Italian Feature Films on National Public and Commercial Broadcasters

Similar to many creative (and other) industries, the film and television industries have for long been permeated by male norms, and by the male worker as the norm. In this context, women workers have always been considered "oddities" – unless they have acted in front of the camera. To a large extent, women have been (and still are) image (Fischer, 1976; Mulvey, 1975). Women's work behind the camera have been counteracted, not least through efforts to exclude them from positions characterized as "creative" or "above-the-line" such as director, producer, and script writer. Further, women have been met with pervading difficulties in allocating finances for their projects and with circumscribed possibilities to have their work screened in the cinema. And although (a few) women are key through their function as "image," films with a woman protagonist are usually provided with a lesser budget than films with a male lead, and women actors get distinctly less paid than their male counterparts (SFI, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2017/08/22/full-list-the-worlds-highest-paid-actors-and-actresses-2017/?sh=2e1c961f3751). Let us give an example of the former: in the Swedish film industry, recently hailed worldwide of being one of the most gender equal screening industries, feature films made between 2013 and 2016 differed in terms of budget depending on the whether the protagonist in a film was male or female. Films with a male lead had on average a 33% higher budget than films with a woman lead. In that same period, women feature film directors had on average a budget ranging between 66% and 86% of the budget of films with a man as director (SFI, 2018). The report published in 2018, by the Swedish Film Institute, concluded that: "[films with women in] key functions generally have overall lower budgets than men" (SFI, 2018, p. 17). Following the international impact that the #Metoo-movement has had and still has, and the recent demands for a 50/50 dispersion between men and women on above-the-line positions in the film industry, gender issues have advanced to the forefront in discussions dealing with the working situation in the film and screen industries. These discussions have appeared in various national contexts in print and social media, as well as in academic work (see, e.g., Jansson et al., 2020; Liddy, 2020; Marghitu, 2018; Meziani & Cabantous, 2020; O'Brien, 2019). It has become obvious that gender inequality pervades all screen industries, large and small, and that women screen workers in different national screen contexts share similar experiences. As film and television production is becoming more and more globalized, with single productions often being the outcome a variety of regional and national industries, finances and competences, working and gendered experiences of being in the industry are also becoming increasingly globalized. Still, there are regional and local differences in how women screen workers experience their work and career situation and these need to be addressed. There are also various aspects of screen work that remain to be tended to academically. Hence, this special section offers a sample of national and local studies that all investigate how gender and equality work is done in four different contexts. It is our hope that this small sample may inspire not only more studies of national contexts, but also inspire to future cross-national studies. Before discussing how various academic fields have engaged with the screening industries in terms of work experience and representation, we wish to point out that film and television, as two available media formats reaching large and heterogeneous audiences, constitute two of the most central expressions of our time, and that both contribute to reflect and mold our understanding of society, of others – and of ourselves (de Lauretis, 1987; Dyer, 1993). Questions about who is allowed to make film and TV and what messages and images are presented and conveyed are thus politically important and imperative. The long-standing male dominance in the industry, together with the realization that images do matter, has sparked an interest in studying gender in the screen industries. The gender conditions in the film industry have attracted scholarly attention across the variety of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, and this special section is a vivid example of this cross-disciplinary scholarship. Three specific, but interrelated fields stand out when it comes to the study of gendered work and inequalities in these industries: production studies, management and life work studies, and studies of women's presence and conditions in screen work. In management studies and work life research, the early 2000s saw an increased interest in focusing and exploring the working conditions in the screening industries, alongside the growing interest for working experiences in what often referred to as the creative industries (see, e.g., Blair, 2001; Delmestri et al., 2005; Ebbers & Wijnberg, 2009; French, 2020; Jones & Pringle, 2015; Meziani & Cabantous, 2020; Soila-Wadman, 2003; Sörensen & Villadsen, 2014). This strand has also included a certain focus on how film can be used as a tool for instruction on how to exert leadership (see, e.g., Bell & Sinclair, 2016). Parallel to this development is the emergence of production studies, emanating from film and television studies. This field explores film and media as cultural practices of media production, and it does so from a variety of perspectives and with various methods. Of particular pertinence here is the sub-field of feminist production studies. This field engages in studying how "routines and rituals […], the economic and political forces […] shape roles, technologies, and the distribution of resources according to cultural and demographic differences" (Mayer et al., 2009, p. 4) in order to understand how "power operates locally through media production to reproduce social hierarchies and inequalities at the level of daily interaction" (Mayer, 2009, p. 15). One of the field's most important contributions here is the critique of the "auteurist" view that films are the "voice" of one single artist, most often the director. Instead, they argue that films are the result of collective work. Departing from this insight, production studies scholars have noted the importance of studying the work that is carried out in the margins, to question the differentiation between "creative" and "craft" professions in film making, and to pay attention to the work done "below-the-line" by workers in the film industry who are seldom credited, but without whose work films would not be produced (see, e.g., Banks, 2009, 2018; Banks et al., 2016; Mayer, 2009, 2011; Mayer et al., 2009). Alongside these two areas of research, there is a third, and more recent, strand that is dedicated to studying women's presence, analyzing policy measures targeting gender (in)equality along with studying impediments to gender equality in the film industry and women's conditions in a male dominated screening industry. This strand of research comes out of feminist media studies as a rather broad field, encompassing both the humanities and the social sciences. While research in both management studies and productions studies constitute important foundations for any research conducted on gender and screen work, for this special section, it is this third strand that is of most relevance, taken that it embraces and explores both local and the global aspects of women's conditions in the male dominated screening industries. Let us therefore shortly present this strand a bit more – and the issues it has raised – in order to give a contextualization of this special section and its four articles. Studies of women's presence in the film industry have mapped the number of women behind the camera, sometimes also including an intersectional analysis and identified gendered budget-gaps and other impediments to gender equality (Cobb, 2020; Lauzen, 2019; Liddy, 2020; Smith et al., 2013). Much of this research is conducted in the United States, discussing the conditions in a film industry that is exclusively driven by private, and most often commercial, stakeholders. In other commercially focused film centers such as Bollywood in India and Nollywood in Nigeria, women behind the screen are reported to be few and the representation of women on screen stereotypical (Mukherjee, 2018; Prakash, 2020; Ukata, 2020). In other contexts, such as Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where there is public support for film production, gender equality is often proclaimed to be a goal. For instance, the Council of Europe (2017) declared its dedication to gender equality in film production in the so-called Sarajevo-declaration, and according to a mapping carried out by the European Audiovisual Observatory in 2019, 15 EU countries have introduced gender equality measures (EAO, 2019, p. 16). In a recent anthology collecting evidence from a number of countries, media scholar Susan Liddy concludes that while demands for gender equality has been voiced by women in all contexts, public funding institutions range from those being "gender blind… to those who theoretically commit to equality but prevaricate