Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies International Conference: Re-examining the past and envisioning the future of Italian cinema and media

Event Details

The Women in Italian Film Production team presented the project at the 2024 edition of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies International Conference with the panel “Women in Italian film production: Industrial histories and gendered labour, 1945-1985”. The team presented three aspects of the research that highlight the challenges and complexities inherent in a project of this kind. The research, building on existing feminist film history, aims to investigate the place of women in Italian cinema by looking at a diverse range of professional roles.

After providing an overview of the project, Dibeltulo’s paper reflected on a number of methodological questions in relation to the process of doing feminist film history through the archive. In particular, it focused on the issues of collaborative work and unfinished films, while considering the opportunities offered by collaboration with cultural institutions in terms of shaping feminist archival practices.

Gundle’s paper considered the challenges involved in assessing the career of screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico, who threw away many of her papers and always considered herself an ‘artisan’ rather than an ‘artist’, both factors which have contributed to the very limited scholarly attention that has been paid to the most prolific and significant of postwar screenwriters. You can view Gundle’s presentation below.


Treveri Gennari’s paper explored the role of oral history in the investigation of women’s labour in the Italian film industry. It presented the case studies selected by the project and the methodological challenges of using oral history as a feminist research approach.

For further details see the conference abstract.

Barbara Corsi

Researcher

My research interests include distributed robotics, mobile computing and programmable matter.