Social Reality in Italian Films
Films can (re)construct social spaces with great accuracy. Particularly in Italian films – from postwar neorealism to later auteur cinema – artistic strategies were developed for the purpose of analyzing the way that certain social constellations are tied to a city or region.
Frame from Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
Department Michalsky has been building up a collection of Italian films (especially relating to Rome, Naples and Palermo) since 2015. Italian film – as the focus of art-historical research into the filmic construction of social spaces – has shown itself to be a fruitful resource, which we exploit through film screenings, each followed by a seminar. The application of film-studies strategies to the investigation of urban spaces is uncharted methodological territory.