on the best measures to implement change to others who have introduced formal gender policies and intervention strategies" (Liddy, 2020, p. 2). Scholars have pointed to several problems with gender equality policies and reforms in the film sector: they are often vague and without a plan for implementation (Thorsen, 2020), they only reach those who are involved in projects actually funded by public means (Cobb & Williams, 2020), and they lack intersectional intention and reach (Cobb & Williams, 2020; Thorsen, 2020). Further, when reforms are implemented, problems arise because making films include a range of different stakeholders and parties, which are out of reach of government policies (Jansson, 2016), and because the film industry is entrenched with institutionalized norms and values that is difficult to change and which tend to reduce the effects of policies (Jansson, 2017; Jansson & Wallenberg, 2020). Scholars investigating women's conditions in the film industry have for a long time indicated that the way the industry is organized both formally and informally benefits white men. The sexual division of labor in the organization is manifested in women being found on positions such as script supervisors, costume designers, and make-up artists, as well as in various below-the-line positions. Many below-the-line professions are dominated by men, and the female dominated positions such as the ones mentioned above, tend to have lower status (Banks, 2009). Scholars have also noted differences in status among above-the-line professions. For instance, while male directors and scriptwriters are considered to be able to "carry" a movie, women directors and scriptwriters are not considered to do so (Bielby & Bielby, 1996, Eikhof and Cole in this issue). The trope of the male genius has been discussed as a hindrance to gender equality in several studies (see, e.g., Lantz, 2007; Marghitu, 2018; Regev, 2016; Schatz, 1988; and by Jansson et al. in this special section). Studies have also looked into how other features of the way the film industry is organized affects gender and concluded that the outcome of networking differs substantially to the favor of men (Grugulis & Stoyanova, 2012). Moreover, mothering duties limits women's possibilities in an industry where long days and extremely intense periods of work away from home are considered to be the normal procedure (Liddy, 2017; Liddy & O'Brien, 2021; O'Brien, 2015, 2019; Wing-Fai et al., 2015; Wreyford, 2013). Considering all these past (and recent) studies, there is no doubt that the screening industries – as production sites and as workplaces – are of definite interest to scholars within different disciplines. This special section aims at addressing some of the issues that recent scholarship has touched upon and tried to tackle, and it does so from four different national and cultural contexts. At the center of all four articles included in the section is the analysis of women's conditions in the screening industries, including their experiences of working and trying to get by – and of how these industries continue to foster the notion of women film workers as "oddities" in an industry that continues to uphold the idea of the genius as male. Let us now turn to the four articles included in this special section. In our first article, "The price of motherhood in the Irish film and television industries," media scholars Susan Liddy and Anne O'Brien discuss the continuous problems that surround motherhood and screen work, finding in their material evidence that there is a systemic bias against mothers, not only as women, but also as women and mothers, and that mothers have internalized the marginalization that comes from their maternal status. They have also found that many mothers adapted ways that would help them to sustain their working lives, but they were rarely supported in those adaptations by the screen production industry. In "'Almost a European, but not quite': Experiences of Female Employees in the Lithuanian Film Industry from the Postcolonial Point of View," authors Lina Kaminskaite and Jelena Salaj discuss how the women filmmakers experience their conditions in a film industry that is still marked by the transformation of Lithuania from being part of the Soviet union to becoming a country which is a member of the EU. They argue that the Lithuanian film industry is characterized by being in a postcolonial state. While the opening up of Lithuania has meant new possibilities for women film workers, it has also presented difficulties and the negotiation of new identities and new mode of film production. Doris Ruth Eikhof and Amanda Cole focus on how women are considered a risk in film production and how this leads to precarious conditions for women in the industry. In their article named, "On the basis of risk: Screen directors and gender inequality," they use the intersectional risk theory to understand how gender inequality is related to risk management practices in the screen industry. Studying two specific gender equality initiatives in the Canadian film industry, they show how risk management is gendered, and they argue that risk plays an important part in decision making in the industry. By understanding how risk is gendered, they argue, it is possible to change the processes that decides how risk is understood. The last article included in this special section departs from the much-debated aspect of film production, namely the final saying over a film's final format. In "The Final Cut," authors Maria Jansson, Frantzeska Papadopoulou, Ingrid Stigsdotter, and Louise Wallenberg discuss how the relationship between film director and producer serve to reproduce gendered relations that position the male creator and producer as norm – even in contexts where both director and producer are women. Departing from a series of interviews made with mostly women working in these two professions, the authors show how these two above-the-line professions are still governed by the malestream and that they tend to be constructed in relation to masculinity. Clearly, even in a country like Sweden, often hailed for its equality work, the gender equality measures that are undertaken are not sufficient to come to grips with gender inequalities and the male norm. Taken together the four articles shed light on different aspects of the film industry. The evidence provided from the different countries indicate that there are many similarities in the challenges that women in the film industry face. However, there are also differences depending on context. The article about Lithuania shows the importance of situating the film industry in a historical and political context. O'Brian and Liddy show in their article, the importance of understanding the specific context of how child care and the welfare state play out in order to capture women's conditions in film and television work. Eikhof and Cole's article demonstrates the necessity of applying an intersectional approach in order to also see differences in conditions between women, even if they work in the same industry and the same country. The article on Sweden, finally, looks deeper into how specific gender equality policies targeting the film industry plays out, and what problems remain, after having been implemented for almost 20 years. We believe that this special section is one step toward a deeper understanding of how gender shapes the working conditions in the film industry, and hope that it will inspire further research that takes a wider, more inclusive and possibly also more comparative grip on women screen worker's experiences and work conditions. This work was supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond under Grant no. P17-0079:1. No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors. The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and/or its supplementary materials.

Except for comedy, Italian popular cinema in the postwar era was mainly characterized by ephemeral genres and subgenres that would follow the model of a successful national or foreign movie and then exploit it to the point of complete saturation. A good example is the spaghetti Western, which became extremely popular in the wake of Sergio Leone’s 1964 success Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars), only to disappear within about a decade. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that, unlike the Hollywood studio system, the Italian film industry was utterly disorganized, comprising countless short-lived, small production companies with no interest in building up fashionable filmic formulas for long-term use. Thus among successful genres such as the film operistico (opera film), the peplum (sword and sandal), and the giallo (thriller), comedy appears to be the only exception. As old as Italian cinema itself, comedy not only survived every crisis in the movie industry but also became increasingly important, and it is now the only popular form of Italian film (all the other genres disappeared or moved to television). This can be explained by the Italians’ well-known passion for comedy. Long before the birth of film, comedy had a long-standing tradition in Italian theater, going back at least as far as the renowned commedia dell’arte in the sixteenth century, characterized by farce, irreverent parody, mockery, and biting satire.

