Series

New Trends in Modern and Contemporary Italian Cinema

New Trends in Modern and Contemporary Italian Cinema is organized by IU’s Department of French and Italian, in the College of Arts and Sciences, and each year feature several films, documentaries, shorts, and several dozen paper presentations. Antonio Vitti, IU professor of Italian cinema, founded the annual symposium to showcase a revitalized film industry in Italy. Scholars and film fans from across the country and around the world gather on the Bloomington campus to discuss many aspects of modern and contemporary Italian production. Each year, a contemporary Italian filmmaker is highlighted and invited to present four of their feature films to a public audience followed by a Q&A.

Papers presented focus on a wide array of topics, including new directions in criticism, financial and political dynamics in film production, analysis of individual films, development of new authorial visions, the relationship to other national cinematographic traditions and films, intersections between film and other arts (photography, music, literature, etc.), “Italophone cinema” coming from the Americas, Australia, Africa, the Mediterranean world or other countries, the representation of family and gender, the issue and experience of otherness, and the search for cultural and spiritual identity.

This Tenth Annual Film Symposium on New Trends in Modern and Contemporary Italian Cinema is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of French and Italian, Mary-Margaret Barr Koon Fund, Olga Ragusa Fund for the Study of Modern Italian Literature and Culture, College Arts and Humanities Institute, Provost Lauren Robel J.D., and IU Cinema.