Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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italiano del 1945 al miracolo economico (Italian Identity and European Identity in Italian
Cinema from 1945 to the Economic Miracle), Turin: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli.
CRISTINA DEGLI-ESPOSTI REINERT
film journals
The first Italian schedule of travelling cinematographic screenings appeared in Bologna
in 1889 and continued until 1914. Soon other film publications appeared: Il
cinematografo (1907, Rome), Lux (1908, Rome), La cinematografia italiana (1908,
Milan), Film (1914, Naples), Iride (1914, Genoa), La rivista cinematografica (1921,
Turin) and Scenario (1932–43, Rome). These mostly originated to satisfy advertising
needs but soon began to include essays concerning the educational and cultural
possibilities of cinema.
This trend continued into the 1920s when some of the more significant film journals
began. The earliest of these was Il cinema italiano (1924, Rome), the official publication
of the National Film Trade and Film Dealers. Cinematografo (1927, Rome), edited by
Alessandro Blasetti, included informed essays on Italian cinema as it went from silent to
sound, providing valuable information on the conditions of Italian cinema in late 1920s
and the birth of the first cinematographic corporations. In 1935 Intercine appeared in
Rome as the publication of the Istituto Internazionale per la Cinematografia Educativa
(International Institute for Educational Cinema). Special issues were devoted to the
Venice Film Festival, television and other related areas. It also published Ferdinando
Chiarelli’s fundamental article ‘Pirandello e il cinema’ (Pirandello and the Cinema)
before closing, after only 12 issues, in December 1935.
Bianco e nero (1937, Rome), edited by Luigi Chiarini, originated at the Centre
Sperimentale di Cinematografia. It is still published today and remains one of the most
prestigious academic journals which examines the theoretical and aesthetic aspects of
cinema. Filmcritica, the monthly review of the Italian Cinema Clubs begun in Rome in
1950, also continues to be published and is now directed by Edoardo Bruno. It presents
interviews, festival reports, book reviews and articles on Italian and foreign cinema while
also addressing general questions of film theory and aesthetics. Cinema Nuovo (1952,
Milan, Genoa, Florence), originally directed by Guido Aristarco, is still published bi-
monthly, offering panoramic overviews on the condition of cinema in Italy and abroad as
well as interviews and articles on scriptwriters and on particular aspects of the history of
the cinema.
Cineforum (Quaderno della Federazione Italiana dei Cineforum) first appeared in 1960
in Venice. Edited by Sandro Zambetti, it is still published monthly. It presents essays on
special topics and films, as well as a substantial number of film reviews. Segno Cinema
(1970, Vicenza) is published every two months and is directed by Paolo Cherchi-Usai.
Like Cineforum, it resembles the British journal Sight and Sound in presenting
specialized essays combined with a considerable number of film reviews. Cinema e
cinema (1973, Bologna) a quarterly founded by Adelio Ferrero, tackles issues of film
theory and aesthetics as well as questions related to the restoration of old films.
Entries A–Z 331
The 1990s have seen an increasing number of reviews such as Cinema/Studio (1990,
Rome), published every three months and edited by Orio Caldison. Some of them also
appear on Internet, like Voci Off (1995, Bologna) which has articles, reviews and
interviews. Cine Critica appeared in January 1996 (Rome); it is a quarterly of film
culture edited by the National Union of Italian Cinematographic Critics (SNCCI). The
first number of Close Up appeared in March 1997 (Rome). Directed by Giovanni
Spagnoletti, it is similar in format and look to Bianco e nero, offering dossiers,
interviews, and historiographic reviews.
On a non-academic level there is Ciak (1984, Rome), edited by Roberto Briglia. The
journal appears monthly and parallels the format, content and brief overview of coming
events of Premiere (the French, British, and American editions). Film. Tutti i film della
stagione (1992, Rome) is a bi-monthly which presents an exhaustive list of film
summaries and comments.
