Filmhistory 30 1 03 PDF

The Cineguf Years: Amateur Cinema and the Shaping of a Film Avant-Garde in Fascist
Italy (1934–1943)
Author(s): Andrea Mariani
Source: Film History, Vol. 30, No. 1, TOWARD A GLOBAL HISTORY OF AMATEUR FILM
PRACTICES AND INSTITUTIONS (Spring 2018), pp. 30-57
Published by: Indiana University Press
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ANDRE A MARIANI
The Cineguf Years: Amateur Cinema and the Shaping

of a Film Avant-Garde in Fascist Italy (1934–1943)
ABSTRACT: In 1934, Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime firmly intervened in the crisis of
Italian cinema and the shaping of a national film culture. Among its major actions, the
regime centralized all the cine-clubs, film associations, and amateur cinema organizations
within the Fascist University Groups (Gufs). Their objective was to reform amateur film
practice toward what we might call a committed, rationalized, and top-down-driven
avant-garde. This article will examine how amateur filmmaking practices were transformed
into an instrument that served the totalitarian state, as well as how a semantic shift from
the notion of amateur to experimental cinema took place in relation to the actual mech-
anisms of cinematic distribution, exhibition, and production.
KEYWORDS: Italian amateur cinema, Cineguf experimental cinema, institutionalization,

avant-garde film, Fascist cinema
INTRODUCTION
In the 1920s, the cultural, economic, and technological conditions that
brought about the global establishment of amateur cinema were closely tied to
the figures that promoted the development of an avant-garde culture. Patricia
Zimmermann discusses their common genealogy and reciprocal influences.1
Malte Hagener—drawing on Thomas Elsaesser’s work2—identifies the inextri-
cable interrelation between modernism, modernity, and modernization that
shaped the processes and tensions of avant-garde film movements during
the interwar period, as well as the emergence of European cinema culture.3
This article expands on such scholarship by including the ideological context
of the totalitarian regime of Fascist Italy. By doing so, the fate of amateur
cinema during Mussolini’s rule will be discussed as the institutionalization
of an Italian film avant-garde movement caught between reactionary and
revolutionary forces.
Film History, 30.1, pp. 30–57. Copyright © 2018 Trustees of Indiana University. doi: 10.2979/filmhistory.30.1.03
31
The emergence of Italian film culture between the second half of the
1920s and the beginning of the 1930s was influenced by two fundamental fac-
tors: the emergence and reorganization of the cine-clubs and associations for
amateur filmmakers, and the provisions for the promotion of educational cin-
ema.4 These factors led to the standardization of the reduced 16mm format in
the field of instructional and educational cinema.5 In Italy, the standardization
of the 16mm format provided an opportunity for a process of centralization and
institutionalization of amateur filmmaking practices to take place. The process
radically transformed the tradition that had emerged in the previous decade,
which was as vibrant as it was disorganized. During 1934 the complex institu-
tionalization of Italian amateur cinema and the establishment of a so-called
Cinema Sperimentale began to take place. When using the expression in the
following pages—which literally means Experimental Cinema—I am referring
to Italian independent or amateur short films, mostly shot in 16mm by young
cinephiles. Despite certain associations with the avant-garde, in this historical
context the term Experimental Cinema does not have the same connotations
as it does in the US during the postwar period. In Italy during the 1930s, this
expression eventually came to replace what had previously been understood
as amateur film. This article will delineate the processes of institutionalization
of Italian amateur cinema and the rise of the Cinema Sperimentale during the
Fascist regime and focus on the semantic shift from amateur to experimental
in relation to film distribution, exhibition, and production. These developments
represent an exceptional instance of an ideological mobilization of the avant-
garde film movement and demonstrate how amateur filmmaking practices
were transformed into an instrument at the service of a totalitarian state.
In addition to its sociopolitical significance, Cinema Sperimentale produc-
tion in the 1930s certainly deserves a place in Italian film historiography because
of both the impressive number of films produced (more than five hundred shorts
in ten years that we know of currently) and their overall quality. This history is
also important as a necessary passageway toward understanding the intercon-
nected development—both technical and aesthetic—of neorealist cinema, as well
as the proximity and exchange between documentary realism and avant-garde
aesthetics (which took place during this period and ultimately led to the renewal
of Italian cinema). Documentary realism and avant-garde aesthetics in Cinema
Sperimentale contributed to the larger theoretical debates on Neorealism as well.6
THE ASSOCIATION: THE ORIGINS AND
INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE CINEGUF
In 1926, the cultural association Circolo del Convegno—headed by Enzo Fer-
rieri in Milan—incorporated a filmmaking society alongside its literary and
ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s
32
theatrical activities. This new organization became known as the Cinecon-

vegno.7 Ferrieri was instrumental in creating the cine-clubs, which greatly influ-
enced the reorganization of the Italian film industry following the disastrous
1920s.8 Ferrieri’s initiative was supported by two intellectuals who were already
his collaborators in the journal Il Convegno: Giacomo Debenedetti and Massimo
Bontempelli. In 1928, the former created the Cinema d’eccezione in Turin.9 The
latter founded the Cine-club Italiano in Rome in 1929.10 During this phase, Ferri-
eri was a guiding figure, in addition to having been a direct source of inspiration
for both Bontempelli and Debenedetti.
Both intellectuals characterized the importance of their endeavors as
serious and concrete responses to the long-standing need for a rebirth of
Italian cinema, which had been a central and critical topic in Italy for the
entire decade.11 “The establishment of the cine-clubs, of which the first record
are these very words of mine,” Bontempelli writes in the introduction to the
program of the Cine-Club Italiano, “is therefore closely related to the famous
‘rebirth of Italian cinema’ about which you have heard a lot.” According to
Bontempelli, a need to establish and organize a thriving film culture emerges
clearly: “We want to foster the creation of a new class of filmmakers: this is
the first, fundamental goal toward the rebirth of Italian cinema.” He continues
bluntly, “the Cineclub is the only true hope for a rebirth.”12 In the program
of the Cinema d’eccezione, Debenedetti also stressed the need to establish a
specific culture with a corresponding level of expertise: “the cinema d’eccezi-
one that is now emerging in Turin takes on the task of helping audiences to
develop a specific taste for cinematographic works. It wants to promote the
use of strict cinematographic criteria when judging a film.”13 We will return
to the notion of expertise as a key concept that will shape the Fascist film
culture of the period.
As far as their objectives, these first film associations focused on the
organization of conferences and screening events in the hopes of encourag-
ing the publication of more works about cinema. Indeed, a closer look at their
program reveals that Bontempelli’s cine-club offered a very structured initial
model which was reproduced, with progressive changes, in the statutes of the
cine-clubs that developed later throughout Italy:
1. First of all, to screen all those artistic, d’eccezione, experimental, avant-

