The New Neapolitan Cinema provides close analysis of the whole of this movement, which stands as one of the most vital and stimulating currents in contemporary European Cinema.

Matilda Mroz argues that cinema provides an ideal opportunity to engage with ideas of temporal flow and change. Temporality however, remains an underexplored area of film analysis, which frequently discusses images as though they were still rather than moving. This book traces the operation of duration in cinema, and argues that temporality should be a central concern of film scholarship.

Napoli/New York/Hollywood is an absorbing investigation of the significant impact that Italian immigrant actors, musicians, and directors—and the southern Italian stage traditions they embodied—have had on the history of Hollywood cinema and American media, from 1895 to the present day. In a unique exploration of the transnational communication between American and Italian film industries, media or performing arts as practiced in Naples, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, this groundbreaking book looks at the historical context and institutional film history from the illuminating perspective of the performers themselves—the workers who lend their bodies and their performance culture to screen representations. In doing so, the author brings to light the cultural work of families and generations of artists that have contributed not only to American film culture, but also to the cultural construction and evolution of “Italian-ness” over the past century. Napoli/New York/Hollywood offers a major contribution to our understanding of the role of southern Italian culture in American cinema, from the silent era to contemporary film. Using a provocative interdisciplinary approach, the author associates southern Italian culture with modernity and the immigrants’ preservation of cultural traditions with innovations in the mode of production and in the use of media technologies (theatrical venues, music records, radio, ethnic films). Each chapter synthesizes a wealth of previously under-studied material and displays the author’s exceptional ability to cover transnational cinematic issues within an historical context. For example, her analysis of the period from the end of World War I until the beginning of sound in film production in the end of the 1920s, delivers a meaningful revision of the relationship between Fascism and American cinema, and Italian emigration. Napoli/New York/Hollywood examines the careers of those Italian performers who were Italian not only because of their origins but because their theatrical culture was Italian, a culture that embraced high and low, tragedy and comedy, music, dance and even acrobatics, naturalism, and improvisation. Their previously unexplored story—that of the Italian diaspora’s influence on American cinema—is here meticulously reconstructed through rich primary sources, deep archival research, extensive film analysis, and an enlightening series of interviews with heirs to these traditions, including Francis Coppola and his sister Talia Shire, John Turturro, Nancy Savoca, James Gandolfini, David Chase, Joe Dante, and Annabella Sciorra.

Wandering Women: Urban Ecologies of Italian Feminist Filmmaking explores the work of contemporary Italian women directors from feminist and ecological perspectives. Mostly relegated to the margins of the cultural scene, and concerned with women's marginality, the compelling films Wandering Women sheds light on tell stories of displacement and liminality that unfold through the act of walking in the city. The unusual emptiness of the cities that the nomadic female protagonists traverse highlights the absence of, and their wish for, life-sustaining communities. Laura Di Bianco contends that women's urban filmmaking—while articulating a claim for belonging and asserting cinematic and social agency—brings into view landscapes of the Anthropocene, where urban decay and the erasure of nature intersect with human alienation. Though a minor cinema, it is also a powerful movement of resistance against the dominant male narratives about the world we inhabit. Based on interviews with directors, Wandering Women deepens the understanding of contemporary Italian cinema while enriching the field of feminist ecocritical literature.

DIVA sophisticated theoretical treatment of post-war Italian Cinema./div

This book draws on a growing body of work in the history and theory of children on film and applies some of these new approaches to Italian cinema for the first time. In considering issues such as gender, the transnational, mourning and filmmaking itself the book maps out a revised understanding of the child in Italian film.

This book is a complete reworking and update of Marga Cottino-Jones' popular A Student's Guide to Italian Film (1983, 1993) . This guide retains earlier editions' interest in renowned films and directors but is also attentive to the popular films which achieved box office success among the public.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year From the author of M and A Death in Brazil comes Midnight in Sicily. South of mainland Italy lies the island of Sicily, home to an ancient culture that--with its stark landscapes, glorious coastlines, and extraordinary treasure troves of art and archeology--has seduced travelers for centuries. But at the heart of the island's rare beauty is a network of violence and corruption that reaches into every corner of Sicilian life: Cosa Nostra, the Mafia. Peter Robb lived in southern Italy for over fourteen years and recounts its sensuous pleasures, its literature, politics, art, and crimes.

With a list of critically acclaimed and award-winning films, the Naples-born director and screenwriter Paolo Sorrentino has established himself as an auteur of world renown--arguably the most successful and significant contemporary Italian filmmaker. To date, he has written and directed nine films and won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe, among others. This is the first English-language collection dedicated to the prolific director, who has emerged as one of the most compelling figures in twenty-first-century European cinema. International contributors--from the UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Israel, Canada, and the US--offer original interpretations of Sorrentino's work in film and television. In an invaluable contribution to the existing literature, they examine Sorrentino's recurrent grand themes, offer new perspectives and cues for discussion, and challenge established notions about the filmmaker and his career.

Col. ill. and maps on inside covers, and detachable col. map of Naples affixed to flap of p. [3] of cover.