PIREDDA MARIA FRANCESCA

ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL. In the light of a broad interest in the subject, expressed above all by Anglo-Saxon studies, it is evident that the debate on Italian festivals is taking its first steps and focuses on specific case studies. The research intends to offer a wide-ranging and above all topical look, through a complex perspective, according to a historical and economic approach: festivals are analysed by considering their evolution, characterising elements, typologies, recurring managerial strategies, and repercussions on the territory. The intention is to focus on the national context, but not to detach it from a global view. Analysing film festivals also allows us to go through salient issues within the contemporary film and audiovisual scenario, including: the role of film festival cultural policies in supporting production initiatives of authors from economically and/or culturally disadvantaged countries; the contribution of film festivals in the creation of a film canon, analysed both diachronically and synchronically; the role, weight and visibility of female professionals, involved both in the production of the films participating in a film festival and in the organisation of the event; the role of film festivals in distribution processes and the relationship with digital platforms; the contribution of film festivals to film literacy and audience development processes. These and other crucial issues are analysed through primary (public and private archives, questionnaires, interviews) and secondary sources. The research works in synergy with the Film Festival Studies Group that arose within the Consulta Universitaria Cinema in 2022 and of which the undersigned is one of the members. The research produced a monograph, several papers and participation in national and international conferences.

MIGRATION CINEMA. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, Italy, lagging behind other Western countries, finally saw the emergence of a postcolonial memory in literature and cultural debate thanks to Italian writers and intellectuals and those from the former colonies. This was a crucial moment in the perception and construction of national identity, corresponding to a change in the political and social order: Italy became one of the countries favoured by immigration from Eastern Europe, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, China and Southeast Asia. These two phenomena have prompted recent studies on migration to identify a continuity between international and internal migration (from southern Italy to northern Italy) as well as between transoceanic migration (Italians heading to the American continent, for example) and trans-Mediterranean migration. The project aims to investigate two fronts, apparently distinct but in reality intertwined: the representation of the colonial epic and that of the phenomenon of migration to Italy from its former colonies. Then there is a third strand. Alongside this production, another has emerged since the end of the 2010s, characterised by a radical difference: the authors are not Italians born in Italy to Italian parents, but new Italians with a migrant background, i.e. individuals who have personally experienced the dramatic journey recounted by their Italian colleagues in their films, or who are their descendants. These are very often “grassroots” productions, which use the internet to make themselves known and rarely make it to the cinema. Their significance cannot be quantified in terms of audience numbers. It is symbolic, perfectly representing an unprecedented “democratisation of history”, to use Pierre Nora's expression, indicating the emergence, in the contemporary era, of memories and narratives linked to minority groups who, from being objects of discourse, are claiming the role of subjects.

MISSIONARY CINEMA. For centuries, missionaries have used images - both still and moving, like those of the magic lantern - to convert indigenous populations, but also to document their activities at home and thus obtain moral and economic support. Starting in the 20th century, the religious began to use the cinema, with films made and/or produced by them: from the first ones we know for sure - in the 1920s - the production progressively increased, constituting a very large corpus of hundreds of titles, many of which may have been lost forever, and with heterogeneous characteristics in terms of themes, languages and style. The largest group of works is made up of documentaries recounting the activities of missionaries abroad, describing mission lands (not without a certain taste for exoticism) or denouncing the difficult living conditions of communities oppressed by poverty and disease. There is no shortage, however, of fictional films, uplifting stories that tell of vocations in which the missionary is the intermediary rather than the protagonist: these include "Fiamme" (1929) by the Xaverians, a western filmed in the Parma Apennines, or "Okiba non vendermi" (1953), made by the Combonians in Sudan with indigenous actors and a plot reminiscent of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The research, which has already produced two monographs, essays in books and journals and papers at national and international conferences, aims to shed light on a still little-known film production that allows us to look at the colonial and post-colonial period in an unusual way.