garde, etc. films whose importance cannot be escaped by anyone inter-
ested in making cinematic art . . . with the name of art films, we are
pointing to those films that, on the basis of a concrete reality, are able
to reach an integral cinematic expression. Of course, such productions
must not be confused with work that is straining, abstract, etc.
Film History | Volume 30.1
33
2. To showcase those films that, for political, social, religious and moral
reasons, are not available at common screening venues, but . . . are
extremely interesting to scholars. For example, Russian films, New York
Israeli theatre films, race films from Chicago, German propaganda films,
[and] national documentary films produced by individual countries.
3. To showcase informative, documentary, and educational films produced
privately.
4. To showcase films by amateur filmmakers.
5. To showcase those commercial films that, for various industrial reasons,
have not reached us and never will ( for example, the many Charlots,
Langs, etc.) that we have never seen. (emphasis in original)14
Alongside the impressively exhaustive program that aimed to rediscover
a vast array of film productions—mostly unknown or marginally discovered in
Italy—an important element of this model is the distinction between experi-
mental films and amateur films; during this period, the two terms were not
yet used synonymously. But the distinction between these two notions—which
we will explore in detail shortly—is not always clear, and they were not mutu-
ally exclusive. As we will see, during the institutionalization of the Cinema
Sperimentale practice, the discussions regarding the definition of experimental
gradually acquired a higher and more specific degree of cultural and political
relevance.
An initial reaction to these initiatives from the world of amateur cinema
is seen in the work of Giacinto Solito, author of the introduction to Cinematogra-
fia per tutti: Guida pratica per cinedilettanti (Cinema for all: The practical guide
for amateurs), which was written by the engineer Ernesto Cauda in 1931. In the
publication that appeared in the journal Cinematografo, titled “Cine-clubs,”
Solito admits that “for the sake of cinema, the clubs are indispensable because
they represent the parliaments of the film art,” and that “they are very useful
for the creation and enforcement of canons and aesthetic norms.” Nonetheless,
in reference to Bontempelli’s initiative, Solito declares: “the Cine-Club Italiano,
since its second meeting, has clearly shown that it is not complying with the
objectives for which it was founded.” The main point of his criticism is the elitist
dimension of the cine-clubs, which became one of the frequent sources of con-
flict in this debate: “The inaugural evening was garish with tail suits and jewelry
[. . .]. The first meeting was not about discussing, having a debate would not have
been appropriate . . . but at the second, third, fourth . . . at the tenth meeting . . .
discussion is necessary, some friendly opposition.”15 As this reaction demon-
strates, while they presented themselves as a response to the need for the rebirth
of Italian cinema, and as “the one true school of cinematographic art meant
34
to prepare the new generations for the act of creation,” the cine-clubs were
supported by two institutions that were neither new nor representative of the
youth: the Ente Nazionale per la Cinematografia (National Agency for Motion
Picture, a mixed private-public distribution company controlled by the Fascist
Corporation for the Spectacle) and the Istituto Nazionale Luce (LUCE National
Institute, the national production and distribution agency for propaganda films
and documentaries, the so-called eye of the Fascist regime).16 Nevertheless, the
cine-clubs continued to be the most immediate and effective mechanism for the
gradual institutionalization of film culture during this first phase of free and
disorderly growth (fig.1).17
These weren’t the only film institutions to appear at that time, as the
first cine-clubs were inaugurated at the same time as the Scuola Nazionale di
Cinematografia (National Film School, hereafter SNC). The SNC was the first
serious, and ill-fated, attempt to reorganize a national cinematic culture by
appropriating the entrepreneurial vitality and practices that had been spread
and sustained within the youth culture in the cine-clubs and related structures.
The SNC responded to “a real need, in Italian cinema, for a profound renewal
of its artistic and technical frameworks, especially in light of the technological
transformations underway at the end of the twenties and at the beginning of
the thirties.”18 Cine-clubs and amateur filmmaking practices both formed the
theoretical and strategic core of the experience of the SNC.19
The SNC, the cine-clubs, and the small-gauge films produced there were
already seen as interrelated, as mentioned in the program republished by the
Rivista Italiana di Cinetecnica, one of the most important and authoritative
editorial references for amateur filmmakers:
Each person will fulfill the role that is found to be most appropri-
ate for them, they will work on the creation of small experimental
“films” of which the subjects, screenplay, directions, staging, acting,
etc. will be entirely established by the students themselves. At the
intersection of theory and practice, important exercises will be
carried out (for example, the “editing” of various uncut copies of
the same filmstrip); these are meant to better advance the degree
of the students’ aesthetic sensibility. Moreover, the best “films”
produced within the “Scuola” [meaning the SNC] will be screened
at the various Cine-Clubs in Italy. (emphasis in original)20
The SNC experiment collapsed in 1934 under the weight of debts and a lack of
clear educational strategies—an error that would not be repeated when, soon
after, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Center for Cin-
ematography, hereafter CSC21) was established as its replacement.22 The lack of
35
Fig. 1: Original statute of the Cine-club of Milan, deposited at the Milan prefecture office on
April 14, 1930. The program is far more detailed and pragmatic than Massimo Bontempelli’s
cine-club program, and it set out to: promote studies and initiatives concerning cinema’s artistic
and industrial issues; program private screenings of films that, for commercial reasons, had not
been screened publicly before; constitute a film library, collecting books and journals; sup-
port experimental activities; and support any worthy film production initiatives aimed at the
progress of the national cinema. (Courtesy of Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del
Turismo and Archivio di Stato di Milano. No further reproduction or distribution of this copy is
permitted by electronic transmission or any other means.)
36
explicit strategies had a similar impact on the world of amateur filmmakers in

other contexts; numerous independent initiatives appeared and quickly failed
during this phase.23
The first serious attempt to reorganize these institutions came from the
newly appointed secretary of the Fascist Party and the national secretary of
the Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (Fascist University Groups, hereafter Gufs),
Achille Starace.24 The proposal, directed toward all Gufs, generally outlined a
“filmmaking training campaign for youth, in order for new generations to be
prepared, including in this field, for the great endeavors of the future.”25 The
proposal must therefore be understood as having charted a new direction for
Italian cinema. The Starace era offered an opportunity for the transformation
of the Guf “into an instrument at the service of the totalitarian State by per-
fecting the [state’s] ability to oversee and control the instructional processes
of young intellectuals in the universities.”26 Milan’s Guf “got to work right
away” and “was the first in Italy to help the GUFs’ filmmaking activity.”27
Milan’s Guf produced one of the first films that could be classified as a Cineguf
experimental film. On April 14, 1933, the small-gauge film Fonderia d’Acciaio
(Acciaio Foundry) which had been directed by two young Guf representatives,
Attila Camisa and Ubaldo Magnaghi, premiered at the Salone della Federazi-
one Provinciale Fascista. During this initial phase, the Cineconvegno contin-
ued to exist alongside the filmmaking section of the Guf (for instance, Ubaldo
Magnaghi’s experimental film Mediolanum was screened at the Cineconvegno
in November 1933).28
The second important phase of restructuring the Gufs (and the cine-club
experience in general) took place in 1934, the most crucial year for Italian inter-
war cinema. In September 1934, the Direzione Generale per la Cinematografia
(General Directorate for Cinema, hereafter DGC) was created to expand, cen-
tralize, and coordinate the state’s policies concerning the film industry, placing
Luigi Freddi in charge.29 During his inaugural address, he stated: “The State
overviews. The State helps. The State rewards. The State controls. The State
incites.”30 Freddi had an idealistic conception of the state apparatus and its
relationship with the film industry and sought to integrate the masses through
a uniform, national experience of the media.31
The DGC immediately sent out an edict to all the local government offices
in order to centralize all amateur filmmaking activities under the Gufs through
units that would become known as Cinegufs. The following communication
states the DGC’s objective: “In order to avoid the unnecessary waste of energy
and to coordinate through only one organization an activity of utmost impor-
tance, this Sottosegretariato, in accordance with the Fascist Party’s directorate,
has decided that initiatives of any sort to do with amateur filmmaking carried
37
out by organizations or associations, groups or sections of film amateurs, will

