A rich selection of photographs capturing regional Italian film sets from the 1940s until today, curated by Antonio Maraldi – Centro Cinema Citta’ di Cesena.
Before the Second World War it was rare, if not unusual, that Italian cinema was shot outside of the studios, immediately following the war, inspired by Neorealism, Italian cinema went into the streets and piazzas and continued to move throughout the entire peninsula. It was a practice used not only in Neorealist films but also in comedies and melodramas, commercial and independent films. A phenomenon visible in the following decades, a continuous search for new locations for cinema’s stories.
The exhibit is a testimony to the on-location production technique, documenting the chosen regional locales and highlighting the excellent work of set photographers over the past 75 years. Italy in all of its entirety is represented, from the Aosta Valley to Sicily, from small villages to large cities. Together the exhibit forms a fascinating album of places and images, sensations and characters.
The exhibit inaugurated the first edition of the cinema festival Filming In Italy, an event promoting Italy as a filming location, which will be held February 6 – 8, 2017 at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles. The festival was conceived as a link connecting other important events in Los Angeles in the upcoming months such as the TCM Classic Film Festival as well as the exhibits The Lure of Italy: Artists’ Views from the Getty Museum Collection and Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth Century Europe, both organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center and highlighting Italian landscapes.