Women, Feminism and Italian Cinema: Archives from a Film Culture

Description

Italian cinema experienced its peak of domestic and international popularity in the years between the ‘economic miracle’ of the late 1950s and the social and political turmoil of the 1970s. But how did the growing development of the feminist movement in this period impact on Italian film culture? And what role did that film culture play in women’s lives? This book explores the multiple intersections between feminism and Italian cinema from the perspective of women’s everyday relationship with the medium. Drawing from a feminist approach to Gramscian cultural theory, the book builds an archival counter-history of Italian cinema in which women took part as movie-goers, activists and practitioners, by means of a collective-historical agency that challenged cinema’s patriarchal structures and strategies of invisibilisation. Cover Half-Title Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Part I Cultures of Film Consumption: Affective Spectators and Activist Audiences 1 Searching for Gender in the Audience: Cultural Discourses and Opinion Surveys 2 The Spectator in the Magazine: Cinema-going, Ideology and Femininity 3 Feminist Spectatorship and Transformative Publics: Aspirations and Legacies of Feminist Film Festivals 4 Patterns of (In)visibility: Lesbian and Queer Counterpublics 5 Feminists and Porn: Protests and Campaigns Part II Cultures of Representation: Sexuality, Race and Politics 6 Asexuality and Housework in the Anthological Comedies of the Mid-1960s 7 Ines Pellegrini: Navigating (Post)colonial Representations in the ‘Sexual Revolution’ 8 The Beginning of the End? Depoliticised Feminism in Fellini’s City of Women Part III Cultures of Production: Maps, Labour and Archives 9 Sexism and Women’s Work: Mara Blasetti, Production Manager 10 A Map of Open Questions: A Feminist Genealogy of Women Directors (1935–70) 11 A Materialist Trajectory in Feminist Filmmaking: Rethinking Labour and Consciousness-raising 12 Feminist Spaces and Knowledge Exchange: Adriana Monti’s Archive Conclusion – Feminist Film Culture(s): Collectivities, Archives and Futures Works Cited Index