report to the Gufs.”32
Thus, the Cinegufs were born, and their authority established (fig. 2).
A second edict was then sent out to all Guf structures and published by
daily newspapers.33 In this statement, the order is issued in a much more
authoritative tone: “No other organization shall be allowed to exist other
than those endorsed by the Gufs.”34 The statement continues by stating that
the provision “is meant to add, to the movement of amateur filmmaking, the
serious and orderly fashion that it lacked. It will set this movement on a more
ample experimental utilization of the young energies that operate in this
field, and will take away from filmmaking certain cultural organizations,
such as the cine-club, the elitist character that thwarted their successful
operation.”35 Within a short time span, the Cinegufs began to appear and
grow in all Italian universities as well as in many satellite cities. With this
provision, the long and complex negotiations that had been taking place
during this first phase—between governmental and institutional structures
and the practices and cultures of youth cinema—reached a resolution and a
certain level of stability. In 1935, the provision set by the second edict took
full effect, and participation and enthusiasm were very high among amateur
filmmakers at the Gufs.
Italian film historians Francesco Pitassio and Simone Venturini
describe what took shape during this time as a general, integrated insti-
tutional project. It included the creation of a new national cinema school
(the CSC) and the establishment of the Cinegufs, both in 1934; the estab-
lishment, in 1937, of Bianco e Nero, a cinema journal; and the publication
of a new definitive volume on the history of cinema, written in 1939 by
Francesco Pasinetti (the inspirational leader of the Cinegufs and the first
head of its Venice branch).36 The relationship between the name given to
the most important instructional film center in the nation—Experimental
Center—and the cinematic practices of the Cinegufs (from now on referred
to as Experimental Cinema) reveal the high degree of coordination among
these initiatives.
The process of systemic integration was regulated through yet another
key entity: the Littoriali della cinematografia (Fascist competitions in cin-
ema). The Littoriali competitions included a contest that allowed young film-
makers from the Cinegufs to compete periodically. The selection process and
the competition involved two specific mechanisms: the best filmmakers were
selected to attend courses at the film school, and the Cinegufs that showed
the most talent would receive financial support to upgrade their technological
equipment.
38
Fig. 2: The official edict that was sent out by the directorate to all the local government offices
in September 1934 and circulated in December. It centralized all the amateur filmmaking activi-
ties under the Guf auspices—through units that would become known as Cinegufs. It states: “In
order to avoid unnecessary waste of energy and to coordinate through only one organization
an activity of utmost importance, this Sottosegretariato, in accordance with the Fascist party’s
directorate, has decided that initiatives of any sort related [to] amateur filmmaking (carried out
by organizations or associations, groups or sections of film amateurs), will report to the Gufs.”
(Courtesy of Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo and Archivio di Stato di
Milano. No further reproduction or distribution of this copy is permitted by electronic transmis-
sion or any other means.)
39
THE EXHIBITION: THE INSTITUTION OF THE FASCIST

LITTORIALI DELLA CINEMATOGRAFIA
The DGC and the Fascist Party had begun planning the establishment of the
Fascist Littoriali in 1933.37 These were meant to be contests that would fit within
the broad mandate of the Littoriali della Cultura e dell’Arte (Fascist Littori-
ali of Arts and Culture).38 The competitive initiative allowed young filmmak-
ers to challenge themselves on theoretical topics set forth for each individual
conference—as well as on practical issues of filmmaking—through a showcase
of the films produced in each section at the events (fig. 3). The competitions,
and the rankings that followed, had the objective of steering debates on certain
themes (selected by the Gufs’ central committee) and of defining standards and
models of film production; thus, theory and practice were equally encouraged.
The most significant aspect of this strategy, however, was the establishment of
a pattern of awarding prizes and equipment, which became the basis for the
financial and technical support for each Cineguf section.39 The DGC created a
fund of 150,000 liras available to the Istituto Luce to be put toward the acquisi-
tion of technical equipment and the distribution of film at the Cineguf sections’
Fig. 3: A picture taken from a backstage film shot during the production of an experimental film
dedicated to the “Littoriali” (as written in the clapperboard). This rare backstage sequence is yet
to be completely identified, but it surely belongs to a Cineguf film group.
40
Fig. 4: Invoice signed by Michelangelo Antonioni, trustee of the Cineguf of Ferrara, for the
purchase of 16mm film strips. (Courtesy of Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del
Turismo and Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome; authorization n. 1581/2018. No further
reproduction or distribution of this copy is permitted by electronic transmission or any other
means.)
41
venues (fig. 4). This was made possible through an agreement with the Agfa Foto
company. Initially, this fund was administered on a system of rewards, most of
which consisted of purchase vouchers for Agfa products: “The General Director-
ate for the Cinema has allocated the amount of 150,000 Liras to reward and to
bolster the filmmaking activity of the Gufs. The sum will be distributed among
the Cineguf sections that have carried out the most activity with particular
focus on the Littoriali’s outcomes.”40
There were smaller competitions for small-gauge films within local
Cineguf sections as well (such local contests existed within the Cinegufs
in Genoa, Turin, Asti, etc.), but the Littorali represented the highest level of
achievement for young filmmakers, which also made it the most important
nationwide event for the circulation of Cineguf-produced films. The initial com-
petition, “The Littoriali della cinematografia of the year XI,” was announced in
April 1933 by the Guf office in agreement with the Istituto Nazionale per la Cin-
ematografia Educativa (International Educational Cinematographic Institute,
hereafter IECI), an international office of the League of Nations devoted to edu-
cational and small-gauge cinema, based in Rome and fully funded by Italy and
the Istituto Luce. The objective was to “raise the interest of university students
in issues to do with national cinema,” and October 1933 was the deadline to
submit films.41 An important aspect of this first edition was the establishment
of generic guidelines for the production of Experimental Films: “Films of any
format will be accepted to compete: minimum length: 120 meters for normal
format and 70 for reduced format; the content of the films must be documentary,
cultural, or sports-related.”42
In the second edition, however, the Littoriali began to accept only films
shot in 16mm, with the objective of standardizing the technical requirements
and practices of the Cinegufs. The standardization of 16mm, in fact, made
explicit the opportunity to centralize and automate—through the Agfa and
Istituto Luce agreement—the provision of technical equipment for amateur
filmmaking. The Fascist Littoriali were a space in which individual or local
identities and cultures had to “converge and meld in a concrete way with
the sociopolitical reality created by Fascism.”43 It is here that the concept
of the Cinegufs’ Experimental Cinema increasingly acquired a more precise
definition.
THE PRODUCTION: EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA AND THE
FORMATION OF EXPERTISE
The above discussion of the institutionalization of Experimental Cinema allows
an analysis of the discursive dynamics that, within the structures of the Cine-
gufs, came to define the political and ideological functions of this particular
42
Fig 5: Cover of Domenico Paolella’s book “Cinema sperimentale.” The book includes a wide
collection of film caps from the Cineguf filmography.
moment in the history of amateur filmmaking. The first systematic, historical,

and critical assessment of these practices appeared as early as 1937 and was
written by Domenico Paolella (fig. 5).44 This text was a programmatic mani-
festo and constitutes the first history of Italian experimental cinema.45 Paolella
43
Fig. 6: Two pages from “Cinema sperimentale,” showing three different experimental film
genres; from the top down: a scientific documentary, a documentary on Italy’s northeast carbon
mines, and an animation film.
provides an initial and fundamental definition of experimental film: “The word

