NEOREALISM. THE BRILLIANCE OF REALITY IN POST-WAR ITALY. CINEMA, PHOTOGRAPHY, LITERATURE, MUSIC, THEATRE

Within the framework of the programmes rolled out in Turin for the occasion of Expo 2015, a group associating some of the main museums and cultural institutions in town is proposing an interdisciplinary showcase dedicated to Italian Neorealism.

NEOREALISM. The brilliance of reality in Post-War Italy. Cinema, photography, literature, music, theatre is a project by the National Cinema Museum in partnership with Palazzo Madama, Camera - Italian Centre for Photography, The Readers Circle, The Turin Resident Theatre Foundation, FolkClub, Scuola Holden and Turin University - Dams.

This project dedicated to Neorealism intends to offer a new articulated and original viewpoint regarding the most important aesthetic experience in the Italian Twentieth century. Starting from the innovations in form and content introduced by cinema, Neorealism truly ended up by imposing a new aesthetic paradigm, which would involve all main expressive forms, extending a significant influence on subsequent nouvelles vagues and leaving such a mark that its feedback may still be found today in many of the works by contemporary artists worldwide.

Its programme, which will spread over a seven-month span between the end of April and November 2015, will feature events, shows, exhibitions, concerts, readings and meetings, for becoming acquainted with, delving into, and understanding an era in Italian history and culture which has left deep traces throughout our present and in our collective imagination.

Palazzo Madama will feature the Federico Patellani – profession, photo-reporter exhibition, from 22 April to 13 September 2015, a solo display dedicated to the first Italian journalist – photographer, one of the most important Italian photographers in the 20th century. About 90 photographs in black and white have been selected from his vast archive, pictures that represent the fundamental stages in Patellani’s career in the best way, from the end of the Second World War to the mid-Sixties, when the photographer dedicated himself especially to travel photography.

The Turin Resident Theatre Foundation will be presenting a project by curator Valter Malosti at the Limone Foundries, on 12 and 13 May 2015, with the final year students at the Actors’ School, based on The secrets of Milan (Arialda and Maria Brasca) cycle by Giovanni Testori. A grand, rough fresco, in which the author was able to depict the soul of Milan suburbs during the economic boom era between the Fifties and Sixties, with extraordinary depth and poetry, at an extremely delicate turning point in Italian history.

The National Cinema Museum will be presenting the Neorealist cinema. The brilliance of reality in Post-War Italy exhibition at the Mole Antonelliana, from 4 June to 29 November 2015. Seventy years after the astounding appearance of Roma città aperta (Rome, open city) by Roberto Rossellini, Neorealism keeps on being the best known, most beloved and influent season in Italian film history. This exhibition will retrace its most significant stages thanks to an original new viewpoint, a journey through film frames and sequences, original documents, posters, promotional material, texts and screenplays, interview fragments, production notes, letters and statements.

Scuola Holden is organising Private issues. Reading and Trekking for remembering Beppe Fenoglio and Natalia Ginzburg on 19 and 20 September 2015, a two-day event to create multiple views on Neorealism, through two narrative treks in which theoretical and experiential elements, readings and long walks will intermingle, in a discovery of Fenoglio’s Langhe hills and Ginzburg’s Turin.

The Readers Circle will propose Conversations on Neorealism on 7- 14 -21- 28 October 2015, four meetings featuring as many Italian writers, who will re-read fundamental pages in Neorealist literature. A tribute to those authors who were able to recount changes in times through their lucid, sharp viewpoint, and during which contemporary narrating voices will restore the historic, narrative, stylistic and contents fabric of literary Neorealism to new life.

The FolkClub will be presenting two Singing of reality concerts on 9 and 30 October 2015, representing the historical experiences of a nucleus of intellectuals, authors and musicians who are strongly at variance with the innocuous, commercial songs model. On one hand, this leads to the production of original material diverging from light songs and sings and speaks of reality, on the other, to a retrieval through field research of the immense popular tradition heritage.

Camera - Italian Centre for Photography will feature Meetings: photography and Neorealism. Stories, documents and views on Post-War Italy during the month of October 2015, a cycle for in-depth research on the convergence between the most representative Italian post-war cultural movement and photography, illustrated by historians and scholars. 

Turin University’s Department for Humanities, Dams - Cinema will be organising the About Neorealism: voices, contexts, languages and cultures in Post-War Italy international panel, from 17 to 19 November 2015, a comprehensive analysis and reflection on the complex social, cultural and aesthetic scenario underlying Italian Neorealism.

The website  is now online at  www.neorealismo.com.