scholarly journals Italian Cinema and the Fascist Past: Tracing Memory Amnesia

Fascism ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-47
Author(s):  
Giacomo Lichtner
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Italian Cinema ◽  
World War ◽  
Long Term Trends ◽  
Italian Film ◽  
Second World

In Italy, cinema has contributed to constructing a paradox of memory in which the rememberer is asked to prevent past mistakes from happening again and yet is encouraged to forget what those mistakes were, or that they ever even took place. Through an examination of the long-term trends in Italian cinema about the Fascist period, this article explores its recurrent tropes alongside its recurrent absences, isolating in particular the act of killing and Italy’s African Empire as crucial absences in Italy’s memory. The dominant narrative of italiani brava gente explains popular amnesia and institutional silences that still surround the darkest and bloodiest pages in Italy’s history. From the narratives of innocence and sacrifice that populate the canon of Italian film about Fascism to the sanitised representations of Italy’s wars of aggression or the boycott of Moustapha Akkad’s The Lion of the Desert (1981), this paper argues that recurrent presences and absences in Italy’s cinematic memories of the long Second World War have not been random but coherent, cogent and consistent.

Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma: opera, melodrama and the Resistance

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine O'Rawe
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Film History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Italian Cinema ◽  
World War ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
Italian Film ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Italian neorealism is conventionally read as the authoritative cinematic chronicle of Italy's experience of the Second World War and the Resistance, through canonical films such as Rossellini'sRoma città aperta(Rome, Open City, 1945). It is important, however, to restore a full picture of the array of genres which narrated and refracted the Resistance experience in the post-war period. To this end, this article looks at a key genre that has been overlooked by scholarship, the opera film ormelodramma. In examiningAvanti a lui tremava tutta Roma(Before Him All Rome Trembled, Gallone, 1946), the article considers Mary Wood's contention (inItalian cinema. Oxford: Berg, 2005, 109) that in this period ‘realist cinematic conventions were insufficient for the maximum perception of the historical context’, and that the ‘affective charge’ of melodrama was essential for restoring this complexity. It assesses the appeal to the emotions produced by the film, and the ways in which this is constructed through the bodily and vocal performance of the operadivo, and questions the critical division between emotion (always viewed as excessive) and authenticity (seen in neorealism, the mode of seriousness) which has seen the opera film relegated to the margins of post-war Italian film history.

scholarly journals EDUCATING THE NATION: IV. SUBJECT CHOICE

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mandler
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Creative Arts ◽  
World War ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Subject Choice ◽  
Long Term Trends ◽  
Degree Level ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTThis address tracks the choices made by students at English schools (O-Level, GCSE and A-Level) and at British universities (undergraduate degree) of what subjects to study over the whole of the period since the Second World War. There are marked long-term trends towards a greater diversity in subjects studied, especially at A-Level and degree level, and this tended to reduce over time the dominance of science, to the advantage of a range of subjects including social studies, traditional humanities and latterly creative arts. These trends reflect (most of all) the growing size and diversity of the student body staying on to further study, but also the broadening of the labour market which this more diverse body of students is entering, and social and cultural changes favouring creativity and self-expression in education. The address closes with a reflection on the possible significance of a very recent halting and even a reversal of these trends in subject choice, to the apparent benefit of the sciences.

Producing Outside the Box: Creative Strategies in the Work of Betty E. Box, 1957–64

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-374
Author(s):  
John D. Ayres
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Film Production ◽  
World War ◽  
E Box ◽  
Film Producer ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
Location Shooting ◽  
Second World

This article considers the working practices of British cinema's only major female film producer during the early-to-mid post-Second World War era, Betty E. Box (1915–99). Via reference to her extensive archive at the British Film Institute and the films Campbell's Kingdom (1957), The Wind Cannot Read (1958) and Hot Enough for June (1964), the article charts how Box initially envisaged multi-generational casting for roles that were eventually taken by long-term collaborator Dirk Bogarde. It considers the manner in which she approached the diplomatic complexities of location shooting, with particular focus on Ralph Thomas's military romance The Wind Cannot Read, the first British film to be shot in India for twenty years at the time of its production. The reasoning for Box's ongoing absence, as a female creative figure, from scholarship addressing British cinema, and film production more generally, will also be addressed.

The Imperial Army Project

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

How did British authorities manage to secure the commitment of large dominion and Indian armies that could plan, fight, shoot, communicate, and sustain themselves, in concert with the British Army and with each other, during the era of the two world wars? This is the primary line of inquiry for this study, which begs a couple of supporting questions. What did the British want from the dominion and Indian armies and how did they go about trying to get it? How successful were they in the end? Answering these questions requires a long-term perspective—one that begins with efforts to fix the armies of the British Empire in the aftermath of their desultory performance in South Africa (1899–1903) and follows through to the high point of imperial military cooperation during the Second World War. Based on multi-archival research conducted in six different countries on four continents, Douglas E. Delaney argues that the military compatibility of the British Empire armies was the product of a deliberate and enduring imperial army project, one that aimed at ‘Lego-piecing’ the armies of the empire, while, at the same time, accommodating the burgeoning autonomy of the dominions and even India. At its core, this book is really about how a military coalition worked.

