Positif and Cahiers du cinéma both devote numerous covers and interviews to Nanni Moretti, while Film Comment criticizes Moretti’s autarchic cult. We moreover noted the difference between the French and the U.S. The lack of interest of the international specialized press for such cases such as Lo Chiamavano Jeeg Robot/They Call Me Jeeg by Gabriele Mainetti, or the films of Cristina Comencini, Ferzan Özpetek, Checco Zalone and other successful Italian titles, shows clearly an ongoing interest in auteur cinema still prevails over popular films in the international press. These directors are close to the field of the documentary, and their works are understood more as “festival films” (often in co-production with France) than titles for the domestic market.
Aside from Alice Rohrwacher, Gianfranco Rosi and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, there are a series of prevalent names – mainly linked to the so-called “cinema of the real”, such as Francesco Munzi, Roberto Minervini, Pietro Marcello, Jonas Carpignano, Claudio Giovannesi, Alessandro Comodin, Stefano Mordini, Davide Del Degan, Yuri Ancarani – that are generally less celebrated in Italy. Many contributions are dedicated to the most famous auteurs: those active since the 1960s, such as Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, the Taviani brothers, Nanni Moretti, Dario Argento, but also the pioneers of the last few decades such as Paolo Sorrentino, Matteo Garrone, Luca Guadagnino and Marco Tullio Giordana.
The obituaries total 27 pages in Cahiers du cinéma and 31 in Positif but none in Film Comment. Reports on audiovisual policies take up 24 pages of Cahiers du cinéma, and 6 of Positif and Film Comment alike, whereas content on Italian festivals (or festivals dedicated to Italian cinema) occupy 36 pages of Cahiers du cinéma, 156 of Positif, and in Film Comment 36 pages. Film heritage amounts to 131 pages in Cahiers du cinéma, 325 in Positif and 69 pages in Film Comment. Between 20, Cahiers du cinéma dedicates 191 pages to contemporary cinema, Positif 296 pages, and Film Comment 76. Film Comment Online is a web resource, so we counted just the number of articles and not the pages).
The data was organized both in number of pages and numbers of articles and contributions (n.b. This contradicts therefore the expectations of a prevalent interest in film heritage, in view of the broader circulation trends of Italian cinema in film libraries, cultural institutes and arthouse cinemas, which are mainly interested in Neorealism or “auteur cinema”. We noted that special attention was devoted to contemporary productions, often more frequently than to the big names of film culture in the past. Though these journals overall dedicate little space to Italian cinema, there is a wide range of related information which also appears in short reviews, articles, and press releases. Most of the content dedicated to books on cinema and DVD releases has been included in the section on film heritage. We verified how many pages include information on Italian cinema, and developed selection criteria based on chronology, between contemporary cinema and film heritage, and content, among the articles dedicated to audiovisual news or policies, festivals and the obituaries. We undertook quantitative and qualitative analyses of the collected data and content, recording the number of articles, and studying the differences and similarities in the assessment of film media as compared to the Italian market.
Certain pivotal stakeholders cooperate in the circulation and valorization of Italian cinema in critical assessment, reviews, and interviews, alongside marketing of Italian titles in the home video market, and curatorial initiatives in the institutional frameworks of cinematheques, museums and cultural institutes. We collected data in the specialist press regarding the diffusion and promotion abroad of Italy’s national cinematographic culture.
3/2018 of the journal Comunicazioni Sociali, in the issue “The International Circulation of European Cinema in the Digital Age”. An extended paper on this research will be published in no. Emiliano Morreale and I, at the Sapienza University of Rome, collaborated on a survey of its critical reception in the main international film journals in France and the United States, by mapping, cataloguing and the digitizing articles from Cahiers du cinéma and Positif in France, and Film Comment in the United States. For the Research Project The International Circulation of Italian Cinema the other project collaborators have proposed a variety of different ways to analyse the forms of distribution and circulation of Italian cinema abroad.