Working on my research project at the University of Bristol has allowed me to reconsider the approaches used to explore topics and fields of studies such as Italian cinema, Italian masculinities, cinema and memory, as well as film audiences and cinema-going experiences. Accordingly, I have enriched my RESEARCH SKILLS and my ACADEMIC CURRICULUM (11 research papers and conference presentations; 14 publications).
Since I began exploration of the Italian national cinema of the 1940s-1960s from the perspective of gender and generation, it is worth noting that – in both past and recent studies of Italian cinema within my academic national context – the research has highlighted the lack of detailed investigations of the formations of gender subjectivities in audiovisual culture. Hence, the main RESULTS of this research may be summarized as follows:
A. The reconsideration of Italian cinema of the mid-1940s to early 1960s in the light of up-to-date
methodologies – namely those from the field of ANGLOPHONE ITALIAN CULTURAL STUDIES – capable of treating film forms as more than aesthetic works and thus expand their meanings in terms of social and cultural practices related to a specific historical era.
B. Thus, adopting this approach allowed for the examination of this national cinema and its intersections with consumption, production, entertainment and economics. Furthermore, it enabled the exploration of textual formations as CULTURAL PRODUCTS and the ways in which this cinema can be considered as an INSTITUTION managing and selling representations and identifications of gender.
C. The promoting, as part of the project, an ETHNOGRAPHIC SURVEY that contests the formalist assumption that film texts are privileged sites of inquiry, and that instead also considers their consumption. This survey assisted in the understanding of the film viewing experience as part of a larger set of cultural and social rituals rather than studying it as simply another filmmaking practice.
Both my ongoing research on the young Italian man in cinema and the related monograph could have a positive spillover effect in relation to the increasing use of THERAPEUTIC PRACTICES OF REMEMBERING in the context of healthcare being carried out in Italy and in many other European countries. As a matter of fact, the importance of SHARING MEMORIES FOR OLDER PEOPLE – especially when these recollections form part of a cultural heritage where cinema had a significant role in shaping the national belonging – plays an important function in addressing the key challenges posed by an aging population, the rise in dementia and the crisis of care for the elderly. I am thus interested in linking my research to other activities concerning the THERAPEUTIC VALUES of stimulating, collecting, and sharing memories (in cognitive therapy, in reality orientation with people suffering from dementia, in providing stimulation for confused elderly people, and so on).
Additionally, my research results offer A SOLID PLATFORM FOR FURTHER PROJECTS capable of affirming the cultural value of ordinary people’s experiences with cinema and of their cinema-going memories – since it was the central medium in Italy at the time (Casetti, Fanchi
2002; De Berti 2000) – by means of research activities, public dissemination activities, archival production, and oral history practices.
