Editorial

Abstract

As we send this issue off to press we note that the circumstances which made the previous Film Issue, along with publishing at large and of course life in general, so very particular, have not entirely disappeared. The COVID pandemic is still with us and certain parts of our social and work lives still unfold via virtual formats, while other experiences have brought us back face to face. As we gathered again this past summer for conferences, symposia and the collective viewing of outdoor cinema, we wondered which habits formed during these pandemic years might remain and, as scholars of media, how they may have permanently transformed production, viewing, and distribution practices. The idea of transformative practice – academic, social, artistic – is a current that runs through many of the pieces in this issue. The opening dossier, by Simone Brioni, Caterina Romeo, Rachel Johnson, and Linde Luijnenburg, builds in exciting ways on last year’s Film Issue focus topic, collaboration. The four articles describe, frame, and contextualise the making of a translingual, transcultural documentary film titled Maka. The film, a hybrid of academic scholarship and creative filmmaking, is partially a reflection on Italian Cameroonian writer and scholar Geneviéve Makaping’s life, and partially a theoretical reflection inspired by her book Traiettorie di sguardi: E se gli altri foste voi? (2001). It was conceived by Brioni in conversation with Makaping, and then created with a collaborative team that included director Elia Moutamid and producers Graziano Chiscuzzu and Ermanno Guida. The four articles published here, which are described in greater detail in the abstract that opens the section, include an analysis of Traiettorie di sguardi (Romeo), an account of the theoretical and productive origins of the documentary (Brioni), a look at the philosophies that guided its production (Johnson), and a piece situating the work of director Moutamid (Luijnenburg). The dossier itself, whose creation saw the four authors in dialogue, becomes another piece of the collaborative puzzle that seeks to find structures and voices for an anti-racist, decolonial Italian studies. Like other recent work published in The Italianist Film Issue on collaborative scholarship and editorial work, videographic criticism, and environmental criticism, this section suggests the urgency – but also the creativity and good faith – with which scholars are seeking new audiences, new formats, and new analytical tools adequate to address critically important issues in contemporary Italy. The issue also features a rich set of open theme articles. Wide-ranging in topic, they can be linked by intersecting explorations of corporality, gender, (trans)national cultures and boundaries. Lora Jury examines the depiction of women as both economic and cultural capital in films of the economic boom period. Focusing on frequent visual citation of the Esso oil company logo in films such as La Romana (Luigi Zampa, 1954), she traces the intersections of petrocapitalism and prostitution to argue that the 1950s Italian economy perpetuates and thrives on a social hierarchy that is always gendered. Jumping ahead to more recent years, Aine O’Healy and Caterina Romeo also consider questions of gendered identity, as they examine transgender performance and transnational mobility in the 2007 novel Vergine giurata by Elvira Dones and the 2015 cinematic adaption of that title by Laura