Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema [Hardcover]

Ruth Ben-Ghiat provides the first in-depth study of feature and documentary films produced under the auspices of Mussolini's government that took as their subjects or settings Italy's African and Balkan colonies. These empire films were Italy's entry into an international market for the exotic. The films engaged its most experienced and cosmopolitan directors (Augusto Genina, Mario Camerini) as well as new filmmakers (Roberto Rossellini) who would make their marks in the postwar years. Ben-Ghiat sees these films as part of the aesthetic development that would lead to neo-realism. Shot in Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, these movies reinforced Fascist racial and labor policies and were largely forgotten after the war. Ben-Ghiat restores them to Italian and international film history in this gripping account of empire, war, and the cinema of dictatorship.

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Winner, 2014 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Professor of Italian Studies and History at New York University.

Italian Fascism?s Empire Cinemarestores [empire films] to Italian and international film history and offers a case study of the intertwining of war and cinema and the unfolding of imperial policy in the context of dictatorship.

In bringing this cinematic history back to life, Ruth Ben-Ghiat treads a path of uncompromising empiricism and subtle textual analysis, which connects the multiple spaces of history and film and significantly advances our understanding of Fascist Italy.

A pathbreaking study of Fascist-era films set in Italian colonies in North and East Africa, Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema represents a major contribution to multiple fields, from the history of Italian Fascism and interwar European cultural politics to the history olC-