The Opening of South Africa and the Future of African Film Mahir Şaul (bio) The newest development in African cinema is the eruption of South Africa, previously isolated from the rest of the continent, as a film industry giant. In 2005, South Africa made a strong showing at FESPACO, with a large number of visitors and four feature films in the competition, one of which (Drum, dir. Zola Maseko, 2004) took the grand prize. In 2006, South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture hosted an African Film Summit in Pretoria-Tshwane, including a congress held by FEPACI. At this meeting, the members voted for the creation of a full-time secretariat in South Africa, though the headquarters remains in Ouagadougou, and elected Seipati Bulane Hopa, a South African woman producer, as Secretary General. The decision was hailed as a watershed in the history of FEPACI, and no doubt it serves as an emblem of the shifting center of gravity for the African film world. On the commercial front, the South African media company M-Net, already broadcasting to the rest of the continent via satellite and a subscription-based online TV service, began compiling its African Film Library by purchasing exclusive electronic rights to the films of the major francophone and anglophone directors. M-Net's pay-per-view entertainment channel, Africa Magic, airs daily Nollywood dramas and is starting to have an impact on both the finances and technical services of Nigerian video production.1 Another South African company, Nu Metro, operates theaters in several African countries, produces and distributes films and TV programs, and sells videos, DVDs, and video games for home entertainment. This new configuration is strengthened by two different imperatives stemming from South Africa: the local film industry's desire to reach a new market and the struggle of the formerly disadvantaged groups within the country to find proportional representation in post-apartheid society. The South African film industry, one of the oldest in the world, intermittently produces features that triumph at the international box office—for example, Academy Award winner Tsotsi (dir. Gavin Hood, 2005) and District 9 (dir. Neill Blomkamp, 2009)—but suffers from a narrow domestic market, which [End Page 315] observers attribute in part to the lack of exhibition theaters and filmgoing habits in the Black townships. Adjustment to the realities of majority rule after the 1994 elections created a temporary lull in production, which was softened but not totally offset by the small flurry of anti-apartheid films. At the same time, the Cape Town World Cinema Festival and the simultaneous Sithengi Film and Television Market, promoted by the South African film industry, have now become major showcases for African cinema, on a par with FESPACO and Carthage.2 The rise of a new generation of young Black South African producers and directors is the second crucial element in the opening of South Africa. The latest crop of filmmakers is different from the small numbers who matured in the underground film scene during apartheid. Young filmmaker Carmen Sangion distinguishes "two generations of filmmakers, the younger generation that is focused on fantasy, entertainment, and commercial work, and the group from the old school with political and social baggage about the country."3 The younger cineastes may wish for work in a normalized commercial film sector, but they find it hard to break into the existing professional circuits. The studios around Johannesburg, and the major broadcast companies and distributors as well, are dominated by white capital and employ an old coterie of producers, directors, and technical personnel. Government aid administered through the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) prods this establishment to integrate the new Black professionals, but progress has been slow. Policy debates turn around a contrast, the independent filmmakers on one side, who establish start-up companies or operate informally, and industry organization on the other. During the 2008 Gauteng Film Commission conference, which was an "industry" event, Bulane Hopa said that "ten percent of the population continue to determine the nature of cultural content production … only by creating and sustaining more opportunities for Black filmmakers will the industry be able to meet the changing demands of South Africa."4...

 Reviews Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits. Ed. by L P and A G. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. .  pp. £. ISBN ––––. Featuring in-depth analyses of film production from the largest to the smallest of countries in the region, Contemporary Balkan Cinema, an eclectic volume brought together by editors Lydia Papadimitriou and Ana Grgić, breaks new ground in scholarship on the film industries of the Balkan Peninsula. e distinct aim of the volume is to reclaim the term ‘Balkan’ from its long association in the West with violence and fragmentation (p. ), and to create a volume ‘more concerned with offering an empirically grounded account of the cinematic activity within and across the region’ (p. ). e aim is a challenging one, primarily because of the scale of its coverage, which ‘widens the geographic focus in order to provide an inclusive view of the region and disband narrow identifications of the Balkans with the former Yugoslavia’ (p. ). e volume features chapters on Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey. Although perhaps contrary to the ethos of the book, it is impossible not to mention that this is a controversial assemblage considering that there are ongoing political difficulties, acknowledged by several of the contributors, between a number of the nations included, and sometimes within countries themselves. As discussed in their respective chapters, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cyprus still face internal divisions along ethnic lines, affecting film production, something which Dijana Jelača suggests in her chapter on Bosnia and Herzegovina even ‘calls into question the possibility of unifying Bosnian cinema under the umbrella of singular national cinema’ (p. ). Meanwhile , several of the countries included do not officially recognize another country included, Kosovo, as an independent state. is is reflected in the limited scale of Kosovo’s intra-regional transnational co-productions (co-productions are highlighted by the editors as one of the major positives in recent developments in the region’s film industries: p. ). Nonetheless, the volume does offer neutral and purposefully equalized ground to explore the various industries in the light of their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as revealing the mostly rich landscape of transnational partnerships in the region. It brings together an array of established specialists to explore the film industries covered in each chapter, some of whose scholarship is not usually available in English. Many of the chapters focus on detailing the funding, structure, and output of their national film industries, as well as describing national film festivals and awards. e chapters on Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Montenegro represent particular milestones in view of the lack of scholarship on these industries in English ; and I would add to this list the chapter on Albania, which offers a fascinating overview of the long and bumpy history of national film production. e volume further contains an appendix with tables providing overviews of national film production, feature film releases, and box office data, and a list of key institutions and major festivals for each country. Anyone who has spent any time trying to MLR, .,   establish such data from incomplete records will appreciate the service this does for film scholarship on the region. Contemporary Balkan Cinema is not all facts, however. For those seeking overviews of filmic themes and their influences in the various nations under discussion, all the chapters cover these topics in varying levels of detail and examine the historical context shaping film production. More importantly, several chapters, particularly those on Croatia and North Macedonia, offer crucial insight into the ways in which political parties influence, or try to influence, film production. While political, economic, and social difficulties are undeniably still a pervasive presence in film from the region, this volume proves that film can also be a conduit for success and growth in these nations. U  N L T ...

