious cinema, as well as works that are too short or too long to find a place in the cinema programme, such as films in reduced format - shot on 16 mm, 8 mm, super 8 film - or in electronic format, but also films subject to state or market censorship. Other exceptions to the rule are, if not co-productions as such, at least certain types of co-production, taking market data into account. Co-productions represent a particularly interesting field of attention, if we consider that - based on ANICA data - of the 5866 Italian films released onto the market between 1949 and 1976, as many as 2397 were co-productions, without distinguishing between majority and minority productions. These figures rise even further if we also include in this group what we might call Italian-style runaway productions, filmed entirely or partly in third countries, which were often exotic and almost never officially involved in production. Lastly, we have to consider the animation cinema that was rarely intended for theatrical distribution in Italy, ending up somewhere between pure experimentalism and distribution through “alternative” channels (usually television) (Bellano 2014; Bendazzi, De Berti 2003; Di Marino 2001)

Bibliographical References:

Aprà A. (a cura di) (2013), Fuori norma. La via sperimentale del cinema italiano. Venezia: Marsilio.
Barra L., Bonini T., Splendore S. (2016), Backstage. Studi sulla produzione dei media in Italia. Milano: Unicopli.
Bellano, M. (a cura di) (2014), L’Italia animata: il periodo d’oro, in “Cabiria”, n. 178.
Bendazzi G., De Berti R. (a cura di) (2003), La fabbrica dell’animazione. Bruno Bozzetto nell’industria culturale italiana, Milano: Il Castoro.
Caldwell J. T. (2008), Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Durham - London: Duke University Press.
Comand M., Venturini S. (a cura di) (2021), Gli archivi della produzione cinematografica (1949-1976). Fonti, strumenti, casi di studio, in “L’avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes”, numero speciale 2021.
Corsi B. (2001), Con qualche dollaro in meno. Storia economica del cinema italiano. Roma: Editori riuniti.
Cucco M., Manzoli G. (2017), Il cinema di Stato. Finanziamento pubblico ed economia simbolica. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Cucco M., Di Chiara F. (a cura di) (2019), I Media Industry Studies in Italia. Nuove prospettive sul passato e sul presente dell’industria cine-televisiva italiana, numero speciale di “Schermi. Storie e culture del cinema e dei media in Italia”, n. 5.
De Franceschi L. (2021), Il Nero di Giovanni Vento: Un film e un regista verso l’Italia plurale. Dublin: Artdigiland.
Di Marino B. (2001), Vite in scatola. L’animazione italiana tra dopoboom e Carosello, in G. Canova (a cura di), Storia del cinema italiano – XI volume (1965-1969), Venezia/Roma: Marsilio/Scuola Nazionale Cinema.
Garofalo D., Minuz A., Morreale E. (a cura di) (2020), La distribuzione cinematografica in Italia: Storie, ricerche, metodologie. “Imago. Studi di cinema e media”, n. 21.
Szczepanik P., Vondeau P. (a cura di) (2013), Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Culture. New York: Palgrave McMillan.
Zagarrio V. (a cura di) (1988), Dietro lo schermo. Ragionamenti sui modi di produzione cinematografici in Italia (Cinecittà 3). Venezia: Marsilio.