This course is designed to provide the students with an insight on the historical, cultural and aesthetic reality of Italy as represented by cinema.

After a brief introduction on the place that cinema has had on the shaping of Contemporary Italy, the course will focus on a number of films selected from the Neo-realist and Post-realist periods and from the classics, from the 60s to more recent ones.

Particular emphasis will be given to the definition of genres as the political, the melodramatic, the psychoanalytical and so on.