Cinema and Media Studies

New book by professor Mauro Resmini

Italian Political Cinema explores how films have reinvented the link between popular art and radical politics in Italy from 1968 to the early 1980s, a period of intense political and cultural struggles also known as the long ’68. The book conjures a multifaceted, complex portrayal of Italian society. Centered on emblematic figures in Italian cinema, it maps the currents of antagonism and repression that defined this period in the country’s history. Resmini explores how film imagined the possibilities, obstacles, and pitfalls that characterized the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transition. From workerism to autonomist Marxism to feminism, this book further expands the debate on political cinema with a critical interpretation of influential texts, some of which are currently only available in Italian.

Available in open access edition and as pdf download.

Professor Resmini recently appeared on the New Books Network podcast to discuss the book. You can listen to the conversation here.

Film Festival: Il Cinema Ritrovato ON TOUR

Il Cinema Ritrovato ON TOUR film festival took place between March 9 and March 12. We celebrated world cinema with four days of screenings and discussions. The films featured at the festival came from Angola, Cuba, India, Italy, Philippines, and more, and the  festival, which took place on the UMD campus and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was open to the public.

Click HERE for more information about the festival and this year's program.

The festival was organized by the Italian Program and the Program in Cinema and Media Studies, with the help of the Arts for All initiative at UMD, the Department of French and Italian at UMD, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UMD, the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at UMD, the School of Music at UMD, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

New book by professor Hester Baer

Acclaimed as postwar Germany's first feminist film, Ula Stöckl's The Cat Has Nine Lives disappeared from view shortly after its 1968 premiere when its distributor went bankrupt. Although it laid the groundwork for the flourishing feminist cinema that emerged in West Germany and beyond during the 1970s, Stöckl's vibrant film long remained largely unknown. Yet it is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it debuted half a century ago. Stöckl's film follows the intertwined stories of five characters to explore the possibilities for and limitations on women's subjectivity, desire, friendship, work, and artistic expression in a society defined by gender inequality. Restoring this singular film to its rightful place as a German film classic, Hester Baer argues that The Cat Has Nine Lives forms an important aesthetic and theoretical precursor to the unfolding cinefeminism of later decades.

Professor Caroline Eades receives Residency Fellowship at the Camargo Foundation

Dr. Caroline Eades, professor of Cinema and Media Studies and French, has won the prestigious Residency Fellowship at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Dr. Eades will spend time at the Camargo Foundation during the Spring 2023 semester. The residency will support her current research project, "Habib Benglia: An Invisible and Omnipresent Figure of the Other in French Cinema," which consists in examining the contributions of the first actor of African origin in French Cinema and puts Benglia's career in parallel with the history of live performance and modern theater on the French stage from 1912 to 1960.