Italian Experimental Cinema and Moving-Image Art

This volume presents one of the first systematic inquiries into Italian experimental and avant-garde cinema in English language, thanks to contributions which deepen the history of experimental audio-visual works in Italy. Frameworks of film production, distribution and circulation, as well as theoretical discourses and emblematic case studies are investigated by this edited collection, which tries to provide a broad overview of the complex phenomena that occurred in a century of cinema beyond its industry, its market, and its conventions. The aim of this book is not to offer a comprehensive compendium, but to explore new paths in researching Italian experimental moving image, its history, and new theoretical insights into authors and their works. The volume is structured in thematic sections. Each of them includes different contributions according to two different types: plenary essays, which offer in-depth analyses on historical and theoretical features, and monographic essays, which focus on single authors, collectives, or works. Rossella Catanese (PhD) is a research associate at the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, and adjunct professor of ‘History of Italian Cinema’ at NYU Florence. Previously, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Udine and IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. Her books include Lacune binarie. Il restauro dei film e le tecnologie digitali (2013), Bill Morrison, ‘Decasia: the State of Decay’ (2023), and the collections Futurist Cinema. Studies on Italian Avant-garde Film (2017) and From Sensation to Synaesthesia in Film and New Media, co-edited with Francesca Scotto Lavina and Valentina Valente (2019). She also received the Sixth Marcel Duchamp Research Grant from the Staatliches Museum Schwerin (Germany) (2023). Jennifer Malvezzi (PhD) is a researcher at the University of Parma. She teaches New Media Aesthetics, Film History Principles, and History of Radio and Television. Her research focuses on the relationship between the moving image and other arts, experimental film and video. She has written essays for journals and volumes and co-curated several exhibitions. She is the author of the monograph Remedi-action. Dieci anni di videoteatro italiano (2015) and Taroni Cividin. Performance, Video, Expanded Cinema (1977-1984), edited with Flora Pitrolo. She collaborates with the Home Movies Archive for the “Art & Experimental Film” project, dedicated to films by Italian artists and filmmakers. Additionally, she is a member of the scientific board of the Umberto Bignardi Archive, and series editor of ExSeries, a multilingual book series devoted to experimental cinema.