CRISTINA DEGLI-ESPOSTI REINERT
Fini, Gianfranco
b. 3 January 1952, Bologna
Political leader
While a student at Rome university, Fini joined the neo-fascist MSI, deeming it Italy’s
only real anti-Communist party. By 1977 he was national secretary of the party’s youth
movement (FDG), and in 1983 he was elected as a deputy. Backed by the party’s historic
leader, Giorgio Almirante, Fini became party secretary in 1987. Briefly pushed aside by
the radical Pino Rauti in 1990–1, Fini thereafter successfully led his party into the
‘Second’ Republic. He appeared regularly on television, and was liked for his clarity and
especially his commentary on President Cossiga’s controversial interventions, which
helped legitimize the MSI’s presidentialism. In 1993 Fini exploited the DC’s collapse to
launch the AN (National Alliance) and in 1994, allied to Silvio Berlusconi, he broke the
taboo on ‘fascist’ participation in government. Thereafter he was Berlusconi’s rival for
leadership of the Liberty Alliance (see Polo della Liberià), although his legitimacy as an
eventual prime ministerial candidate was questioned by many.
MARK DONOVAN
Fininvest
Founded by Silvio Berlusconi in 1978 as a consolidation of his building and other
interests into a single holding company, Fininvest soon moved into television, taking over
Canale Cinque and the publicity agency Publitalia in 1980, Italia Uno in 1982,
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 332
Retequattro in 1984 and then the AC Milan football club in 1986. By the late 1990s its
main fields of activities were in media (grouped together into Mediaset), publishing
(Mondadori), retail (Standa and others), and insurance and financial services
(Mediolanum and others). Berlusconi’s close relationship with Milan gave the group the
nickname ‘il biscione’, alluding to the snake on the city’s crest.
Accusations of a conflict of interest and antitrust legislation have forced Berlusconi to
gradually give up personal control of Fininvest. However, despite his relinquishing of
company posts in 1994 when he founded Forza Italia, and Mediaset and Mediolanum
being traded on the Milan stock exchange from 1996, the family has retained control with
Berlusconi’s children, Marina and Piersilvio, as executives on the board.
JAMES WALSTON
Finsider
A financial holding company founded in 1937 under the auspices of IRI to manage state
participation in the steel sector, Finsider’s major task in the postwar period became the
reorganization of crude steel production in Italy by modernizing the three existing centres
at Bagnoli (Naples), Piombino (Livorno) and Cornigliano (Genoa), and constructing a
fourth one at Taranto. Together with several more specialized plants—for stainless steel
at Terni (Perugia) and for large diameter pipes at Dalmine (Bergamo)—the productive
enterprises formed the company called Italsider. These efforts saw Italy become
Europe’s second-largest steel producer (behind Germany) and guaranteed a strong
position for Italian crude steel on domestic, European and international markets. In
subsequent reorganizations of the steel sector, several Finsider plants and mills were
decommissioned, and the financial holding itself was officially liquidated in 1989.
Further reading
Balconi, M. (1991) La siderurgia italiana (1945–1990): Tra controllo pubblico e incentivi del
mercato, (Italian Steel-Making (1945–1990): Between Public Control and Market Incentives),
Bologna: Il Mulino (a detailed discussion of all aspects of the Italian steel industry in the
postwar period).
ANTHONY C. MASI
Entries A–Z 333
Fiorucci, Elio
b. 10 June 1935, Milan
Fashion designer
The son of the owner of an elegant shoe shop in Milan, Elio Fiorucci made a bold
statement in 1962 by taking three pairs of bright plastic galoshes to a Milan fashion
magazine to be photographed. The famous photo speaks for the alternative youthful look
that Fiorucci has represented from then on. Mass and contemporary trends from rock
music to political issues have been reflected and parodied in the Fiorucci look, which
flaunts colourful parachute cloth jumpsuits, plastic and metal lunchbox ‘purses’, fishnet
stockings, fake animal fabrics, spandex and military clothing. Above all it has been jeans
which have defined the Fiorucci look, preferably in colours that are not blue but fuschia,
jade or the colour of those galoshes which first made Fiorucci a fashion industry name.
