organizing committee: Marco Dalla Gassa, Francesco D’Asero, Francesco Dongiovanni, Gabriele Landrini, Angela Bianca Saponari, Giulio Tosi e Federico Zecca
Pesaro, 16 June 2025

In June 2025, the Pesaro International Film Festival will mark its 61st edition. Founded by Lino Micciché and Bruno Torri, the festival distinguished itself from the outset as an event conceived in opposition to the institutional model of festivals, and particularly to the tradition established in Italy by the Venice International Film Festival. From the 1960s onward, Venice was joined by a constellation of smaller, more combative festivals that sought to embrace everything “new” cinema and society were generating at the time—new authors, new filmographies, new political and social struggles, new experimental forms. Just before Pesaro, events such as the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, the Latin American Film Festival in Santa Margherita Ligure, and the International Free Film Festival in Porretta had already appeared. Historiography has often grouped them together under the label of “anti-festivals,” a reflection of their alternative spirit and their closeness to countercultural movements.

Pesaro, however, would leave a deeper imprint than many of its counterparts, thanks not only to its longevity but also to a series of curatorial, organisational, and aesthetic innovations that inspired numerous other festivals. These included the adoption of thematic programmes and large-scale retrospectives; a strong commitment to “alternative” cinemas (from the various nouvelles vagues to Third World cinema, militant practices, and experimental work); significant attention to debut films; the development of horizontal structures fostering dialogue between directors, producers, critics, and audiences; a focus on circulation and distribution; the deliberate distancing from glamour and stardom; and the construction of alternative distribution circuits. Central to Pesaro’s identity was also the creation of round tables—annual conferences bringing together critics, filmmakers, scholars, and theorists—accompanied by publications. Initially produced directly by the organisers or in magazines, these publications became, from the 1970s onward, part of a stable editorial collaboration with Marsilio. Particularly memorable were the 1965–1967 conferences on cinematic language, which featured interventions from Roland Barthes, Christian Metz, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Umberto Eco, alongside directors such as Miloš Forman, Lionel Rogosin, and Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.

It is within this tradition that the study day L’irruzione della modernità. La Mostra del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro (1965–1998) (The Irruption of Modernity: The Pesaro New Cinema Festival (1965–1998)) situates itself. The initiative aims to reflect on the multiple roles the Pesaro Festival has played: its impact on Italian and international cultural and social history; its renewal of the festival model through practices of curation, sharing, networking, and alternative circulation; its redefinition of canons of taste and historiographical paradigms through conferences and publications; and the close connections it fostered between production, criticism, and academic research.