Italian Film Directors in the New Millennium - Hardcover

"While seeking to characterise the oeuvre of individual fin-de-siecle-new millennium Italian directors, this volume also bears witness to the economic, political and even social constraints against which they struggle to create serious cinema in an increasingly hard-nosed, over-commercialised world. This collection of essays will prove invaluable in any serious attempt to understand the deep-rooted connections between cinema and society in contemporary Italy." -Prof. Doug Thompson, University of Hull "Many of the films featured in this volume stand resolutely on the margins-and rightly so, since in the absence of an agreed centrality, the margins are more worthy to be focused on than the centre. In this work focused on the margins, the role of individual authors is of paramount importance. We are not talking here of 'auteur' cinema in the traditional sense but of distinct and distinctly authorial voices crying from the wilderness and demanding to be heard. The success of Paolo Sorrentino's Il divo and Matteo Garrone's Gomorra is perhaps a sign that Italian cinema is moving to regain the centrality it appeared to have lost. But centrality does not necessarily mean consensus. There is still a lot of work to be done on the margins, and in worlds about which there is not likely to be agreement for some time. Meanwhile, the story told in this volume should be read as the story of a new beginning." -Prof. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Queen Mary, University of London

This collection of essays examines the themes and styles that characterize the new millennium work of Italian film directors from different generations. These artists range from Marco Bellocchio, Dario Argento, Marco Tullio Giordana, and Nanni Moretti, who made their name in the 1960s and 1970s, to Oscar winners such as Gabriele Salvatores who forged their careers in the late 1980s. The volume also features essays on Cipri and Maresco, Emanuele Crialese, Cristina Comencini, as well as work on successful new millennium directors such as Paolo Sorrentino and Matteo Garrone whose controversial films examine the nature of interpersonal relations and the individual's rapport with Italian society today. The essays illustrate the way in which contrasting images of Italy and its provinces emerge in the work of different directors; what links new millennium Italian screen protagonists, film directors, and even individual spectators is often a sense of being at the centre of oppressively converging social, economic, and political forces and having diminishing opportunities and space for self-realization. The contributors to the volume are academics who have also worked as film critics, visual artists, film industry administrators, and, indeed, as film-makers, and the book's foreword has been written by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith.