Books in the New Directions in National Cinemas series

A fascinating read combining film and Asian studies, Theorizing Colonial Cinema reveals new contexts within film theory, history, and ideologies as it centers the question of the colonial perspective and emphasizes how the present is constantly entangled with the colonial past.

During a period of heightened global concerns about the movement of immigrants and refugees across borders, Migrant Anxieties explores how filmmakers in Italy have probed the tensions accompanying the country's shift from an emigrant nation to a destination point for over five million immigrants over the course of three decades. Aine O'Healy traces a phenomenology of anxiety that is not only present at the sociopolitical level but also interwoven into the narrative strategies of over 30 films produced since 1990, throwing into sharp relief the interface between the local and the global in this transnational era. Starting with the representation of post-communist migrations to Italy from Eastern Europe and subsequent arrivals from Africa through the controversial frontier of Lampedusa, O'Healy explores topics as diverse as the configuration of migrant labor, affective surrogacy, Italian whiteness, and the legacy of Italy's colonial history. Showing how contemporary filmmaking practices in Italy are linked to changes in the broader media landscape, O'Healy analyzes the ways in which both Italian and migrant filmmakers are reimagining Italian society and remapping the nation's borderscape.

Off the screen and onto the runway!

Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human is an ecocritical study of five Italian films. It explores the ways in which on-location filming impacts the relationships between the production crew and the environment, and ultimately the story told in the resulting cinematic narrative.