experimental has lost its old acceptance in order to be applied to a broader cate-
gory, a category in which the purpose is the entire process of cinematic creation,
with a focus on all individual components, irrespective of genre.”46
Thus, the first definition of experimental—as it crystallized and was
formalized in Italian writing on cinema, and reiterated quite clearly by Paolella—
was used indiscriminantly to describe all cinematic productions within the
Gufs as well as those connected to them (fig. 6). Significant emphasis was clearly
placed on practical aspects, on the “process of cinematic construction” (fig. 7),
and therefore on activities that dealt with technical competencies. Experimen-
tal Cinema is from this perspective a cinema of training and exercise, tied to a
certain freedom of experimentation, and is understood linguistically and sty-
listically—though the definition also functions in a number of other important
ways.
Given that it was initiated from within Fascist society, Experimental
Cinema production was perceived to have extreme social and political rele-
vance that fit in harmoniously with the cultural and ideological functions put
in place by the Gufs. The achievement of expertise became its key legitimating
factor during the years of the regime; the expertise governing the activities of
Experimental Cinema could therefore not be anything but political. In other
44
Fig. 7: On the right is a sequence of three pictures taken from the fiction film Arco felice (1935)
directed by Domenico Paolella. On the left is a page from the script of this film.
words, experimental films produced by the Gufs must be understood as politi-

cal films. This becomes clear when we look at statements published in journals
and other documents from this period. Luigi Chiarini—a central figure in the
institutionalization of Italian cinematographic culture, as already shown by
Pitassio and Venturini—bluntly declares on the pages of Lo Schermo, “political,
indeed, as should be every film shot in Italy: the youth from the GUFs possess a
cultural maturity that makes them giants compared to the cinematographical
illiteracy that prevails. . . . for these young people, it is not possible to conceive
of film other than fascistically.”47 The idea of Experimental Cinema as political
cinema here achieves an almost spiritual dimension, hinted at in the following
statement by Paolella: “experimental [work] leads to a [certain] conception of
cinema, the only one that may be an epic expression of our times and that moves
toward a fusion of arts and politics.”48
When examining the discourses on the political understanding of Exper-
imental Cinema, we must address two points: first, aesthetics, which are the
central dialectic between the avant-garde and realism; and second, production
and the strategic political importance placed on the development of techni-
cal expertise through experimentation. In other words, expertise becomes the
decisive factor for the legitimization of Experimental Cinema, defined more by
its capacity to serve industrial and institutional demands of the nation than by
45
Fig. 8: Cover of the 1941 special issue of the Milan Cineguf journal, celebrating the Cineguf’s
seventh year of activities. The gun and the camera on the cover stand for the Fascist motto “libro
e moschetto, fascista perfetto,” or “a book and a gun: a perfect fascist.”
an ideological commitment to any defined aesthetic mandates. In this sense,

it was the investment in Experimental Cinema expertise within sectors such as
manufacturing, education, and urban planning that constituted the political
importance of experimental film (fig. 8). Yet, Experimental Cinema was also
a means of disseminating information on the life of the Fascist Party through
documentary films.
The politicization of Experimental Cinema can be best measured through
the increased opportunities for filmmaking for many young people in schools
46
and universities and for those who lived on the periphery (such as in villages
or in the countryside). It can also be seen in the continued centralization of
the structures that formally catalyzed possibilities, abilities, and knowledge of
filmmaking: the Cinegufs. Many films produced by the Cinegufs were documen-
taries that touched upon local realities, usually commissioned by local insti-
tutions or businesses to depict their role in the life of the region. For example,
in 1937, Leonardo Algardi, a member of Genoa’s Guf and a student at the CSC,
sought the collaboration of the Società Anonima di Navigazione Italia (Italian
Navigation Limited Company) for the making of a small-gauge film, Crociera di
lusso (Luxury Cruise).49 Ico Parisi, a member of Como’s Guf and an architecture
student, became involved in the production of the documentary Risanamento
del quartiere La Cortesella (Renovation of the Cortesella’s Neighborhood) in
1939 through the studio of the rationalist architect Giuseppe Terragni. This
collaboration was notably similar to the manner in which, years before, Ubaldo
Magnaghi (connected to Milan’s Cineguf) had collaborated in 1933 with the
architect Piero Bottoni on the small-gauge film Una giornata nella casa popolare
(A day in the Council House).50 At the end of the 1930s, Milan’s Cineguf sought
and successfully established a collaboration with the Milanese journal Il Mil-
ione (from the art gallery by the same name) for a series of art documentaries,
just as the Scuola di Mistica Fascista (School of Fascist Spirit), an educational
entity of the Fascist Party operating within the University of Milan, collabo-
rated with the Cineguf for the production of Il Covo (The Hideout) in 1941—an
avant-garde documentary made to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the
Fascist revolution. In this collaboration, the interests of local institutions and
the Fascist ideological priorities coincided, creating a campaign aimed at a mass
interventionist mobilization of the population, with this short film mandatorily
screened in all of the theaters in Italy.51
What also occurred around this time in a widespread and somewhat
systematic fashion was the commission of the technical expertise of the Cineguf
groups by local branches of the Fascist Party itself. Thus, we find works such as
Littoriali femminili del lavoro (The Littoriali of the Working Women, 1941) by
Pisa’s Cineguf, a documentary on Fascist women’s organizations, and Discorso
di Mussolini (Mussolini’s Discourse, 1941), a documentary on the Duce’s visit
to Pisa. Similarly, in Perugia’s Cineguf, we find Bimbi e sole (Kids and the Sun,
1936), on heliotherapy centers; Littoriali della neve anno XIV (The Winter Sports
Littoriali of the year XIV, 1936), a documentary on the winter-sport season of
the Fascist associations; Giovani fascisti al campo (Young Fascists Camping,
1936); and Tornano i legionary (The Legionnaires Are Coming Back, 1937), a
documentary on the homecoming of troops from Africa.
47
The availability of the experimental filmmakers’ technical expertise at

