edited by Marco Dalla Gassa, Francesco D’Asero, Giulio Tosi, Federico Zecca
special issue of “Cinema e Storia”, 2025

This special issue brings together a series of studies on the origins and consolidation of Italy’s major film festivals. The volume investigates a broad spectrum of events that, through their cultural, social and political significance, contributed to shaping the Italian cinematic landscape from the post-war years to the close of the twentieth century. Combining reflections on the national festival system with in-depth analyses of specific case studies, the issue examines the self-reinforcing dynamics of the festival phenomenon, focusing in particular on the historical and archival reconstruction of founding narratives and on the processes through which festivals achieved definition and legitimacy within critical discourse. The essays adopt an interdisciplinary perspective that interweaves film history with the history of Italian society, the politics of spectatorship and cinephile cultures, placing archival sources, paratexts and personal memoirs in dialogue within a shared historiographical framework.