A recent bilateral film co-production agreement between Italy and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), ratified in September 2012 by the Italian Parliament, will hopefully bring fruitful cooperations between these two national film and television industries. However, Chinese and Italian film co-productions are not an unprecedented phenomenon. The first co-production between these two film industries actually happened in 1982, when mini-series Marco Polo was produced by Italian television network RAI along with Chinese Company Cinematic Co-Production (CCCC). The aim of this article is to examine the production history of Marco Polo and its complex transnational dimension, through the analysis of issues previously highlighted by theoretical works about the crisis of national cinema and of issues of identity in European co-productions. Moreover, the article will analyze RAI’s production policy of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a watershed era that marks a move from the production of works of international film-makers of modern cinema, to more spectacular and marketable productions for the new global television market. Finally, I will discuss Marco Polo’s relationship with the Italian political film, an important production trend in 1970s Italian cinema, to which director Giuliano Montaldo contributed with at least three of his films. I will suggest that the Italian political film was extremely apt at narrating a story focused on intercultural communication, and that Montaldo had been hired by RAI because of his experience in this genre.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 John Stafford, The £.S.d. of Film Making in Rome Studios, Kinematograph Weekly, 20 June 1946, 14. I am indebted to Dr. Paola Merli for her painstaking and insightful comments on this paper’s arguments and understanding of Italian history, culture and cinema. 2 Herbert Harris, Gentleman From Verona, Picturegoer, 10 April 1948, 10. 3 Andrew Grey, Gracie—48 years young, Picturegoer, 5 January 1946, 8. 4 ‘Britalian’ is a word sometimes used to identify the Italian community in the UK. 5 By 1952, Italian film exports were worth more than £1.75 million, probably only slightly lower than those of Britain. Official statistics for British film exports were not published until 1956, when they stood at £4 million. Ironically, the rapid growth of the Italian industry might not have been possible without the infrastructure of technical training and state support put in place over the previous two decades by Mussolini’s regime to save the ailing film industry. This foundation was built upon by the governments of reconstruction, which put the volume of Italian production on a par with that of Britain by promoting co-production and distribution deals and instituting a production fund of £3 million. Italy Increases Subsidy for Producers, Kinematograph Weekly, 28 August 1952, 9. For an overview of the Italian film industry in this period see, for example: Pierre Sorlin, Italian National Cinema (London, 1996), 83–93; Marcia Landy, Italian Film (Cambridge, 2000), 15–20; Matthew Hibberd, The Media in Italy (Maidenhead, 2008), 51–56. 6 J. Arthur Rank Speaks …, and Let British Films be Ambassadors to the World, Kinematograph Weekly, 11 January 1945, 35 and 163. 7 Letter from Joan T. Zappa, Picturegoer, 16 August 1947, 14. 8 Letter from Brian Roger Haigh to Picturegoer 8 November 1947, 14. 9 Distribution and Exhibition of Cinematograph Films: Report of the Committee of Enquiry Appointed by the President of the Board of Trade, HMSO, Comnd 7837, November 1949, para 51. 10 Recalled in To-day’s Cinema 20 November 1945, 4. 11 Some civilian cinemas, including all of the ones in Naples, were out-of-bounds to Allied troops ‘for health reasons’. Captain Andrew Grey, ‘Going to the pictures in Italy’, Picturegoer 31 March 1945, 8–9. However, almost all cinemas south of Rome had been derequisitioned by June 1945. War Office 204/3305. Public Records Office (hereafter PRO). 12 The British film industry was equally slow to supply publicity material to the thriving Italian fan magazines, which were unhampered by paper shortages. Grey op cit. 13 The cheeky Lancastrian’s dialogue was dubbed in falsetto Italian, but his comic songs were left in their original form, perhaps deemed beyond effective translation. Ibid. 14 The Cinema, 15 May 1946, 31. The nomination by the British authorities in Italy of Smith as the sole representative of all film companies caused an outcry from Rank’s competitors in May 1945. Representatives of private companies had not been allowed to visit Italy up to this point, but American companies were already evading this prohibition by securing attachments to the Office of War Information. Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/49949. PRO. 15 Internal Bank of England memo to Mr. Somervell, 23 October 1946. Board of Trade (hereafter BT) 11/3201. PRO. 16 Treasury memo from E. Rowe-Dutton to Sir Wilfred Eady, 31 October 1946. BT 11/3201. PRO. 17 See correspondence in FO 371/60671. PRO. 18 Talks began on 21 March 1945 and produced a set of draft proposals on 30 May 1945. Captain Vernon Jarrett (rather than ‘one of Mr. Rank’s men’) was appointed as the British’s Film Officer with a seat on the Italian Film Board. FO 371/49949. PRO. 19 Verrnon Jarratt, The Italian Cinema (London, 1951), 62. 20 David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era: cultural industries, politics and the public (Manchester, 1990), Chapter 5. 21 Kinematograph Weekly, 12 December 1945, 20. 22 Robert Raymond, Invaders Welcome!, Film Illustrated Monthly, 3(2) (1948), 18–19; Peter Noble, Film Illustrated Monthly, 2(11) (1947). 23 Tony Rose, Continental Invasion, Picturegoer, 14 February 1948, 7. 24 Lionel Collier, Continental Hits, Picturegoer 10 September 1949, 21. However, the exhibition of almost all Italian films in Britain was restricted to a small number of specialist cinemas. By September 1956, Italy had produced more than 1,500 films during the previous decade, but only Bread, Love and Jealousy (1954) had achieved a circuit release in Britain. Italians Demand British Circuit Deal—or Else, Kinematograph Weekly, 6 September 1956, 3. 25 In truth, there were a number of British silent films that utilised Italian locations, and a few examples in the 1930s of Anglo-Italian production co-operation. Carmine Gallone, an experienced Italian director who had also worked in France and Germany during the contraction of his home industry, directed scenes shot at the Venice Carnival for the musical For Love of You (UK, 1933). Unsurprisingly, these were emphasised in the publicity: ‘Every gondola available in Venice was commandeered and several hundreds of gondoliers and lovely girls took part. The title song “For Love of You” is sung here with beautiful effect by Foresta as the gondolas containing young lovers slip past, making the scene one of rich splendour and romance.’ (Kinematograph Weekly, 2 November 1933, 53.) Gallone’s 1935 Bellini bio-pic Casta Diva was made by Gaumont British in partnership with Allenza Cinematografica Italiana The English languish version The Divine Spark employed the scripting talents of Emlyn Williams and an entirely different cast, with the exception of Marta Eggerth. Mario Zampi’s First World War drama 13 Men and a Gun (1938) was made for Two Cities Films by a British cast in Italy in bilingual versions, but the English version failed to meet the qualifying conditions for a British quota film. The decision to film in Italy was probably shrewd at a time when the doors to the Italian market were rapidly closing to foreign-made films. Two Cities would go on to be one of the most successful production outfits in 1940s British cinema, but not before Zampi and his business partner Fillipo del Giudice had spent some of the war years interned on the Isle of Man as enemy aliens. 26 The Cinema 23 November 1945, 16. 27 The Cinema 14 August 1945, 6. MGM had begun negotiations for the rights to Quo Vardis just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, and it eventually became Hollywood’s most expensive film when £2.5 million was spent on its production, principally at Cinecittà, in 1950. 28 Kinematograph Weekly, 15 August 1946, 24. 29 Stefano Pittaluga had produced the first Italian sound film in 1930. The picture was directed by Gennaro Righelli, who would also direct L’Armata Azzura. 30 The Blue Squadron pressbook, Warner Bros First National, 1934. 31 Warners appealed, but to no avail. Kinematograph Weekly, 2 August 1934, 3. 32 The Cinema 28 November 1945, 6. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Kinematograph Weekly, 7 February 1946, 22. 36 Gentilomo had directed Rome Symphony (1939), one of the World Windows series of Technicolor shorts photographed by Jack Cardiff. His other credits included the well-received Carnival in Venice (1940) and, most recently, the neo-realist influenced O Sole Mio (1945). 37 William Freshman, Roman holiday, Film Industry, December 1946, 2–3. 38 Jarratt, op cit. 39 Kinematograph Weekly, 14 March 1946, 13. 40 Kinematograph Weekly, 21 March 1946, 25. 41 Kinematograph Weekly, 2 May 1946, 24. 42 Stafford, op cit. 43 To-day’s Cinema, 4 March 1947, 22. 44 Film Report 1455, 7 March 1947. 45 Picturegoer, 5 July 1947, 13. 46 Elisabetta Girelli, Beauty and the Beast: Italianness in British cinema (Bristol, 2009), 19–27. See also Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain: realities and images (Leicester, 1988). 47 A Man About the House pressbook, British Lion, 1947. 48 Ibid. See also Michael Denison, Overtures and Beginners (London, 1973), 209. 49 The Cinema, 8 January 1947, 30. 50 Picture Show, 29 November 1947, 11; Film Illustrated Monthly, 2(10) (1947), 23. 51 Andrew Gray [sic, Grey?], The British Film World Needs a Place in the (Empire) Sun, Film Industry, October 1946, 8–9. On ‘bandits’, see Film Industry, November 1946, 18. It would be another 10 years before the ACT and the three Italian technicians’ unions came to an agreement on location filming in both countries. Kinematograph Weekly, 27 September 1956, 3. 52 Douglass Montgomery, My Adventures in Italy, Picturegoer, 24 May 1947, 11. 53 The Cinema, 10 December 1947, 22. 54 Call of the Blood is the story of a British bourgeois couple (the husband is of Mediterranean origin) who honeymoon in Sicily where the people are closer to nature. The contemporary advertising for Hitchens novel colourfully evokes its discourse of erotic essentialism: ‘A story thrilling with the exultant joy of physical life […] In the man’s veins runs a stream of hot Southern blood, which unawakened until this time, now echoes a quick response to the romantic and mysterious environment and to the beauty of an alluring young peasant girl’ (New York, 1906). 55 Film Industry, March 1948, 18. 56 To-Day’s Cinema, 13 February 1948, 14. 57 One Night With You pressbook, Rank, 1948. 58 Patricia Roc International Fan Club Magazine, 1(8) (October 1947), 2. Two months earlier, announcing that she had been given the part, she had been rather more enthusiastic: ‘So it’s the true blue Italian skies for me, friends! … Pauline, my personal maid, is very thrilled about it all.’ Patricia Roc International Fan Club Magazine, 1(6) (August 1947), 6. 59 Kinematograph Weekly, 21 August 1947, 13. 60 Film Illustrated Monthly, 3(6) (1948), 23. 61 Sunday Express, 25 April 1948. 62 Can Price make Byron box-office?, Film Illustrated Monthly, l3(3) (1947), 6–7. 63 Dennis Price, Bringing a character to life, Picturegoer, 28 February 1948, 10. 64 Sydney Box and Vivian Cox, The Bad Lord Byron (London, 1949), 92. 65 The Cinema, 22 October 1947, 19. 66 Film Illustrated Monthly, 4(5) (1949), 13. 67 The film had the working title OK, Agostina at this point. 68 To-Day’s Cinema, 22 April 1949, 3, 20. 69 Dora Dobson, Experiment that Became a Triumph!, The Cinema Studio, 8 December 1948, 15. Ischia became the home of the English composer William Walton in 1949, and was later the base for location work on the Anglo-American swashbuckler, The Crimson Pirate (1952), although the action was supposed to be set in the Caribbean. Studio work followed at Teddington and Elstree. The film was a major box-office hit, but the production was dogged by script re-writing and other delays caused by transportation problems, near-death accidents and the confusions arising from using three crews: British, American and Italian, under the direction of Robert Siodmak and Vernon Sewell. As a consequence, Warner Bros’s frozen assets were well nigh evaporated. See Colin Hanmer, Ischia is an island, not a sneeze, Picturegoer, 14 February 1953, 10–11. 70 Yvonne Mitchell, Actress, London, 1957, 71–77. 71 To-Day’s Cinema, 11 October 1949, 11; Kinematograph Weekly, 13 October 1949, 24. In Film Monthly Review (December 1949, 42), Austin Welland, frustrated by the film’s ‘trite’ dialogue, condemned the picture as ‘a futile attempt to “cash in” on the current craze for films with an Italian setting’. 72 A Legend, an opera and a triangle, The Cinema Studio, 9 June 1948, 7. ‘No film made against the background of either the Dolomites or of Venice could be wholly dislikeable’, commented the Manchester Guardian, 5 February 1949. 73 Michael Denison’s account of the filming in his Overtures and Beginners (221–223) includes comments on the privations of living on the £5 per week allowed by British foreign currency restrictions, and a description of floating down the Venetian Grand Canal by moonlight with Tito Gobbi singing the melancholy songs of the gondolieri. 74 Not surprisingly, Brief Encounter was a favourite of Rota’s. On his positive experience of composing for a British film, see Nothing Like it in Italy, The Cinema Studio, 6 October 1948, 9–10. See also George Minton. Where The Glass Mountain got its title, The Cinema Studio, 10 November 1948, 17–18. 75 The Times, 4 February 1949. The Cinema Studio’s review judged The Glass Mountain ‘a shrewd compromise between the high and low-brow’ and correctly predicted that it would have ‘considerable box-office success’. 20 January 1949, 21. 76 Quoted in Dennison Thornton, Portrait of George Minter, The Cinema Studio 8 December 1948, 15. 77 Kinematograph Weekly, 2 September 1948, 21. 78 Angelo Unit Start in Italy, The Cinema Studio, 1 September 1948, 9–10. 79 The Cinema Studio, 10 November 1948, 13. 80 Majorie Rhodes, My Dream Holiday, Film Illustrated Monthly, 3(12) (December 1948), 5. 81 Private Angelo pressbook, Associated British-Pathe, 1949. 