2024 LECONFIELD LECTURE
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We are not making a formal charge for participation in this event. Traditionally we offer attendance at the Leconfield Lecture free of charge to those members who have paid their subscription for the current year. We strongly encourage all others attending to make a minimum donation of at least £15 per participant. If any members would also like to make a donation to help offset our costs, that would be much appreciated.
Event description:
From the ashes of the war and the first experiments in neorealism, Italian cinema rose to become one of the most important and influential in the world. With directors like Visconti, Fellini, Antonioni and many others it became a byword for art and innovation. This lecture will examine two people who played a vital role in this success; the producer Dino De Laurentiis (1919-2020) and the prolific screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico (1914-2010) Each thought more of the industry than art and worked not only with artistic directors but with the makers of the comedies and genre films that were the bread and butter of Italian film production. Their ways of operating could hardly have been more different: flamboyant and visionary in the case of De Laurentiis, discreet and modest in the case of Cecchi D’Amico. It will be suggested that these modes corresponded to the pattern of gendered labour in the industry, in which female contributions – no matter how important – tended to be invisible. While producers historically received far less credit than directors, the achievements of De Laurentiis are today more widely acknowledged. Yet it is hard to overestimate the role of Cecchi D’Amico in impressing the marks of quality and humanity on Italian cinema that were essential to its worldwide successes in the postwar decades.
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Photo credit: Camera, Cinecittà Studio, by Sonse at https://flickr.com/photos/34585612@N00/46760148102
