Frank Beaver – författare

Over the past few decades, Italian colonial cinema has proved to be a compelling area to explore artistic productions born during the colonial and fascist periods whose unique ideology shifted from propaganda to fiction. The films produced during the Italian colonial intervention in Africa, which lasted roughly seventy-five years, reflect cinema’s recollection of political beliefs and its aesthetic attention to colonialism while exposing its ideological contradictions. Italian colonial films mirror imperial ideology influenced by a racial hierarchy that was acted upon during the colonization of Africa.This study on images of Italian and African identities displayed in these films today invites viewers to reflect on racially constructed images that speak of justice and loyalty, values that reflect nationalist and patriotic ideals defining but also confining the identities of both Africans and Italians. The films analyzed in this book include Attilio Gatti’s Siliva Zulu (1927); Mario Camerini’s Kif tebbi (1928); Augusto Genina’s Squadrone bianco (1936). To conclude this journey through colonial discourses in Italian cinema, two examples of contemporary cinema given by Bernardo Bertolucci in L’assedio (1998) and Cristina Comencini in Bianco e Nero (2007) expand the study from colonial national and cultural identity to interracial relationships in today’s multiethnic Italy. The representations of African and Italian identities found in these two contemporary films grow into compelling visual documents of a historical connection that does not seem to move forward from its colonial mentality.These films’ analyses are helpful tools for understanding the growing racial intolerance which has been troubling Italian society in the past decade. The need remains crucial to explain the racial component of the relationship between Italy and Africa by looking at the imagery of national and cultural identity found in the films shot in Africa during the Italian expansionist intervention in the 1920s and 1930s.

In the documentary Celluloid Closet (1995), actress Susan Sarandon said films are «important – and they’re dangerous – because we’re the keepers of the dreams.» The visual media hold a powerful sway, influencing attitudes on class, gender, race, and ethnicity, politics, religion, and sexual orientation. Dangerous Dreams: Essays on American Film and Television employs aesthetic, feminist, historical, Marxist, psychoanalytic, semiological, and sociological criticism to explore five decades of film and television texts that have captivated audiences. From Ordinary People (1980) to Shutter Island (2011) and from The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971) to Sex and the City (1998–2004), the study is divided into four sections, each comprised of several essays that explore the effects of narrative and visual texts. Sections include «The Role of Literature in Film and Television», «Portrayals of Race, Ethnicity, and Sexual Orientation in Film»; «Portrayals of Race, Ethnicity, and Class in Film and Television»; and «Gender Images in Film and Television». The 16 single-authored essays that comprise Dangerous Dreams celebrate the interconnectivity of film, literature, and television and do not suggest the primacy or superiority of any of these texts, which have in common both a creative process and an immeasurable cultural impact.