the service of Fascist society—their practical utility as trained storytellers for
commercial, educational, industrial, political, and social purposes—was the true
expression as well as the most important result of a politically engaged cinema
as it was understood in Fascist Italy at that time. The rhetoric of expertise had
evolved in university culture to mean what Giuseppe Iannaccone describes as
“the end of academism and the propensity to dive into concrete reality, [which
set] politics as the object of privilege of any artistic initiative.”52 This particular
entry into society was the horizon toward which film experimentation was being
mobilized.
However, it was not merely a matter of professionalism in filmmaking. In
fact, political engagement and the achievement of expertise in the Experimental
Cinema must be understood in broader social and political terms. The filmmak-
ing experience, through its complex construction of the gaze at the real world
and its reliance on technology, enabled physical and philosophical encounters
with modernity for an increasingly dissatisfied Italian youth. Filmmaking pro-
vided an outlet to express their anxieties and dissatisfaction with an atrophied
national cinema, a culture that needed to be renewed, and a Fascism that was
no longer seen as revolutionary.
THE PRODUCTION: EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA
AND THE QUEST FOR REALISM
The interest in a cinema that would be closer to reality is an omnipresent topic
in the debates in the Cinegufs’ journals and at cinema meetings during the
Littoriali del cinematografo. It is through discussions on this topic that the
solution for the rebirth of Italian cinema was formulated. Furthermore, this
issue corresponded perfectly with the regime’s political project of penetrating
further into rural and suburban territories. “Local” spaces became the primary
choice for cinematographic experimentation. The story of “the familiar” and of
that which is “nearby” became the premise for a cartography of “Italianness”
that aspired to go beyond picturesque representations and, at the same time,
emancipate itself from simple reportage.53
The choice to move away from both the idea of reportage and also from
political film as simple propaganda points to the departure of the Cineguf move-
ment from frameworks such as those used by the Luce newsreels. It counter-
poses to these a search for artistry and spirituality within the portrait of a
Fascist Italy. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat rightly speaks of a “spiritual realism” in
Fascist culture at large,54 and this notion also arguably characterizes Experi-
mental Cinema. What realism meant in this context was more a transfiguration
48
and interpretation of reality than a mere recording of it, and thus it is closer to
what we traditionally associate with a modernist and avant-garde ethos.55
From this perspective, the productions of the Cinegufs reflect the com-
plexity of an even broader debate that continued to take place more or less
overtly for the entire Fascist period and that characterized modernism under
Mussolini—the relationship between realism and the avant-garde (likewise,
between classicism and experimental literature, classicism and rationalism in
architecture, and, in a broader sense, the aesthetics of revolution and reaction).
The tension between the two is not easily resolved in this particular historical
instance, and it would perhaps be more useful to see such a dialectic not as
a simple opposition but as a complex osmotic negotiation in fascist modern-
ism. Roger Griffin, unlike previous scholars, argues that a strong relationship
existed between modernism and fascism: “It is precisely because fascism was an
intrinsically modernist phenomenon that it could host some forms of aesthetic
modernism as consistent with the revolutionary cause it was pursuing, and con-
demn others as decadent, as well as imparting a modernist dynamic to forms of
cultural production normally associated with backward looking ‘reaction’ and
nostalgia for past idylls” (emphasis in original).56
Griffin’s dialectical understanding of the modernist nature of Fascism
reflects the tension between forms of avant-gardism and realism in these film
productions as well. With the institutionalization of Experimental Cinema in
the Gufs, this tension progressively acquired more political force. On the one
hand, the tension allowed discussions about cinema to go beyond questions of
aesthetics in order categorize the Gufs’ films as undoubtedly Fascist—namely
for reproduced realities composed of Fascist elements. The following state-
ment by Luigi Movilia of Turin’s Cineguf on “the problem of national cinema”
confirms a reluctance to reduce the discussion to aesthetics alone: “Wanting
to establish what is meant by the character of Fascist cinema would mean to
reduce the issue of national cinematography, which is, essentially, a construc-
tive issue within a purely aesthetic issue. This would mean reducing the general
and essential problem to a distinctly particular one. A particular problem that
is certainly of great importance, but that already finds its implicit resolution
in the production of cinematography that consists only of Fascist elements;
elements with a spirit and a soul fully forged in the ascetic climate of the
revolution.”57
On the other hand, the engagement with the documentary mode and
the negotiations with avant-garde culture that shaped Experimental Cinema
production in that period also inevitably demanded a delineation of a stylistic,
if not aesthetic, project. From the Cineguf in Asti:
49
Our cinema’s principal hallmark will therefore be seriousness.

Such is a logical and aesthetic rigor that will oppose any fantas-
tical and technical overload or excess. This does not mean that
fantasy will be banned from the parameters of our cinema: it will
have to place itself, other than on realistic baselines, as functional
to a present or future reality. The objective being our revolutionary
orientations: reality, on its own, will have enough spiritual content
and strength. Artistic transfiguration will mean a highlighting of
reality through the process of fantasy, with a consequent func-
tionalization of art through expressive needs; a “documentary” of
a revolutionary reality or its foresight. Here is the issue: to express,
to document.58
The language of these contributions implies a realist documentary aesthetic

that would restrain the most irresponsible and nonrigorous avant-garde experi-
mentalism and “that . . . [would] oppose any fantastical and technical overload or
excess.” This kind of approach would lay the foundation for a type of cinematic
production that adhered to the spiritual realism discussed earlier as the subli-
mation of an ethical stance into an aesthetic one when faced with reality. It is
precisely this spiritual understanding of cinema that can push Experimental
Cinema productions toward an openness of form and stylistic experimentation
akin to the avant-garde.
The emancipation from objective staging—and, concomitantly, from
reportage—was supported by the institutional figure Chiarini with respect to
the “political value of the documentary.” During the first Cineguf conference in
Como in 1936, Chiarini writes:
the documentarians . . . believe that all that is necessary is to

place the camera in front of an action, of a fact, of an external
reality, in order to provide the documentation of this reality.
Even in such a field, falsehood showed itself at once, because
each of us has been able to ascertain the enormous differences
between certain facts and their documentation, which reduces
and minimizes what is often even colossal. The error is born from
the fact that there is no external, material, extraneous reality
that exists outside of us to be documented. Instead, reality is
spiritual, it is ours and it is what we live; it is a unique reality and
it is important with respect to documentation, because it is the
only true reality.59
50
The complex symbolic negotiation between realism and experimentation

demands a middle term such as spiritual realism, which has been well described
by Ben-Ghiat and is clearly present in Chiarini’s words. The term spiritual real-
ism can help us to account for the experimentation and echoes of the avant-
garde in Cineguf productions.
In 1937, Paolella, in his Cinema Sperimentale, explained the first attempts
to integrate avant-garde experimentation and realism in the following way: “If
we consider that the period 1932–1936 was the one during which Italy saw the
blooming of theoretical studies on film, during which the third pages of news-
papers and magazines welcomed the most discussions on cinematographical
aesthetics, and during which films such as Film e Fonofilm by Pudovkin (a
work of the translator Umberto Barbaro) found success, we are able to better
understand the proliferation of films whose tendencies were generally avant-
garde; this characterizes the first period of experimentalism.”60 Many films
produced by the Cineguf reflect this complex integration of avant-garde for-
malism, modernist fragmentation, and documentary realism. These include
Mario Monicelli’s fiction film inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Il cuore rivelatore
(The Tell-Tale Heart, 1934), and Ubaldo Magnaghi’s Il caso Valdemar (The Valde-
mar Case, 1936), in which a realist structure is applied to fantastical subjects.
Indeed, Cinci (1939), produced at the Cineguf in Siena and directed by Michele
Gandin, takes inspiration from Luigi Pirandello, and the realist staging is com-
bined with dizzying and complex camera movements in an attempt to depict
the internal anguish felt by its character. Similarly, in the film La città nemica
(The Enemy City, 1939) by Renzo Renzi, a distressing and realistic account of a
young farmer in a mysterious revolutionary city ends with an emotional climax
depicted through an assembly of nonnarrative images explicitly influenced by
Soviet montage, with point-of-view shots that visually express the feeling of
anger.
The most significant expression of this dialectic appears in 1941 in
the avant-garde documentary Il covo (The Hideout), which was produced
by Milan’s Cineguf and commissioned by the Scuola di Mistica Fascista—
the most important cultural institution of the Partito Nazionale Fascista
(National Fascist Party, PNF). The film was produced by a small film company
run by university students and nonprofessional filmmakers from the Cineguf
of Milan; they were also deeply into the modernist and avant-gardist milieu
of the city of Milan at that time, and in fact they launched documentary proj-
ects with rationalist architects or abstract artists of Milan’s scene during this
period as well. Thus, this connection and the modernist atmosphere they were
immersed in was crucial for the production of Il covo as I have demonstrated
elsewhere.61
51
The film is a celebration of the Fascist revolution, from World War I to

