Research Catalog

Title

Italian silent cinema : a reader / edited by Giorgio Bertellini.

Publication

• New Barnet, Herts, U.K. : John Libbey Publishing Ltd, [2013]
• ©2013

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Bertellini, Giorgio, 1967-

Description

vi, 401 pages : illustrations (some color); 25 cm

Summary

Despite the wealth of studies of silent cinema in the English language, knowledge of the medium's first decades has remained attached to a canon in which Italian silent cinema appears deceptively familiar but largely absent. With 30 essays written by leading scholars in the field, 'Italian Silent Cinema' illuminates this understudied area of film history. Featuring over 100 illustrations, the reader brings into focus individual film companies, stars and genres and seeks to place the Italian production of dramas, comedies, serials, newsreels, and avant-garde works in dialogue with international film culture.

Subject

• Motion pictures > Italy > History
• Silent films > Italy > History and criticism
• Motion picture industry > Italy > History
• Stummfilm
• Italien

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Note

• Most essays translated from Italian.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-369) and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• Introduction : traveling lightness -- Part I. Methods and objects. Silent film historiography and Italian (film) historiography / Gian Piero Brunetta -- A brief cultural history of Italian film archives (1980-2005) / Paolo Cherchi Usai -- Part II. Italian silent cinema's visual cultures. Italy and pre-cinematic visual culture / Carlo Alberto Zotti Minici -- Photography and cinema, and vice versa / Giorgio Bertellini -- Visualizing the past : the Italian city in early cinema / Marco Bertozzi -- Part III. Production companies and contexts. The giant Ambrosio, or Italy's most prolific silent film company / Claudia Gianetto -- The "Pastrone system" : Itala film from the origins to World War I / Silvio Alovisio -- Rome's premiere film studio : Società Italiana Cines / Kim Tomadjoglou -- Milano films : the exemplary history of a film company of the 1910s / Raffaele De Berti -- Southern (and southernist) Italian cinema / Giorgio Bertellini --^
• Italian cinema in the 1920s / Jacqueline Reich -- From wonder to propaganda : the technological context of Italian silent cinema / Luca Giuliani -- Part IV. Genres. Non-fiction production / Aldo Bernardini -- In hoc signo vinces : historical films / Giuliana Muscio -- All the same or strategies of difference : early Italian comedies in international perspective / Ivo Blom -- The diva-film : context, actresses, issues / Angela Dalle Vacche -- Early Italian serials and (inter)national popular culture / Monica Dall'Asta -- Futurist cinema : ideas and novelties / Giovanni Lista -- STRACITTÀ : cinema, rationalism, modernism, and Italy's "second futurism" / Leonardo Quaresima -- Istituto Nazionale Luce : a national company with an international reach / Pierluigi Erbaggio -- Part V. Cinematic words : on paper, on state, on screen. Film on paper : early Italian cinema literature, 1907-1920 / John P. Welle -- On the language of silent films in Italy / Sergio Raffaelli --^
• Famous actors, famous actresses : notes on acting style in Italian silent films / Francesco Pitassio -- "Our beautiful and glorious art lives" : the rhetoric of nationalism in early Italian film periodicals / John David Rhodes -- Italy's early film "theories" : borders and crossings / Francesco Casetti -- Part VI. Circulation, exhibition, and reception. Disordered traffic : film distribution in Italy (1905-1930) / Chiara Caranti -- "Pictures from Italy" : Italian silent films in Britain, 1907-1915 / Pierluigi Ercole -- Research on local moviegoing : trends and future perspectives / Paolo Caneppele -- Part VII. Research. Where can I find Italian silent cinema? / Ivo Blom -- Cinema on paper : researching non-filmic materials / Luca Mazzei -- Bibliographic appendix : film exhibition and spectatorship / by Paolo Caneppele.

ISBN

• 9780861966707 (softcover)
• 0861966708 (softcover)

LCCN

^^2013498159

OCLC

830946956

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library