Entering Cinecittà. Image from Newsreel, December 6, 1946. the Cinecittà Refugee Camp (1944–1950)*
Entering Cinecittà. Image from newsreel, December 6, 1946. The Cinecittà Refugee Camp (1944–1950)* NOA STEIMATSKY Yes, they have sacked and destroyed it; the few remaining buildings accommodate only destitute, displaced families. But permit me to believe that on the highest wall, within the concealing yellow foliage, an empty movie camera continues to roll on, its lens focused on the clouds, waiting for a poet to find it, dust it off, set it finally before men and facts and, with neither fake models nor backdrops, expose it, al naturale, to our sorrow and our hopes. —Gino Avorio, “Schedario segreto,” Star I.1 (August 12, 1944) I The conversion of one of Europe’s largest movie studios, Cinecittà, to a refugee camp has always seemed an odd footnote to the chronicles of Italian cinema. However, as one recognizes its material and historical vicissitudes, its true magnitude, the duration of its existence, and the broader social and political forces that gov- erned its development, the camp emerges as a stunning phenomenon and, in effect, a prime allegorical tableau of its time. Once confronted, the existence of the camp marks our vision of postwar film history, and, in particular, of Neorealism. * Research for this project was launched with a 2004–2005 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, with additional support from the A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Fund and the European Studies Council Faculty Research Grant of Yale University. At the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome I am grateful to director Sergio Toffetti and especially to Mario Musumeci, the first who encouraged me to explore this topic.
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