82 In his autobiography, Dear Me, Harmondsworth, 1978, 211, Peter Ustinov clarified his own thoughts on this controversial aspect of Italianism:The Italians have always seemed to me to be almost over-endowed with courage expressed in the form of personal panache, or recklessness. They are nonpareil in the production of Condottieri, poisoners, boxers, racing-drivers, stuntmen, popes angelic and diabolical, gangsters, and unflinching martyrs. Place all these disparate elements in a trench, however, and cover them with the drab uniform and a coat of mud, give them a officer or two that they don’t necessarily respect, and of course their splendid qualities of individual radiance are tarnished. They prefer not to die under anonymous, or worse, under stupid circumstances. These aspects of Italian character would be revisited in the more well-known Captain Correlli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières’ 1994 book filmed by Working Title in 2001. 83 Douglas Bodkin, Bidding Goodbye to Trequanda, The Cinema Studio, 3 November 1948, 15. On the production of Private Angelo, see also, The Quadruplicated Duty of Ustinov, The Cinema Studio, 15 December 1948, 9–11. 84 Picturegoer, 6 August 1949, 14. 85 The Cinema Studio, 29 September 1948, 10. 86 Quoted in a digest of reviews of Private Angelo in The Cinema Studio, 13 July 1949, 15. 87 Peter Noble, Film Illustrated Monthly, 4(8) (1949), 17. 88 Private Angelo pressbook, Associated British-Pathe, 1949. The film’s publicity materials also included showcards to promote Italian wines endorsed by Maria Denis. 89 Ustinov estimated a saving of £40,000 on Private Angelo by keeping studio work to a minimum. The Cinema Studio, 6 October 1948, 10. He saved another £23,000 by finishing location shooting two weeks ahead of schedule. The Cinema Studio, 24 November 1948, 16. See also Operation Angelo, Kinematograph Weekly, 28 October 1948, 31. 90 See the Mole-Richardson supplement, Kinematograph Weekly, 29 October 1953. 91 The Cinema Studio, 6 October 1948, 10. 92 Kinematograph Weekly, 11 August 1949, 3. As well as half a dozen quota films shot in Italy, the previous year had seen four filmed in Austria, two in Germany, and three in France. 93 The Cinema Studio, 25 January 1950, 3. 94 BT 64 95/4934, PRO. Quoted in Margaret Dickinson and Sarah Street, Cinema and State: the film industry and the British government 1927–84, London, 1985, 182. 95 Italian immigration numbers increased from 350 in 1947 to 6500 in 1949. Terri Colpi, The Italian Factor: the Italian community in Great Britain (Edinburgh, 1991), 134. Their lives in Bedford were depicted in the Viking Film Unit’s documentary England May be Home (1950). 96 The Cinema Studio, 13 October 1948, 15. See also: Calvert on location, Picturegoer, 26 February 1949, 7. 97 Acting in the SUN, Peter Noble’s Picture Parade, 1949, 113–16. 98 The Times, 18 April 1949; Evening Standard, 14 April 1949. 99 The Cinema 13 April 1949, 15; Daily Worker, 16 April 1949. 100 Picture Show, 10 September 1949, 10. 101 Acting in the SUN, op cit. 102 Michael Korda, Charmed Lives, London, 1979, 242–246. 103 Interviewed by the author 22 July 2008. A union representative was flown in to make sure the crewing arrangements were being observed. 104 The Cinema Studio, 20 July 1949, 18. See also Kinematograph Weekly, 26 May 1949, x). Documents relating to the picture’s successful registration as a British film survive as PRO file BT 64/2497. Newbrook recalled that he was paid in cash with ‘bagfuls of lire’. 105 See, for example, the location report in The Cinema Studio, 10 August 1949, 16. 106 22,000 people went to see it in one week at the Sheffield Gaumont alone. Kinematograph Weekly, 15 February 1951, 16. 107 The budgets for these films were around £135,000 each, considerably less than those given to Rank’s prestige pictures. Kinematograph Weekly, 3 February 1949, 24. 108 They Only Had a Touch of the Sun!, The Cinema Studio, 11 January 1950, 11–15. 109 Desmond Dickinson, BECTU Interview. 110 Kinematograph Weekly, 9 August 1951, 14, had more reservations than most: ‘The volatile Italians pep things up a bit, but fail to atone for the fundamental error of presenting bedroom farce in the open air.’ For an assessment of the film’s box-office performance see Kinematograph Weekly, 18 June 1953, 8. 111 Kinematograph Weekly, 21 July 1949, 29. 112 To-Day’s Cinema, 17 February 1950, 6. 113 Stephen Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow (London, 2000), 27. 114 See Government Backing More Than 50% of Present Filming, The Cinema Studio, 12 October 1949, 3, 12; Studios Dark But Money for the Continent, Kinematograph Weekly, 13 October 1949, 3. The NFFC backed Her Favourite Husband, Children of Chance, State Secret, My Daughter Joy, Shadow of the Eagle and Interrupted Honeymoon. 115 Italian and British Film Producers Associations were in regular talks on saving dollars by extending the mutual exchange of pictures, although, while foreign pictures were regularly and successfully dubbed into Italian, the same skills and facilities were scarce in Britain. Italian Producers in Two-Way Distribution Talks with BFPA, Kinematograph Weekly, 27 July 1950, 9. 116 Five Countries Make One Film, The Cinema Studio, 11 August 1948, 3, 6. 117 Operation X pressbook, Columbia Pictures, 1950. 118 For example, Dilys Powell in the Sunday Times, 18 June 1950. 119 The Cinema Studio, 5 October 1949, 3. Salkow had the help of Jacopo Comin for the Italian version. 120 Spectacular and picturesque … Magnificently photographed, was the verdict of Picture Show, 55(1437–1440) (1950), 12. 121 Daily Telegraph, 28 August 1950. 122 Better Over Here …, Kinematograph Weekly, 2 March 1950, 28. 123 Unity Park, On Filming in the Dolomites, The Cinema Studio, 26 October 1949, 7–10. 124 Picture Show, 26 November 1949, 11. 125 Jock Macgregor, Location Italy, Picturegoer, 8 October 1949, 10. See also: Elizabeth Forrest, The Secrets of State Secret, Picturegoer, 9 September 1950, 12–14. 126 Quoted in a digest of reviews in The Cinema Studio 26 April 1950, 18–19. ‘Really splendid entertainment […] one of the films one is proud to claim as British’, said Picture Show, 9 September 1950, 12. Kinematograph Weekly, 15 December 1949, 29. Picturegoer, 19 November 1949, 3. The between and story in these films became a of in correspondence see 6 May 1950, 3. Tony Rose, You For This From The Cinema Studio, May 1950, 21. had the for Man (1947), another film with a of Picturegoer, 28 January 1950, Kinematograph Weekly, 15 February 1951, it as ‘A production, rich in Kinematograph Weekly, 27 December 1951, 12. Kinematograph Weekly, 18 June 1953, 8. Kinematograph Weekly, 9 August 1951, 19. Kinematograph Weekly, 18 June 1953, 8. My Venetian Picturegoer, 17 May 1952, 9. Letter from Picturegoer, 3 January 1953, 3. in Italy, Rome 1951, This was not necessarily to the of British the film the they have been to the of their up an of of it is to the in the is a film. But it is the of Rome and Venice that the Some of are my of and the The are a Picturegoer, 18 September 27. Kinematograph Weekly, 17 February 1949, 31. in Italy, Letter from Dora The Cinema Studio, 8 March 1950, 6. On the making of the film see Picture 8 August 1953, is in Picturegoer, 18 September Picturegoer, 25 September 20. On the making of and see she Picturegoer, 26 September 1953, 8–9. Kinematograph Weekly, 28 January 22. See also Margaret in for 16 January 16. The Cinema Studio, 17 August 1949, 5. could not help the in Italian to the of 28 August 1952, 9. Quoted in and The Cinema Studio, 22 February 1950, 7–10. Kinematograph Weekly, 14 August 1952, 24. British production was The Times, 11 July 1949. On Private Angelo see, Michael Filming and its The Cinema Studio, 22 December 1948, The Cinema Studio, 4 January 1950, 5. with its American and Italian was seen as an rather than a British