Today Fiorucci stores can be found worldwide and continue to provide an alternative to
the more conservative trends in Italian fashion.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
flag
The Italian national flag is composed of three equivalent vertical bands of green, white
and red. The colours first appeared in Italy under Napoleon, and were immediately
adopted by the Cispadane, and then the Cisalpine, Republics. Disappearing with the fall
of Napoleon, the ‘tricolour’ resurfaced in the 1830s with the Giovine Italia (Young Italy)
movement of Giuseppe Mazzini, and was prominent in the revolutionary uprisings of
1848. Having become a popular emblem of Italian aspirations, it was reluctantly accepted
by Charles Albert of Savoy alongside his own flag, was flown in the wars of liberation
against Austria and was subsequently adopted with the Savoy coat of arms at its centre—
as the flag of the United Kingdom of Italy. With the fall of the monarchy in 1946 and the
referendum and the consequent establishment of the Italian Republic, the Savoy coat of
arms was removed but the tricolour was reconfirmed as the flag of Italy and its place
enshrined by Article 12 of the constitution.
GINO MOLITERNO
Flaiano, Ennio
b. 5 March 1910, Pescara; d. 20 November 1972, Rome
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Writer, critic, journalist and screenwriter
Flaiano’s literary activity was linked to his decision to move to Rome, where he soon
came to contribute short stories and theatre and film reviews to the weekly magazines
Oggi and Il Mondo. In the meantime he began writing screenplays for films, some of
which were destined to mark the history of Italian cinema: he collaborated with Federico
Fellini on many films including La dolce vita, and he also worked with Michelangelo
Antonioni. Flaiano’s novels and plays, however, were written in the immediate postwar
period.
The late publication of Flaiano’s creative works
gave him time to refine his moral attitude and to sharpen it in the light of his own
satirical temperament. One of the main themes of his writings is the solitude of the
intellect in an era in which the arts are definitively separated from reality. All that is left
to the artist is a noble, albeit fruitless, consumption in the fire of his own efforts to
acquire knowledge. Flaiano achieves his best results in the epigrammatic, often
allegorical tale, as in his first novel, Tempo di uccidere (Time to Kill), winner of the
Strega Prize in 1947. In this respect, Flaiano finds his literary niche between the
scepticism of a man of faith such as Vitaliano Brancati and the fantastic tales of Dino
Buzzati.
Further reading
Flaiano, E. (1992) Time to Kill, trans, and introduction S. Hood, London: Quartet.
ERNESTO LIVORNI
Flash Art
Flash Art is a journal of discussion and review of contemporary art, edited and published
by Gian-carlo Politi. Appearing first in Rome in 1967 as Flash, it moved to Milan in
1971 and since 1979 the international edition has been published in English, separate
from the Italian edition, in approximately six issues per year. The masthead declares it to
be ‘the world’s leading art magazine’.
Flash Art pursues the latest trends in style and theory, and is not afraid of influencing
them. It has been vigorously postmodern (see postmodern- ism) and post-structuralist,
with long texts by artists and articles by European intellectuals and critics such as Celant
and Bonito Oliva. Politi claims some credit for the development of arte povera,
conceptual art, minimalism, performance art, the transavantgarde and neo-geo. Flash
Art also makes a point of recognizing different cultures and ethnic groups, with its
coverage of art extending to Eastern Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Given that illustrated art journals can be potent instruments of cultural imperialism,
Flash Art has at least provided an alternative to the American models.
Entries A–Z 335
Further reading
Politi, G. and Kontova, H. (1990) Flash Art: Two Decades of History: XXI years, Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press (selection of articles).