the advent of Benito Mussolini, and its complex editing scheme alternates doc-
umentary sequences of the headquarters of Il Popolo d’Italia, the daily newspa-
per founded by Benito Mussolini (now transformed into the Scuola di Mistica
Fascista headquarters) with found footage of historical materials—all of which
is accompanied by a multilayered soundtrack and no voice-over. In this film,
the search for a spiritual transfiguration of documentary material (the head-
quarters of Il Popolo d’Italia, a place of worship for the young Fascists) achieves
a sophisticated balance: the complex soundtrack radicalizes the juxtaposition
of time and space in the documentary form, alternating realistic noise, recorded
voices, popular military songs, and classical symphonies. At the same time, the
fragmentation of documentary scenes with a blend of photographic indexical-
ity from the shooting location (found footage of old pictures and newspapers
to evoke the past), and the abstraction and exaltation of fetish objects at the
headquarters of Il Popolo d’Italia, are turned into a progressively timeless flux,
and lead up to an epic climax.
The Hideout reflects the close relationship between modernist avant-
garde and documentary styles that Malte Hagener, drawing on Bill Nichols,
identifies with the intersection of photographic realism, narrative structure,
modernist fragmentation, the rhetoric of social persuasion, and nonsynchro-
nous sound.62 This small film by Milan’s Cineguf was commissioned by the
PNF to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Fascist revolution,
and its screening was mandatory in all theaters across the country in order
to promote military mobilization for the war that was underway. The Hideout
demonstrates how the institutionalization process could operate and lead
to greater visibility for the experimental film practice of the Cineguf; in fact,
the Fascist Party selected a group of amateur filmmakers of the Cineguf and
promoted the group toward professionalim (shooting with 35mm cameras,
too), allowing them to produce a short film, putting into practice the best
skills gained from the Cineguf experience. In this way The Hideout can be
taken as the best, maybe ideal, example of the Cineguf forces at the servive of
the Fascist regime: it is not more amateur cinema, it is not yet professional, it
is experimental cinema.
CONCLUSION
The institutionalization of amateur cinema and the creation of the Cinegufs’
Experimental Cinema were the outcome of a complex process involving the
reorganization of cultural practices within the structures of the Fascist party.
At the peak of the institutionalization of culture and Italian society in the
1930s, the practice of amateur filmmaking embodied, for a decade, the most
52
active, creative, and dynamic forces of Italian Fascist film production. The
energies devoted by the Cinegufs to produce Experimental Cinema success-
fully fueled a large-scale mobilization of juvenile forces of cinephiles, which
gave life to an avant-garde movement that was rooted in and touched all of
Italy’s territory and was extremely receptive to the complex tensions of Ital-
ian culture between the two wars. The Cineguf experience also became an
expression of the youth’s own anxieties and dissatisfaction with an atrophied
Italian cinema and culture, as well as with a Fascism that was no longer seen
as revolutionary.
Many directors of the neorealist generation were trained in and cre-
ated their first films for the Cinegufs. The complex, and at times convoluted,
search for realism in the place where modernist and avant-garde cultures
had been established and transformed, and the acquisition of a practice and
a technique that had to be put to the service of the nation, constitute the
most relevant and significant impact of the Cinegufs in the history of Italian
cinema. The search for a new realism that took shape in the years between
the two wars cannot be understood without a serious consideration of the
process of the politicization and institutionalization of amateur cinema by
the Fascist regime.
Notes
I would like to thank, for their key role during different stages of the research and writing of this article:
Masha Salazkina and Enrique Fibla, who kindly assisted me in translation and provided crucial help
throughout the work on this essay; the reviewers and editors who kindly worked on this article and
brought invaluable improvements to it; Mariapia Comand, Francesco Pitassio, and Simone Venturini, who
sustained this research and gave me the opportunity to excavate this crucial field; and Leonardo Quares-
ima, who inspired the beginning of this research and still inspires it. Finally, a part of this work, specifically
on the Agfa amateur film equipment, was made possible by the 2016 William O’Farrell fellowship I was
honored with: I thank the representatives Jennifer L. Jenkins and David Weiss.
1. Patricia R. Zimmermann, “The Amateur, the Avant-Garde, and Ideologies of Art,” Journal of Film and
Video 38, nos. 3–4 (Summer–Fall 1986): 63–85.
2. Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (New York: Routledge,
2000), 390.
3. Malte Hagener, Moving Forward, Looking Back: The European Avant-Garde and the Invention of Film
Culture, 1919–1939 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2005), 15.
4. Andrea Mariani, “‘Per la comprensione del buon film’: Sulla germinazione del film culturale e la
diffusione della cinematografia educativa in Italia (1926–1934),” Immagine—Note di Storia del
Cinema 11 (2015): 105–31.
5. The Istituto Internazionale di Cinematografia Educativa (International Institute of Educational
Cinema) communicated this decision to Benito Mussolini on August 16, 1934. On issues related to
the standardization of the format, see “Problemi attuali del film sub-standard,” Rivista del Cinema
53
Educatore 4, no. 6 (1932): 561–64; and “Il cinema educativo e la standardizzazione del formato
ridotto,” Rivista del Cinema Educatore 5, no. 1 (January 1933): 76–77. For a history of reduced formats
before standardization, see Karen Fiorini and Mirco Santi, “Per una storia della tecnologia amatori-
ale,” in “Comunicazioni Sociali,” ed. Luisella Farinotti and Elena Mosconi, special issue, Il metodo e
la Passione: Cinema amatoriale e film di famiglia in Italia 27, no. 3 (2005): 427–37.
6. On the importance of documentary film in Italy during the period between the two wars, see Luca
Caminati, “The Role of Documentary Film in the Formation of the Neorealist Cinema,” in Global
Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style, ed. Saverio Gioacchini and Robert Sklar (Jack-
son: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 52–69.
7. For more information on the activities of Enzo Ferrieri and the Cineconvegno, see Morando Moran-
dini, “Enzo Ferrieri e il ‘Cineconvegno,’” in Enzo Ferrieri, rabdomante della cultura: Teatro, letteratura,
cinema e radio a Milano dagli anni venti agli anni cinquanta, ed. Anna Modena (Milan: Fondazione
Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori, 2010), 35–39; Giuseppe Anderi, “Il cinema e le arti nella Milano
degli anni Trenta,” in Un secolo di cinema a Milano, ed. Raffaele De Berti (Milan: Il Castoro, 1996),
191–213; Raffaele De Berti, “Cultura ed estetica del cinema a Milano: Ettore Maria Margadonna tra
‘Il Convegno’ e ‘L’Ambrosiano,’” in Estetica e cinema a Milano, ed. Raffaele De Berti, Elena Dagrada,
and Gabriele Scaramuzza (Atti del Convegno: Università degli Studi di Milano, 2006), 135–49.
8. Francesco Pitassio and Simone Venturini, “Building the Institution: Luigi Chiarini and Italian Film
Culture in the 1930s,” in The Emergence of Film Culture: Knowledge Production, Institution Building
and the Fate of the Avant-Garde in Europe, ed. Malte Hagener (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 254–55.
9. The statute of the Cinema d’eccezione was recovered by Lino Miccicché and partially published in
Giacomo Debenedetti, Al Cinema (Venice: Marsilio, 1983), 308. The first official screening of the film
is covered by the journal Al Cinema (“Prima del Cinema d’eccezione al cinema Borsa,” December
16, 1928, 3). The piece describes in detail the evening of December 14, 1928, and the screening of
Frank Urson’s Chicago.
10. On the Cine-club Italiano, see “La Costituzione del Cine-Club italiano,” in Cinematografo 3, no. 5
(March 3, 1929): 5. It reads: “è stato costituito a Roma il ‘Cine-club Italiano’. La presidenza onoraria
del Club è stata offerta a S.E. Bisi presidente dell’Ente Nazionale per la Cinematografia e a S.E.
Sardi Presidente dell’Istituto Luce, che hanno cordialmente accettato, assicurando il loro vivo
interessamento. [. . .] Il comitato direttivo è composta da Massimo Bontempelli, Gaetano Cam-
panile, Mancini, Jacomo Comin, Prof. Ruggero Conforto, Alerto Spaini, Comandante Enrico Doria
(tesoriere), Libero Solaroli (Segretario).” (At this time, journals, as well as private correspondence,
interchangeably employed the words cine-club—separated by a hyphen as in French—and cineclub.)
11. For more information, see Andriano Aprà, La Rinascita sulla pagina cinematografica del Tevere
(1929–1930), in Nuovi materiali sul cinema italiano, 1929–1943, vol.1 (Mostra Internazionale del
Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro, 1976), 60–85; and Sila Berruti and Luca Mazzei, La critica cinematografica: I
quotidiani, in Storia del cinema italiano, ed. Leonardo Quaresima, vol. 4, 1924/1933 (Venice: Marsilio,
Edizioni di Bianco e Nero, 2014): 520–47.
12. All previous quotations are taken from Italian Cine-Club, second program, 22 May 1929—VII, Cine-
convegno correspondence, f. 7, Enzo Ferrieri Fund (EF), Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori
Milano (FAAM). The cine-club inaugurated its activities with the screening of La Chute de la Maison
Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928) followed by Die Büchse der Pandora (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1929). It has
to be taken into account that while they used the word cine-club, there was no definitive spelling
in terms of the use of the hyphen or the use of capital letters. For the sake of consistency in this
article, if not quoted from an original source, we use cine-club as a general category, and Cine-club
to designate the proper name of a group.
13. Tra le quinte del cinematografo–programma del Cinema d’eccezione, 28 December 1928, EF, FAAM.
54
14. Programma del cine-club Italiano, n.d., f. 7, Cineconvegno correspondence, EF, FAAM.
15. All the citations are taken from Giacinto Solito, introduction to Cinematografia per tutti: Guida
pratica per cinedilettanti, by Ernesto Cauda (Rome: Edizioni A.C.I.E.P., 1931), 3–4.
16. In a postcard dated February 25, 1953, Mario Gromo, during the drafting of his history of Italian
cinema, verifies certain information with Debenedetti: “I have not forgotten your ‘Cinema d’eccezi-
one’ (I believe that is its name), started by you at the Borsa cinema with Pittaluga, and with the
presentation of Dreyer’s Passione di Giovanna D’Arco.” Mario Gromo to Giacomo Debenedetti, 25
February 1953, Giacomo Debenedetti Fund, Vieusseux Office (GV), Archivio Alessandro Bonsanti
di Firenze (AAB).
17. During this period, a plethora of cine-clubs were founded across Italy and followed the model of
these first groups. It does not seem productive to list all the associative initiatives that arose simul-
taneously; we must also note that the majority of the groups that were established during this phase
were characterized by instability and uncertainty.
18. Alfredo Baldi and Silvio Celli, “Una scuola ‘sperimentale’ di cinema: Da Bottai a Ciano,” in “La Scu-
ola Nazionale di Cinematografia (1931–1935),” special issue, Bianco e nero, no. 560 (January–April
2008): 15.
19. Baldi and Celli, “Una scuola ‘sperimentale.’”.
20. “Scuola Nazionale di Cinematografia e il Cine-Club d’Italia,” Rivista Italiana di Cinetecnica 3 (August
8, 1930): 13.
21. The recurrence and use of the terms cinematografia and cinema in the Italian discourse of this period
deserves a specific treatment and a broader discussion. In this essay I opt for a translation that is
inevitably a simplification of the issue. I decided to translate cinematografia as cinema and not
cinematography, which in English could be misunderstood with the profession of cinematography.
I thank Masha Salazkina for her help in clarifying this aspect.
22. Pitassio and Venturini, “Building the Institution,” 261–62.
23. Mariani, “‘Per la comprensione del buon film.’”
24. On the basis of the Partito Nazionale Fascista’s reform of 1932, and article 7 of the same statute, the
PNF’s secretary’s role was also that of secretary of the Gufs. For organizational purposes, Achille Sta-
race personally wanted to take on the role of secretary of the Gufs in order to strengthen the Gufs’
dependency on the PNF, and for symbolism alone, he also highlighted the importance that the party
attributed to university students. See Luca La Rovere, Storia dei Guf (Turin: Bollati Boringheri, 2003), 177.
25. G.F.C., “Attualità cinematografiche,” Libro e Moschetto, April 24, 1933, 4.
26. La Rovere, Storia dei Guf, 177.
27. “Sull’attività cinematografica dei Guf,” Libro e Moschetto, June 2, 1933, 2.
28. “Un film su Milano di U. Magnaghi,” Libro e Moschetto, November 4, 1933, 4.
29. Vito Zagarrio, “Schizofrenie del modello fascista,” in Storia del cinema italiano 1934–1939, ed. Orio
Caldiron (Rome: Edizioni di Bianco e Nero, Marsilio, 2006), 44.
30. Luigi Freddi, Il cinema: Il governo dell’immagine (Rome: Centro sperimentale di cinematografia,
1994), 137.
31. Luigi Freddi had been an important figure during the first wave of the Fascist period, and had a
cultural background in futurism as well; in 1927, he was nominated vice secretary of the Fascist Party
foreign policies, and in 1932, he travelled to the US and Hollywood—it was a crucial journey that
deeply influenced a project to reorganize the media apparatus of the Fascist Party.
55
32. Communication to the prefects of the Kingdom, 27 December 1934, n. 8200–94, f. 78, envelope
21, Pubblica sicurezza disposizione di massima fascicolo generale 1932–1933–1934, Gabinetto di
Prefettura, Archivio di Stato di Udine (ASU).
33. “Nuova organizzazioni dei passi ridotti,” La Stampa, December 11, 1934, 6; and Filippo Sacchi, “Nuovi
indirizzi per il cinedilettantismo: Un esperimento interessante,” Corriere della Sera, December 12,
1934, 6. See also Silvio Celli, “Piccoli cineasti crescono: A passo ridotto con i Cineguf,” in Schermi di
Regime, ed. Alessandro Faccioli (Venice: Marsilio, 2010), 191; Segreteria Nazionale dei Guf, newslet-
ter no. 6/2, January 1935, Fratelli Palombi, Rome 1935, 542, Atti del PNF a. XIII, II series, PNF, ACS;
and Luca La Rovere, “I Cineguf e i Littoriali del cinema,” in Caldiron, Storia del cinema italiano, 86.
34. “Nuova organizzazione dei Passi ridotti,” La stampa, December 11, 1934, 6.
35. “Nuova organizzazione dei Passi ridotti.”
36. Pitassio and Venturini, “Building the Institution,” 261–62. The new history of cinema refers to
Francesco Pasinetti, Storia del cinema dalle origini a Oggi (Rome: Edizioni di Bianco e nero, 1939).
37. “Littoriali della Cinematografia,” 28 April 1933, newsletter no. 15, b. 46, GUF Newsletters 1930–1937,
Segreteria dei GUF, Direttorio Nazionale, PNF, ACS. The Littoriali had planned the launch of the
“best-film contests for those enrolled in a Guf” and “film-set contests,” in addition to “contests for
[themed] filmic monographs” and “studies on the current status of Italian cinematography and
its future potential.” See “Littoriali della Cinematografia,” Libro e Moschetto, July 30, 1933, 4; and
“Littoriali della cinematografia,” Eco del Cinema 11, no. 115 (June 1933): 14.
38. La Rovere, “Cineguf e Littoriali del Cinema,” 85–95; and Mino Argentieri, “Il Cinema ai Littoriali,”
Bianco e Nero 547 (January–June, 2004): 71–76.
39. To access the rankings of the film sections of the Gufs, which were established by the Gufs’ secretar-
iat and based on both the Littorali and the routine audits of each section, see the index of “Sezioni
cinematografiche dei Guf,” Bianco e Nero, for the years of 1937 through 1941.
40. Promemoria per l’On: Marinelli del 28 settembre 1936, b. 225, series II, Servizi Vari, Dir. Naz., PNF, ACS.
41. It must be kept in mind that the Fascist year XI ended on October 28, 1933; Vice-secretary of the
Gufs to the Secretary of the Guf in Trieste, 21 October 1933, C.B. 10739/Ma, communication by
Consul Poli, f. various, communications and newsletters, b. 22, Segr. Dei GUF, Dir. Naz., PNF, ACS:
“The deadline for the Littoriali della Cinematografia of the Year XI has been set by His Excellency
[Achille] Starace at the end of October.”
42. Littoriali della Cinematografia, 28 April 1933, Newletter n. 15, f. varie, communications and news-
letters, b. 22, Segr. Dei GUF, Dir. Naz., PNF, ACS.
43. La Rovere, Storia dei Guf, 278.
44. In 1937 Domenico Paolella was still a student at the University of Naples, where he had been
enrolled in the Guf since 1933 and at the CSC since 1935. See Domenico Paolella, entrance appli-
cation, 10 August 1935, Concorso per Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Student records
1935–1940, Archivio Storico Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (ASCSC).
45. Francesco Pasinetti alleges this sentence in the introduction of Paolella’s book: “This book is the first
of its kind, in the world.” Francesco Pasinetti is among the main contributors to the institutional-
ization of experimental cinema and is the author of the second history of cinema written in Italy:
Francesco Pasinetti, Storia del cinema dale origini a Oggi (Rome: Edizioni di Bianco e nero, 1939).
Pasinetti rightfully referred to Paolella’s book as “the first book” on experimental film practice; for
an article on the history of international experimental cinema written by Pasinetti, see Francesco
Pasinetti, “Cinema sperimentale,” Kinema 4, no. 11 (1933).
46. Domenico Paolella, Cinema sperimentale (Naples: Casa Editrice Moderna, 1937), 15.
56
47. Luigi Chiarini, “Il cinema e i giovani,” Lo Schermo 1 (1935): 1.