This paper describes the post-reform Indonesian film industry as one of the creative industry sub-sector. The creative industry has contributed to developing a city and a country to increase the market and the global economy. Creative industries have great potential to boost the economy and the quality of life of the Indonesian people. The international film industry can obtain revenue up to $10,162,657,657 (approximately IDR 980 trillion), with ticket sales reaching 1,276,715,780 pieces and the number of moviegoers went more than a 700million people. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, according to research by Oxford Economics, considering the direct and indirect transactions caused, the total economic contribution of the film and television industry to GDP in 2010 reached USD 2.98billion or 0.43 percent of all national GDP. This study aims to analyze three sub-sectors of the film industry, namely production, distribution, and exhibition, as well as to describe how the conditions in the national film industry in the post-reform era since the film industry was lined up as one of the sub-sectors of the creative industry.

Background: In the last ten years, the Indonesian film industry has experienced significant growth. The national film industry and the regional film industry, one of which is indie films produced in the city of Makassar. The development of films in Makassar began to receive national public attention with the explosion of the film Uang Panai in 2016. Also, in 2017, the success of the movie Silariang received an audience of 183.340 people. Purpose: Examining the impact of Makassar-produced films on the dynamics of Indonesia's domestic film industry is the main objective of this study, including examining its impact on cultural identity, economic variables, and its role in enhancing the uniqueness of national film. Methods: This study employs a qualitative methodology and gathers data through content analysis, observation, and interviews. Results: According to the study's findings, regional films—like those made in Makassar—are essential to the growth and advancement of the country's film industry. This demonstrates how crucial it is to acknowledge and encourage filmmaking outside of the major industrial hubs. Conclusion: Research shows that regional films have the potential to positively impact economic growth, especially in the regions where they are produced. It encourages the creative economy, creates local employment opportunities, and offers direct and indirect financial benefits. Implications: There is a need to recognize and promote regional films to encourage the diversity of Indonesian films; this study is also expected to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between regional films and the dynamics of Indonesian films.

OCTOBER 128, Spring 2009, pp. 51–68. © 2009 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Throughout the twentieth century, Europe was one of the principal markets for Hollywood films. The popularity of American-made films represented a threat to the financial health—to the very viability—of national film industries. During World War II, as a measure of protection, American films were banned in some European countries. In Italy, the restricted distribution of American films started in 1938 and ended at the conclusion of World War II. Italy then became one of the largest foreign markets for the American film industry, with 80 percent of Italian cinemas screening American films.1 Five t imes as many films were imported than were exported from Italy to the US.2 For the American production companies seeking to optimize the return on their investments, weakening the competition was the best way to make profits.3 This obviously created a degree of financial distress for the Italian film industry. I wish first to dispel the myth that the flooding of Hollywood films into postwar Italy inhibited the flourishing of its national film industry.4 I shall go on to show that certain types of regional comedies were produced in response to the American cinematic invasion of Italy, and I will examine the way in which they were perceived in relation to the Hollywood film industry. The films that attracted the most people to the box office and on which I shall focus are Luigi Comencini’s

he Soviet Union’s collapse not only had an impact on the sociopolitical situation in the former Sovietrepublics, but also on the state of affairs in science and art, including cinematography. Marked bymany common or similar traits, Soviet cinema, as the unity and synthesis of its national components,disintegrated into purely national parts, finally breaking free from Moscow’s ideological grasp. This alsoled to the cinema art (and its parts) of the newly independent states breaking its decades-long ties with thecinematography of other former union republics, primarily Russia. The difficulties experienced by all thesecountries during the transition to a market economy also took their toll on the national film industry, in-cluding in Uzbekistan, the only post-Soviet republic in which local cinematography has centralized fi-nancial support. (When a film production and rental market is just forming, it is difficult to overestimatethe state’s participation in encouraging and supporting this intricate process.)Specialists and connoisseurs of this type of art have highly praised Uzbek cinema for its profession-alism, national uniqueness, and originality. It is indicative that films began being produced here almost assoon as cinematography was invented. For example, a pioneer of Uzbek cinema, Khudoibergan Devanov,made the first documentary film in Khorezm as early as the spring of 1900. As for feature films, the firstones were made in Uzbekistan during the second half of the 1920s almost immediately after the formationof the Uzbek S.S.R., with the help of Russian masters. During the next decade, local teams of directors,cameramen, scriptwriters, and other creative specialists appeared and began their professional activity.The quality of films gradually improved and their number increased. Whereas at the beginning of the 1950s,three feature films were made every year at the Uzbekfilm studio, by the mid-1980s, during the heyday oflocal cinematography, this number had leaped to twelve. Whereby nearly every year, one of them receiveda prize at prestigious international film festivals. The documentary film industry was also highly praisedin those years, in which well-known director Malik Kaiumov, who won prizes at many festivals, worked.In the mid-1980s, a documentary film by Tashkent documentary film director S. Papazian was awardedthe Silver Dove prize at the International Film Festival in Leipzig. Vibrant masters of Uzbek Soviet cin-ema, such as Sh. Abbasov, A. Khamraev, E. Ishmukhamedov, and M. Abzalov, are well known in the