MAX STAPLES
Fo, Dario
b. 24 March 1926, Leggiuno, Varese
Actor, playwright and director
The most famous and notorious figure in contemporary Italian theatre, and 1997 winner
of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Dario Fo (together with his wife Franca Rame and their
company La Comune) terrorized the Italian bureaucratic and political establishment
throughout the 1970s with their unique brand of political theatre which aimed primarily
to provide the working class with ‘counter-information’ on the real state of national and
international affairs. This left-wing theatre for a class deprived of critical viewpoints on
current affairs by the state-owned media monopoly had its roots in the 1968 student
uprisings, but Fo and Rame had since the early 1960s been running foul of state
censorship for their irreverent and anti-Catholic positions on current affairs. In 1962 they
were thrown off a popular national television variety show, Canzonissima, over
objectionable material in some of their skits.
Fo absorbed the riches of the Italian popular performance tradition, which goes back at
least as far as the Commedia dell’Arte, and developed into a prolific playwright and
talented performer, creating his own physical performance style based on mime,
storytelling in dialect, gibberish or ‘grammelot’ derived from medieval performance, and
folk music.
Immediately after the Second World War he began an architecture degree, but quickly
became involved in theatre. His earliest performance experiences were in musical
reviews, but his marriage to Franca Rame, a member of a family touring company, gave
him the opportunity to extend his skills as a playwright to the point where by the late
1960s he was premiering a new play each year and touring it in Italy on the main
commercial circuits. The political upheaval of these years prompted Fo and Rame to shift
radically away from their role as entertainers of the middle classes; they set up
Associazione Nuova Scena, which toured their productions on an alternative circuit of
communist workers’ clubs. A subsequent break with the Italian Communist Party (PCI)
led to the formation of the theatrical collective La Comune, an extreme left-wing
‘theatrical flying squad’ which travelled rapidly and incessantly from one political hot
spot to the next, performing in popular venues and for workers in occupied factories. This
work was done at considerable personal cost and risk; at one point Rame was abducted
by neo-fascists, and in Sardignia Fo was arrested while performing a play on the coup
d’état by the military against the democratically elected communist government of
Salvatore Allende in Chile. Despite difficulties even with the hiring of venues during this
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period (due to theatre managers’ fear of the violence that was threatened by his political
opponents), Fo’s best-known play, Morte accidental di un anarchico (Accidental Death
of an Anarchist), was so popular that the company was hiring indoor sports stadia and
performing it to audiences of 10,000 or more at a time. Its function as ‘counter-
intelligence’, to inform the working class of the ‘frame-up’ of left-wing activists by the
forces of law and order, gave a pungent political immediacy to its farcical surface (an
immediacy lost in subsequent productions outside Italy, which tended to stress the
farcical elements). Perhaps Fo’s most theatrically innovative work occurred in this
period, as the shoestring conditions in which he worked necessitated great simplicity of
production. Mistero Buffo (Funny Mystery), a series of monologues based on Bible
stories, and Storia della Tigre (Tiger Story), an account of one man’s experience of
Mao’s Long March, relied entirely on Fo’s acting skills: dressed in simple black and
wearing a radio microphone, he narrated and enacted the events of the story, employing
extraordinarily inventive mime to delight the audience. The performances were always
framed in political terms to ensure their didactic impact, as were a series of monologues
he wrote with and for Franca Rame on women’s issues.
The 1980s saw a return to favour by the mainstream media, and Fo began to reappear
on television (a priceless series of demonstrations of his acting techniques was screened
on the third national television network, RAI 3). As his plays began to be produced in
translation outside Italy, he toured and lectured in Europe, England and America, and
began to direct mainstream theatre.
