Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Italian Cinema Audiences
Histories and Memories of Cinema-going in Post-war Italy
by Daniela Treveri Gennari, Catherine O'Rawe, Danielle Hipkins and Silvia Dibeltulo
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
We know a lot about the directors and stars of Italian cinema's heyday, from Roberto Rossellini to Sophia Loren. But what do we know about the Italian audiences that went to see their films?
Based on the AHRC-funded project 'Italian Cinema Audiences 1945-60', Italian Cinema Audiences: Histories and Memories of Cinema-going in Post-war Italy draws upon the rich data collected by the project team (160 video interviews and 1000+ written questionnaires gathered from Italians aged 65 and over; archival material related to cinema distribution, exhibition and programming, box-office figures, and critical discussions of cinema from film journals and popular magazines of the period). For the first time, cinema's role in everyday Italian life, and its affective meaning when remembered by older people, are enriched with industrial analyses of the booming Italian film sector of the period, as well as contextual data from popular and specialized magazines.
About the authors:
Sarah Culhane is Assistant Professor in Italian at University College Dublin. From 2018 to 2021 she was a CAROLINE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow in Media Studies at Maynooth University where she led the Irish Cinema Audiences project. She holds a PhD in Italian for the University of Bristol (2017). She conducted her PhD research as part of the Italian Cinema Audiences project (AHRC 2013-2017).
Press Reviews:
"This book is a "master class" in exploring the historical culture of moviegoing in postwar Italy. Using an innovative suite of research methods drawn from the "New Cinema History," and featuring fascinating ethnographic studies, the authors chart the vibrancy of film attendance as the cultural lynch-pin of Italy in the rapidly changing 1950s. They uncover the tensions pitting local against national and systems of film distribution, and gendered dialogues about differences and similarities between Italian and Hollywood star culture. The Italian Cinema Audiences project expertly demonstrates how post-war Italy's diverse publics were drawn together into complex communities of entertainment, at a time when discussion of who was allowed to attend the movies was being negotiated and challenged across the nation." ―Kathy Fuller-Seeley, William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of Media Studies, University of Texas at Austin, USA
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic
> From the same authors:
The Non-Professional Actor (2025)
Italian Neorealist Cinema and Beyond
Moralizing Cinema (2018)
Film, Catholicism, and Power
Dir. Daniel Biltereyst and Daniela Treveri Gennari
Subject: Sociology
Post-War Italian Cinema (2010)
American Intervention, Vatican Interests
> On a related topic:
Women, Feminism and Italian Cinema (2023)
Archives from a Film Culture
Schooling in Modernity (2014)
The Politics of Sponsored Films in Postwar Italy
Fame Amid the Ruins (2025)
Italian Film Stardom in the Age of Neorealism
Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film (2016)
Cinema Year Zero
Vital Crises in Italian Cinema (2013)
Iconography, Stylistics, Politics
Back
