TOWARDS AN ECOLOGY OF CINEMA AND HISTORY

Abstract

What are the modes, genres, and registers in which Italian cinema has dealt with the history of Italy? An apparently innocuous question, its relevance to this discussion comes from the fact that it has not yet been answered, and its implications are far-reaching for the discipline of Italian screen studies if exhaustedly pursued. Answering it implies rethinking the relationship of Italian cinema to the history of Italy from a descriptive and analytical rather than from a prescriptive and paternalistic perspective. Instead, certain moments and types of filmmaking continue to be seen as having a privileged relationship to the Italian nation and its history: neorealism, auteur cinema, the so-called cinema d’impegno. Meanwhile, the tastes of the Italian audience, whether for less culturally valued forms of cinema or for the Hollywood product that has almost always been the most watched form of filmmaking, have been pathologized; modes and registers of engagement with history exemplified in popular or genre film or in imported cinema have been regularly overlooked. It seems to me that the discipline should investigate the variety of ways in which Italians have understood and engaged with their history through the medium of film — and should not dictate the preferred forms such an engagement must take. The aim should be to articulate a comprehensive taxonomy of the different modes of engagement with the past represented by the century-plus of Italian cinema, and the taxonomy should be clarified through comparison with non-Italian material.