Women in Italian Film Production: industrial histories and archival sources

A study day to be held at Warwick University

Friday, 15 March 2019

Organised by Karl Schoonover and Stephen Gundle

The conference aims to shed light on the labour of women in Italian cinema production from 1940s to 1970s. The conference will focus on craftswomen and other women working “below the line” on major studio productions. It will also look at women producers and directors, though in a less sustained manner. In both cases, however, the approach will remain an industrial one in order to facilitate questions about how to re-write production history. These questions will include: Through what methods can we find women working behind the scenes in cinema production in this period? How can film history best attest to the creative labour of women in the film industry in Italy during its golden years? How can we adjust or expand our given methods of industrial film history to recognise the work of women? Are there particular archival sources or methods which are most useful for revealing these otherwise obscured histories? Given the lack of scholarship on this topic and the erasure of women’s work in the existing accounts of the film industry, one aim of the conference will be to provide space for new and even experimental modes of historiography, modes that extend, complicate and even challenge conventional histories of Italian cinema.

The Producers Project is proud to announce the opening our exhibtion, Dream Makers: Italian Cinema and its Great Producers, curated in collaboration with the Cineteca of Bologna. You can catch a glimpse of the preparations here.

This exhibition takes visitors on a journey through Italian film history with the stories of the producers who made the national movie industry one of the top ones internationally between 1947 and 1975. From Gustavo Lombardo of the famous production company Titanus to Alberto Grimaldi, from Carlo Ponti to Dino De Laurentiis, from Alfredo Bini to Franco Cristaldi. Original archive materials bring to life the golden age of Italian cinema and the films that were made by a generation of talented and foresighted producers: from Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il Vangelo secondo Matteo, from Giuseppe Tornatore’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso to the wildly successful Lo chiamavano Trinità. Admission free. Salaborsa (Piazza Coperta), Bologna: 22 June - 9 September, 2018.

#Dreammakers18

Workshop: Researching Film Producers and Production Companies

A workshop on Italian industrial film history.

Click here for videos from the project's first open workshop held in June 2016 at Univesity of Warwick.