Globalization, new media and the computerization of culture have outlined new landscapes and undermined notions and categories of interpretation both inside and outside FilmStudies. The theoretical definition of film has become evenmore problematic: filmtoday is "diasporic",migrant and hybrid, reproducing the destiny of the world. Film Studies over the past 20 years has moved in two directions characterized by a "heuristic of rethinking". On the one hand, Film Studies looks ahead and asks new questions (Cognitive Film Theory, Neurocinematics etc.). On the other, it looks backwards, reading both the theory and history of cinema in the light of a different conceptualization of cinema, (New Historicism, New Cultural Studies etc.) or increasing the importance given to memory (preservation, philology, restoration, neo-cinephilia in the age of the web). In the past we asked «Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?», but today the questions have become:Where is cinema? Has cinema always been what it is today?

This paper aims to present some of themain outcomes ofmy PhD thesis concerning the evolution and the economics of blockbuster movies. In order to explain the wide range and the multifaceted nature of blockbusters I propose four different perspectives of the phenomenon. The first one tries to depict the blockbuster businessmodel focusing on the notion of multisided market. Secondly, I analyze the fragmented nature of the blockbuster movie franchise linking it to the idea of the high conceptmovie. Then I refer to the notion of filmandmedia event in order to illustrate the impact of blockbusters on the media landscape. Finally I suggest a consideraton of the notion of restyling to examine the friction between uniqueness and repetition that characterize the contemporary high budget film production.

The studies about cinematographic genres represent, in many ways, an extension of the literary critics on genres, from Aristotle onwards. This is one of the reasons why a certain tradition of formal analysis on films didn’t take them into any account, rather favouring the aesthetic dimension concerning auteur films and the reflection about image. The American scholar Stanley Cavell, although he borrows a set of theoretical tools inherited by classical rhetoric, performs an original philosophical operation, renewing the concept of genre and, above all, providing an innovative reading of the films, with particular reference to the Hollywood of the Thirties and the Forties. It’s in this very cinematographic context that Cavell places the category called «the melodrama of the unknown woman»: protagonist is an emblematic typology of woman, a central figure in what can be considered a real philosophy of genres.

Only since the Eighties of the last century, in Italy filmhas been institutionally considered as a cultural, rather than a commercial item. So it has been given a systematic, academic and ethical disposal to the conservation and restoration practices. The introduction of the numeric information among the images systemallows awide flexibility of action on images, although it is bound to numeric encoding and decoding systems. A case study for the digital processes is a restoration project planned on Ballet mécanique, cubist painter Fernand Léger’s masterpiece of the European Twenties Avant-garde, that the Eye Filminstitut decided to restore in a unique coloured copy.

Contemporary theory often reflects on the existence of a “European cinema”, with reference to the ongoing geopolitical changes in this area. Beyond the attention to international co-productions and the exclusive focus on the work of diasporic and exilic filmmakers, my research addressed to the representation of multiple imaginaries in European cinema, both “accented” and mainstream.This essay faces some aspects of the transnational approach to European cinema, in order to underline the relevance of “multiple occupancy” in the construction of identities. Furthermore, through a brief analysis of Bend It Like Beckham, the essay will explain the intertwining of identification and desire (Fanon) for the construction of a rhizomatic identity (Glissant) and of mestizaje (Anzaldúa).

Intercepting the current debate dealing with the media specificity of cinema, the essay sketches a research project aiming to test the possibility of funding Postcinema Studies. Assuming an experiential approach, the exploration takes into account the newforms of filmic experience as cinema seemingly leaves its own precincts and finds newexpressing solutionswithin everyday encounters. Starting fromthe emergence of original imagepatterns in different contexts of daily life, the observation focuses on the mechanisms which mould cinematic experience into particular configurations, defined here as space-image. This category is analysed through the idea of design, intended as a set of transformation options able to (re-)shape experientialmaterials. This allows it to reframe the presence ofmoving images in a perspective of organic integration and texture, enabling on the one hand to identify the new places of cinema in our time, and on the other to depict new research directions.

Through a short survey of the sexualisation of Italian media and culture during the Sixties and Seventies and through the analysis of the cineromanzo drawn fromthe sexy comedy Quante volte… quella notte (Mario Bava, 1971), this essay aims to trace a brief history of the Italian sexy cineromanzi of the Seventies, highlighting their particular relationship with contemporary exploitation movies and adult magazines.

The history of Cinecittà has been studied, developed and addressed only in terms of film production. Its major structural and architectural features however, have remained in a sort of twilight period formore than seventy years. It is certainly not easy to find the material needed for the reconstruction and understanding of the motivations and stylistic choices, the economic, political and architectural elements which are at the origins of Europe’s largest film studios project. But we know that, even if it is going to be a winding road, it is a viable one. The starting point are the reasons and the facts behind the location of the studios in Via Tuscolana, which had been strongly desired by General Director for Cinematography Luigi Freddi, Hon. Charles Roncoroni (owner of Cines warehouses) and designed by architect Gino Peressutti - with the unqualified support of the Duce. The essay will take into account the events preceding the laying of the cornerstone: from some key events and the involvement of key professional and political figures to the preliminary study of European studios by Cinecittà architect Peressutti.

This article focuses on the relationship between the history of spiritualist séances in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the introduction of film. It examines in particular two cases: the convergence of psychological studies on magic and spiritualism with early film theory, signalled in particular by Hugo Münsterberg’s involvement in both fields; and the trajectory fromspirit photography, a spiritualist practice that was based on the appearance of spectres on the photographic plate, to the trick movies of early cinema. The conclusion sets the relationship between beliefs in spirit and fictional representation of ghosts in film as a promising field of inquiry for contemporary film studies.

This study of the Chaplin bibliography 1985 to 2011 enlightens first of all the paradigmatic role of this artist for any research about critical writings and about their Darwinian evolution. The research focused on the renaissance of Chaplinian studies after the famous biography Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson, and the discovery of the accurate work of Georges Thierry Mathieu about the Keystone period, has permitted the individuation of the very birth of a philological method in cinema studies.

Bergman’s cinema defines the possibilities of a perceptive horizon in which the experience of passing time becomes tangible. On the basis that the analysis of themise-en-scene of time can be a useful field of research, this essay highlights the process through which Bergman defines a complex temporal horizon, in which the phenomenological dimension of the linear passage of time merges with, and often turns into, a subjective perception of passing time, creating a syncretic relationship between the quantitative time of the action and the qualitative time of the sensation.