48. Paolella, Cinema sperimentale, 45.
49. Società Anonima di Navigazione “Italia” to Leonardo Algardi, 8 November 1937, Centro sperimentale
di cinematografia 1935–1937, Leonardo Algardi Fund, BMG.
50. A copy of the film in 35mm is currently held at the Archivio Piero Bottoni in Milan. On this film, see
Leonardo Quaresima,“Stracittà: Cinema, Rationalism, Modernism, and Italy’s ‘Second Futurism,”’ in
Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader, ed. Giorgio Bertellini (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2013),
213–20.
51. Andrea Mariani, “La politicizzazione del film sperimentale: I Cineguf e la ‘Dolomiti film’ di Luciano
Emmer nella produzione de Il Covo (1941),” L’Avventura: International Journal of Italian Film and
Media Landscapes 1 (2016): 80. A digitized version of this film can be accessed at http://www
.archivioluce.com/archivio/jsp/schede/videoPlayer.jsp?tipologia=&id=&physDoc=4129&db=cine
matograficoDOCUMENTARI&findIt=false&section=/.
52. Giuseppe Iannaccone, Giovinezza e modernità reazionaria: Letteratura e modernità nelle riviste dei
Guf (Naples: Dante e Descartes, 2012), 85.
53. Mariani, “La politicizzazione del film sperimentale,” 82.
54. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 50.
55. Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities, 50.
56. Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (London:
Palgrave Macmillian, 2007), 33. For an earlier and similarly held perspective written in Italy, see
Emilio Gentile, Il culto del littorio: La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza,
1993).
57. The previous year Movilia was assistant director for Adriano Giovannetti’s film, Si fa così . . . (1934),
produced by Torino Film. Luigi Movilia, “Il problema cinematografico nazionale nei convegni di
critica cinematografica,” Notiziario delle sezioni cinematografiche dei Gruppi Universitari Fascisti 13
(March 9, 1935): 4.
58. “Realtà e avvenire del cinema,” Quaderno cinematografico a cura del Guf di Ascoli Piceno, May 1935, 19.
59. Luigi Chiarini, “Valore politico del documentario,” in “Primo concorso internazionale di cine-
matografia scientifica e turistica,” special issue, Il broletto 14 (September–October 1936): 14–15.
60. Paolella, Cinema Sperimentale, 28. Masha Salazkina explores the influence of Soviet cinema and film
theory on the historical divide between avant-gardism and realism in “Moscow-Rome-Havana: A
Film-Theory Road Map,” October 139 (Winter 2011): 97–116.
61. See Mariani, “La politicizzazione del film sperimentale.”
62. Malte Hagener, Moving Forward, Looking Back, 219.
Andrea Mariani is a fixed-term lecturer at University of Udine, where he also

teaches media theory. He was the 2016 William O’Farrell Fellow. He obtained
his PhD from the University of Udine in 2014. His work deals with philology of
cinema, film curatorship, documentary and avant-garde cinema, and Italian
film theory in the Fascist period. From 2011 to 2014, he was the co-organizer
and curator of the Film Heritage workshop at the Udine Filmforum MAGIS Film
57
Studies Spring School, where he founded the Media Archaeology workshop in

2015 as well. He coedited The Archive, Forum International Edition 2012, and
At the Border of (Film) History, Forum International Edition 2015. He has pub-
lished several articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Necsus, Bianco e Nero,
L’Avventura, Immagine, Fata Morgana, and Cinergie. He is member of NECS,
CUC—Italian University Council of Cinema, and AIRSC—National Association
of Italian Film Historians. His book, Gli anni del Cineguf: Il cinema sperimentale
italiano dai cine-club al neorealismo (Mimesis, 2017), has recently been pub-
lished in Italy.

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The Cineguf Years: Amateur Cinema and the Shaping of a Film Avant-Garde in Fascist

The Cineguf Years: Amateur Cinema and the Shaping

KEYWORDS: Italian amateur cinema, Cineguf experimental cinema, institutionalization,

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

theatrical activities. This new organization became known as the Cinecon-

1. First of all, to screen all those artistic, d’eccezione, experimental, avant-

Film History | Volume 30.1

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

Film History | Volume 30.1

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

explicit strategies had a similar impact on the world of amateur filmmakers in

Film History | Volume 30.1

out by organizations or associations, groups or sections of film amateurs, will

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

Film History | Volume 30.1

THE EXHIBITION: THE INSTITUTION OF THE FASCIST

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

Film History | Volume 30.1

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

moment in the history of amateur filmmaking. The first systematic, historical,

Film History | Volume 30.1

provides an initial and fundamental definition of experimental film: “The word

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

words, experimental films produced by the Gufs must be understood as politi-

Film History | Volume 30.1

an ideological commitment to any defined aesthetic mandates. In this sense,

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

Film History | Volume 30.1

The availability of the experimental filmmakers’ technical expertise at

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

Film History | Volume 30.1

Our cinema’s principal hallmark will therefore be seriousness.

The language of these contributions implies a realist documentary aesthetic

the documentarians . . . believe that all that is necessary is to

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

The complex symbolic negotiation between realism and experimentation

Film History | Volume 30.1

The film is a celebration of the Fascist revolution, from World War I to

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

Film History | Volume 30.1

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

Film History | Volume 30.1

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

47. Luigi Chiarini, “Il cinema e i giovani,” Lo Schermo 1 (1935): 1.

Andrea Mariani is a fixed-term lecturer at University of Udine, where he also

Film History | Volume 30.1

Studies Spring School, where he founded the Media Archaeology workshop in

ANDRE A MARIANI | The Cineguf Year s

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