In 1997, Fo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (he had been shortlisted in
1975), an award which immediately provoked negative reactions from certain sectors of
Italian political and cultural life. The objections of right-wing politicians were
predictable—Fo’s fame in Italy was more as a performer than as a writer—and some
members of the literary establishment made clear their displeasure and incomprehension
at the Nobel committee’s implicit broadening of the definition of ‘literature’ to include
performance works such as those by Fo. Playwrights are not highly regarded within
literary culture in contemporary Italy, and while a playwright like Luigi Pirandello had
previously received the Nobel Prize, his plays are unmistakably literary and stand beside
a substantial narrative output. The same cannot be said for Fo: many of the published
texts of his plays of the 1970s, such as Morte accidentale and Mistero Buffo, cited by the
committee as high points of his oeuvre, are little more than transcripts of performance,
and his cultural significance is undoubtedly through his performances and his public
persona rather than through the influence of his published works. Nevertheless, as the
Nobel award seemed to testify, Fo’s reinvention and political adaptation of medieval
oral-based story-telling techniques of performance is a most valuable technical
contribution to both theatre and literature and, as such, is an important contribution to
international culture as a whole.
Further reading
Fo, D. (1991) The Tricks of the Trade, trans. J. Farrell, London: Methuen.
Fo, D. and Rame, F. (1983) Theatre Workshops at Riverside Studios, London: Red Notes (valuable
outlines of their working processes).
Entries A–Z 337
Mitchell, T. (1984) Dario Fo: People’s Court Jester, London and New York: Methuen (an
overview of Fo’s theatrical career and successes both in Italy and Europe).
TIM FITZPATRICK
Fontana
The three sisters Zoe, Micol and Giovanna Fontana were introduced to their craft in their
home town of Parma by their great-grandmother, Zeide. Zoe was the first to leave the
provincial town for Rome in 1937, where she went to work for a large fashion house. She
was soon joined by her sisters, and together they set up their own shop on the corner of
the fashionable Via Veneto where they attracted famous and influential women as
customers. Their designs also appealed to foreign actresses who had come to Italy’s film
capital. Among the personalities adorned in Fontana styles were Princes Grace of
Monaco, Jacqueline Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner and
Barbara Stanwyck. The sisters went on to conquer the world, exporting their designs to
United States as well as to other European countries, Africa and Asia. While their clothes
belong mostly to the world of high fashion, they have also produced a ready-to-wear line,
a leather line and bridal wear.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
Fontana, Lucio
b. 19 February 1899, Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina; d. 7 September 1968, Milan
Artist
Fontana’s early work was figurative and influenced by fascist artistic themes, but he soon
moved towards abstraction. In 1948 he founded spatialism (see spazialismo) which
stressed that space, movement and time were as important as colour, perspective and
form, and he would subsequently refer to his paintings as concetti spaziali (spatial
concepts). Fontana’s lacerated canvases of the 1950s, created by cutting the surface of the
painted canvas with a blade thus allowing the viewer to see through to the space behind,
challenged accepted notions of pictorial space and brought him notoriety within and
outside Italy. Fontana also experimented with ambienti spaziali (spatial environments),
often neon installations in which he attempted to extend his painting practice into a
specific environmental space. He is one of the postwar Italian artists whose work has had
a genuine influence outside of Italy and an enduring relevance to contemporary painting.
LAURENCE SIMMONS
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Fontanella, Luigi
b. 1943, San Severino, Salerno
Critic and poet
Fontanella lives in the USA, where he teaches literature at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook. He has published critical essays, poetry and novels and also edits
the journal Gradiva. In 1996 he founded IPSA, the Italian Poetry Society of America.
At the basis of Fontanella’s poetry is a sense of the dissolution of human relationships,
rapidly consumed by the flames of the quotidian. Salvation is only offered by the chance
of daily encounters, transformed into mythical occasions by the poet’s artistry.
Fontanella’s poetic idiom tends to adhere as much as possible to everyday language,
while the self of this poetry appears to be writing a sort of masked autobiography,
fluctuating between two different realities: his native Italy, left behind and rescued in
fragments of past memories or conscious efforts in the present, and the United States
where daily existence flows out of the self and forces the poet to find new linguistic
tracks in order to unite the languages of the mind.
Further reading
Fontanella, L. (1991) Round Trip. Diario in versi, Udine: Campanotto (collection of poetry which
received the Premio Ragusa).
ERNESTO LIVORNI
football
Football (calcio in Italian) is unquestionably Italy’s favourite sport, an intense passion
that engages great numbers of active participants and spectators. It began towards the end
of the nineteenth century with the formation of the first Italian football teams, Genoa
football club being the first in 1893. The first official Italian championship, played
according to the English rules of football association, took place in 1898 and was won by
Genoa FC. The FIGC (Federazione Italiana Gioco Calcio) was founded 1898 and has
remained Italian football’s governing body.
Professional teams are divided into different leagues (serie in Italian), called Serie A,
B, C-1 and C-2. The other leagues, including all the women’s teams, are officially
considered amateur ones, although in some cases the salaries paid to the players of these
leagues make them true professionals. In the course of a season, which typically lasts
Entries A–Z 339
from September to May, each team plays all the other teams in its category twice. Serie A
is the top league: the team that wins the Serie A becomes Italy’s football champion for
the year and secures the chance to represent the country in the Champions’ League
(formerly Champions’ Cup), the most prestigious of the European competitions for clubs.
Inclusion in a given category is determined by the results obtained in a single season. For
example, the teams with the four worst records at the end of the Serie A season play the
next year in Serie B, while the best four teams of Serie B move up to Serie A.
Although not lucrative per se, mostly due to the high salaries paid to the players,
owning a Serie A team is a sign of prestige and provides much publicity. Many Serie A
teams are under the control of Italy’s prominent business entrepreneurs, such as Fiat’s
Agnelli family (in charge of Juventus FC) and television tycoon Silvio Berlus-coni (AC
Milan). Most of Italy’s major urban areas are home to a team competing in one of the
professional leagues. Cities such as Rome, Milan, Turin and Genoa each host two major
football teams, and these have traditionally been the main competitors for the title of
Italian champions. Juventus FC of Turin leads the pack with twenty-five championships,
followed by AC Milan with fifteen, Internazionale FC (also of Milan) with thirteen,
Genoa FC with nine and AC Turin with eight. AC Milan was the first Italian team to
triumph in the Champions’ League in 1963, followed by Internazionale FC in 1964–5 and
then AC Milan again in 1969. Between 1985 and 1996, Italian teams have participated in
eight of the twelve finals of the Champions’ League, winning five of them. AC Milan’s
record between 1989 and 1995 was especially impressive, with three victories out of five
attempts.
A factor which contributed to these renewed accomplishments on the part of Italian
club teams was the lifting of the ban on foreign players. Italy has in fact long been home
to one of the most competitive and lucrative football leagues, attracting many
international star players. However, in 1966, after the disastrous expedition to the World
Cup held in England, a law was passed to stop the influx of foreign players. This measure
was aimed at increasing the playing possibilities of young Italian players, who might
otherwise be prevented from developing their talent by the their team’s reliance on more
famous and experienced foreign stars. Foreign players were allowed to return in 1980,
initially only one player per team and then two beginning in 1982. Today, European
Community laws overrule those of the Italian football federation, and as a consequence
there no longer is a limitation on the number of foreign players who can come from
countries belonging to the European Community. Since the mid-1990s players from
African nations have started to be considered by Italian teams, which traditionally have
looked to South America and northern Europe as the main sources for their foreign
players. This pattern of global trading of players has finally influenced Italian players as
well, who in the past rarely played in other countries. When this happened, it was usually
an end of career move to one of those countries where the level of play was somewhat
inferior to that of Italy, thus providing the chance to still compete in the main leagues, as
opposed to accepting a descent to one of Italy’s lower categories. The trend was reversed
in the 1990s when players still in their prime, including some members of the national
team, began accepting offers to play abroad.
Italy’s national team has consistently been among the world’s best. Among its major
accomplishments are the victories in the World Cup in 1934, 1938 and 1982 and the
success at the European championships of 1968. On two other occasions, 1970 and 1994,
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