Italian Film Directors in the New Millennium

Book excerpt: This collection of essays examines the themes and styles that characterize the new millennium work of Italian film directors from different generations. These artists range from Marco Bellocchio, Dario Argento, Marco Tullio Giordana, and Nanni Moretti, who made their name in the 1960s and 1970s, to Oscar winners such as Gabriele Salvatores who forged their careers in the late 1980s. The volume also features essays on Ciprì and Maresco, Emanuele Crialese, Cristina Comencini, as well as work on successful new millennium directors such as Paolo Sorrentino and Matteo Garrone whose controversial films examine the nature of interpersonal relations and the individual’s rapport with Italian society today. The essays illustrate the way in which contrasting images of Italy and its provinces emerge in the work of different directors; what links new millennium Italian screen protagonists, film directors, and even individual spectators is often a sense of being at the centre of oppressively converging social, economic, and political forces and having diminishing opportunities and space for self-realization. The contributors to the volume are academics who have also worked as film critics, visual artists, film industry administrators, and, indeed, as film-makers, and the book’s foreword has been written by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith.