This title charts the birth and development of Italian neorealism. Surveying the major creative contributions to and critical receptions of this trend in Italian postwar cinema, the book begins by tracing the roots of neorealist film and drawing parallels to neorealist fiction. It then explores the ways in which neorealist cinema positioned itself in relation to the processes of postwar reconstruction, and what relations it may be said to have established with non-cinematic practices in the redefinition of national identity. It discusses the impact neorealism has had on 1960s avant-garde cinema and on contemporary directors. It re-considers critical discourses that have emerged over the past few decades. It accounts for the revolutionary nature of neorealist film as its key practitioners conceived it.

Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture discusses cultural products-films, poetry, fiction, architectural buildings, autobiographical writing, and social media-to individuate through them the dynamics of memory. The field of analysis is Italian culture from World War II to the contemporary times, and the volume has in a gendered approach one of its focuses, offering an encompassing view on cultural memory and highlighting the similarities between gendered revisitation and revisitation of the past. The volume is divided into three sections: cultural transmissions, fractured memories, and nostalgia. In the chapters herewith the study of memory through these forms hints at a sense of transformation and often enrichment or resilience, individual or collective, that values more the present and the future rather than the past.

This is a study of the birth and development of a key movement in Italian film history. Surveying the major creative contributions to and critical receptions of this trend in Italian postwar cinema, the book begins by tracing the roots of neorealist film and drawing parallels to neorealist fiction. It then explores the ways in which neorealist cinema positioned itself in relation to the processes of postwar reconstruction, and what relations it may be said to have established with non-cinematic practices in the redefinition of national identity. This book discusses the impact neorealism has had on 1960s avant-garde cinema and on contemporary directors. It re-considers critical discourses that have emerged over the past few decades. It accounts for the revolutionary nature of neorealist film as its key practitioners conceived it.