Italian Cinemas and Moviegoing. Venues, People, Management

This issue of Comunicazioni Sociali (No. 3, September–December 2024), titled Italian Cinemas and Moviegoing: Venues, People, Management, presents a comprehensive historical investigation into film exhibition, distribution, and audience reception in Italy. Framed within the methodological paradigms of "New Cinema History," the collected essays shift analytical attention from the film text to the socio-economic, spatial, and political conditions of the moviegoing experience. The volume is organized into three primary thematic areas: 1. Management and Economic Practices: Exploring historical cinema taxation, the logistical strategies of private theater circuits in the mid-1960s, and the structural market integration brought by the rise of multiplexes from the late 1990s onward. 2. Venues, Politics, and Institutions: Examining how political forces shaped exhibition spaces, including the fascist Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro networks in rural Lombardy, Italian colonial theaters in Tunisia, local political cineclubs in post-1968 Parma, and public cinema management in the Republic of San Marino. 3. Audiences and Viewing Models: Reconstructing historical spectatorship through the lens of early 20th-century etiquette manuals, ethnographic recollections of post-war male identity, and the unorthodox educational film practices implemented at the School of Barbiana.
By combining macro-level statistical data with localized micro-histories, and utilizing diverse archival materials alongside oral histories, this issue illuminates the complex "cinema machine" and its enduring role in Italian social and cultural life.