Internationalizing Italy’s Post-war Filmmaking: Means and Contexts of Production and Circulation
Post-World War Two Italian cinema is typically remembered for its realistic narratives, impoverished interior settings and ample use of exterior shooting. Yet not every film produced in Italy between the mid-1940s and the early 1950s was filmed on location. In the aftermath of the war, film producers gradually returned to the ‘comfort’ of the studios as Italy’s production facilities reopened following periods of inactivity. Offering key examples of Italian and Italian co-produced films which came into being after the end of the war, I move beyond the neorealism film canon to observe how the industry emerged from an intense period of infrastructural, economic, cultural and political realignment. I also explore the impact that foreign investments had on Italy’s filmmaking infrastructure and assess how the mixing of labour, languages and craft practices shaped post-war films’ aesthetics and their reception at home and abroad.
Lecture by dr. Carla Mereu Keating, University of Bristol
Carla Mereu Keating is a research associate in the Department of Film and Television of the University of Bristol, working on the European Research Council (ERC)–funded project “STUDIOTEC: Infrastructure, Culture and Innovation in Britain, France, Italy and Germany (1930–60).” From 2016 to 2019, Carla was a British Academy postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol where she teaches translation and international film distribution. She has also been a visiting research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, University of London. Carla is the author of The Politics of Dubbing (Oxford: Peter Lang 2016) and has published articles and chapters on the history of film censorship, distribution, and audiovisual translation.
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