The Anatomy of Power: Italian Political Cinema, 1965–1976

Polarization? Inequality? Fake news? Impunity of the powerful and powerlessness of the weak? Mass media circus? Postcolonial tensions?

We associate all these slogans with the present day, but cinema first described them with passion and polemical eloquence when Italian filmmakers took up politics on screen at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Fired up with polemical passion, screenwriters and directors, rejecting the definitions of "good-natured" neorealism under De Sica's banner, proposed a new formula for socially engaged cinema, which not only commented on socio-political reality, but seemed to flow directly from it, shaping it and giving it rhythm (often identical to the outstanding compositions of Ennio Morricone).

 

In this review, we will watch four titles, created between 1965 and 1976, and their tone will range from countercultural ecstasy to an elegiac and gloomy tone, saturated with the pessimism of the so-called decade of lead, which the Italian 1970s turned out to be. February 4, 7:30 p.m.

Fists in the Pocket, dir. Marco Bellocchio