Cinema

From its origins, Italian cinema has influenced film movements worldwide. Italy is at the same time a birthplace of Art Cinema and a major producer of genre fiction and exploitation films. With 14 Academy Awards, Italy has won more international Oscars than any other country.

The twenty regional Italian Film Commissions have officially recognised the innovative Green Film Protocol adopted and promoted by the Trentino Film Commission as an industry standard and sharable tool to encourage environmental sustainability on sets. Green Film was established in 2017 to promote and encourage sustainability in productions in Trentino by offering audiovisual producers guidelines on running a sustainable set and sustainability certifications for those projects demonstrating serious commitment to reducing their impact on the environment.

The importance of location shooting on the ethics and aesthetics of a film has been of interest to film scholars since at least André Bazin's work on cinematic realism. Less studied, however, is how films may affect the locations where they are shot.

This mutual relationship is at the core of Elena Past's Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human, a well-researched and beautifully written study that draws on interviews, published works, and close readings of specific scenes.

Professor Past of Wayne State University will walk us through Italian Film Protocols and the sustainability behind them. She will be joined by visiting PhD candidate Federica D'Urso from the University of Rome, La Sapienza, whose research joins her expertise in the field of audiovisual markets to a study of sustainability in film.