Rivalries Redoubled: Americans in the Levant

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Dueck
Keyword(s):  
Direct Contact ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
Second World

This chapter considers American involvement during the war years. Unlike Britain, the USA had a sizeable social and cultural network in Syria and Lebanon, owing mainly to the work of American Protestant missions. This strong educational presence provided the American government with an institutional framework around which to develop stable long-term cultural networks. Moreover, the USA's reputation for political disinterestedness and anti-imperialism endeared it to much of the local population. Where the British used direct contact between their military officials and the French teaching establishments to hinder French cultural activities, American influence on education took place through grass-roots activism and diplomatic intervention. The ties that American educators had fostered with the local population for decades provided a foundation for powerful bilateral exchanges during the Second World War.

scholarly journals Comparison of DNA yield after long-term storage of Second World War bone samples

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Lina Friš ◽  
Sara Grdina ◽  
Eva Podovšovnik ◽  
Tomaž Zupanc ◽  
Irena Zupanič Pajnič
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Dna Yield ◽  
Long Term Storage ◽  
Second World ◽  
Term Storage

New Challenges, New Elites? Changes in the Recruitment and Career Patterns of European Representative Elites

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 85-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinrich Best
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Long Term Trends ◽  
Recruitment Patterns ◽  
Western European ◽  
Expert Status ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Second World

AbstractLong term changes in the recruitment patterns of European representative elites can be described as the aggregate result of selectorates' responses to a sequence of fundamental problems challenging polities since the emergence of modern representative political institutions in the 19th century. Recent data show that some long-term trends of (Western) European parliamentary recruitment like the increase of MPs with a public sector background have reversed or plateaued since the late 1980s. At the same time a rise in turnover, a decrease of incumbency and a growing diversity of recruitment patterns can be seen in the same group of polities. This paper explores whether and to what extent these changes are linked to changes in the party systems of Western European polities and whether new trends of parliamentary recruitment are emerging. It introduces the proposition that after the 'consensus challenge' of the post Second World War era a 'legitimacy challenge' is now shaping European legislative recruitment, increasing the value of social and cultural assets of candidates that are related to their expert-status and favouring properties signalling their moral integrity.

War's End: How did the war affect Aborigines and Islanders?

1996 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-54
Author(s):  
Robert A. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Beef Industry ◽  
Prison Farms ◽  
Assimilation Policy ◽  
White Control ◽  
Second World

In the 20 years before the Second World War the frontier war dragged to a close in remote parts of north Australia with the 1926 Daly River massacre and the 1928 Coniston massacre. There was a rapid decline in the Aboriginal population, giving rise to the idea of the ‘dying race’ which had found policy expression in the State ‘Protection’ Acts. Aboriginal and Islander labour was exploited under scandalous rates of pay and conditions in the struggling north Australian beef industry and the pearling industry. In south east Australia, Aborigines endured repressive white control on government reserves and mission stations described by some historians as being little better than prison farms. A largely ineffectual Aboriginal political movement with a myriad of organisations, none of which had a pan-Aboriginal identity, struggled to make headway against white prejudice. Finally, in 1939, John McEwen's ‘assimilation policy’ was introduced and, though doomed to failure, it at least recognised that Aborigines had a place in Australia in the long term.

scholarly journals Science Diplomacy and Its Engine of Informed Decisionmaking: Operating through Our Global Pandemic with Humanity

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-450
Author(s):  
Paul Arthur Berkman
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
World War ◽  
Short Term ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Science Diplomacy ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Second World

Summary Science diplomacy is an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive (holistic) process, involving informed decisionmaking to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth across generations. Informed decisions operate across a ‘continuum of urgencies’, which extends from security to sustainability time scales for peoples, nations and our world. The COVID-19 pandemic is the ‘most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War’, as noted in March 2020 by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, when survival is once again a common interest at local-global levels. This essay introduces common-interest-building strategies with science diplomacy to operate short term to long term, before-through-after the ‘inflection point’ of our global pandemic, as the next step in the evolution of our globally interconnected civilisation.

Derailed: The Postwar End of New York City Subway Expansion

2019 ◽  
pp. 009614421989657
Author(s):  
Jonathan English
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Labor Cost ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Aging Infrastructure ◽  
Second World

New York City witnessed the construction of one of the largest subway systems in the world in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Expansion virtually ceased thereafter, and New York’s public transportation has since relied on a legacy of aging infrastructure. The explanation of this unexpected cessation is key to understanding the city’s current transit problems, and also offers valuable lessons for other cities experiencing infrastructure construction booms. Identifying the 1951 bond issue as a key turning point, this article argues that there are three convergent factors that brought about the end of subway expansion after the Second World War: political leadership distracted by disputes over administration and unable to plan for the long term; financial constraints imposed by construction and labor-cost inflation, the strained municipal budget, and declining ridership; and the New York transit authorities’ indifference to the growing demographic, political, and symbolic significance of the rapidly growing suburbs.

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