The Melodramatic Nation: Integration and Polarization in the Argentine Cinema of the 1930s

The chapter provides an overview of the history of the post-war Italian film industry from crisis to crisis, that is to say from the ground zero of 1945 (when the whole Italian film business had to be politically and economically reorganised, together with the rest of the war-torn country) to the ground zero of 1985 (the year in which, for the first time in almost three decades, Italian film production fell below the rate of 100 films made per year, as the culmination of a crisis that started in the mid-1970s). The chapter opens with an in-depth production history of I vampiri / Lust of the Vampire (Riccardo Freda, 1957), followed by an account of the 1958-1964 boom in the production of pepla, the historical-mythological adventures of the sword-and-sandal kind. Both cases (an isolated commercial failure the former; a short-lived box-office goldmine, or filone, the latter) are emblematic of the functioning of the Italian film industry between the early 1950s and the mid-1980s – a state-subsidised system mostly based on a constellation of medium, small and minuscule business ventures piggy-backing on popular genres/trends in the local and/or global film market.

Italian national cinema developed quickly between the last decade of the 19th century and the outbreak of World War I (particularly in Turin and also in Rome), and it won a sizeable share of film audiences around the world for, in particular, its epic films set in classical settings. The outbreak of the war virtually destroyed the industry, but with the coming of sound and the advent of the Fascist government, support for the industry grew before World War II broke out, with the building of the film studio complex at Cinecittà (“Cinema City”), the establishment of Luce (the government agency charged with producing documentaries and newsreels), and the opening of an important national film school in Rome, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Unlike its counterparts in totalitarian Russia or Germany, the Italian industry was not completely dominated by government propaganda, and in fact some of the major Fascist figures in the industry wanted to imitate the entertainment of Hollywood rather than support a completely ideological cinema. Major directors emerged during this period, such as Mario Camerini, Alessandro Blasetti, and Vittorio De Sica (all of whom continued to work after the end of the war), and the cinema during the Fascist period trained a great many people involved in basic film production who were to play a vital role in the dramatic rebirth of Italian cinema after 1945. With the end of the war, Italian neorealism burst on the international scene. Such figures as Roberto Rossellini, De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Giuseppe De Santis won international acclaim for their “realistic” portrayal of contemporary Italian social and economic problems. During the 1950s, many young directors (Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Pietro Germi among them) sought to move beyond the kind of programmatic social realism Marxist critics in Italy and France championed, and in the 1960s a second generation of even younger figures (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gillo Pontecorvo, and Francesco Rosi) looked both backward to their Italian neorealist heritage and abroad to French cinema for inspiration. During the same time, but less beloved by film scholars and critics, Italian cinema began to produce an enormous number of highly profitable works that might be described as genre films or, to use the Hollywood term, B films. First, in the late 1950s and the 1960s, the peplum or “sword and sandal” epic film starring foreign bodybuilders became immensely popular and was quickly exported. This genre was followed closely by the spaghetti western, an incredibly successful genre that produced almost five hundred films in a very short time and revolutionized the face of a classic Hollywood genre almost overnight. Subsequently, in the 1970s and 1980s, the thriller (known as a giallo in Italy) and the spaghetti horror film (with its zombie and cannibal variants) were also extremely popular. Perhaps the most popular genre of all, one that continued to thrive during the entire postwar period, was the so-called commedia all’italiana or “comedy, Italian style,” a form of comic film indebted not only to the traditional commedia dell’arte but also to a collection of brilliant actors and scriptwriter-directors who combined humor with a biting and often cynical vision of Italian culture, providing a type of social criticism that Italy’s politicians often avoided. The period between 1945 and around 1975 thus witnessed an Italian cinema that managed to combine popular entertainment in a variety of film genres with art films, box office power with critical acclaim at film festivals and among auteur-oriented critics and film historians. Nevertheless, directors and technicians of genius continued to work, and in the last decade some new faces have added luster and box office appeal to the national cinema’s treatment of new themes (racial and gender identity in a multiethnic and multicultural Italy, terrorism, crime, and the Mafia), themes that have evolved in Italian cinema’s reflection of everyday reality in the peninsula. Italian film scholarship has evolved dramatically in the recent past, moving from a focus on postwar neorealism and the art film toward a broader definition of film history that encompasses an interest in multicultural themes, more film theory imported from abroad (especially from the United Kingdom and the United States), and more interest in two periods (the silent era and the Fascist period) that have long been neglected in comparison with postwar Italy.

This article draws on a broad range of under-explored historical sources to document the career trajectories of the women who worked in the Italian film industry between 1930 and 1944. Challenging established histories that normalise male dominance in Italian cinema during and after Mussolini's regime, the article sheds light on women's overlooked contribution to Italy's sound film industry and explores the multilayered, shifting dimension of their precarious and gendered labour. Engaging with key questions raised by historians of Italian Fascism and by feminist research in film and media history, the article delineates intersectional barriers to film employment faced by women in the years of the dictatorship and points to their historical legacy.

The yearbooks and almanacs printed between the beginning of the Second World War and the end of the Fifties collect rare and hardly accessible data on the Italian film industry and the professionals involved in it. As such, they are both sources, whose use can be extremely profitable in production studies, and objects of investigation that might reveal the rhetoric and the discursive strategies through which different social actors have promoted an image of that production system as a fully-fledged and rationally organized industry. The article describes these yearbooks and interprets such discourses, in order to better understand the tensions that characterize this phase of important changes for the Italian film production.