Represents the first comprehensive reconstruction of Italian women's film cultures of the 1960s and '70s Provides an innovative, intersectional feminist methodology to cinema history, adopting stand-point theory, archival theory and addressing questions of nostalgia and anachronism Case studies enrich the understanding of cinema's socio-cultural role in Italy, and addressing, in an engaging way, key concerns for feminist cinema history Through an emphasis on women's affective and active relationship with cinema, the book offers an innovative, holistic approach that covers aspects of consumption, representation, and production Investigates, for the first time, the relationship between Italian second-wave feminism and mainstream cinema, with a comparative perspective with other national contexts 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.

About the Author
Dr Dalila Missero is post-doctoral research fellow in Film Studies at the School of Arts, Oxford Brookes University

Reviews
"This passionate and imaginative engagement with the 'archival turn' breathes new life into cultural history. Weaving a brilliant dialogue between a very wide range of theories and archival sources, Missero's refreshing methodological intervention demonstrates both the tenacity of male privilege and the existence of a feminist film culture as a form of precarious collectivity in postwar Italian film history." -Danielle Hipkins, University of Exeter



Book Information
ISBN 9781474463256
Author Dalila Missero
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press