A schermo pieno. Eni nel cinema italiano

The photography exhibition "A schermo pieno. Eni nel cinema italiano" (Full Screen: Eni in Italian Cinema), from May 21 to August 24, 2026, curated by Sergio Toffetti, it's a journey through AGIP service stations as portrayed by Italian cinema: a map showing the evolution of the landscape and the transformation of individual and collective lifestyles, dreams and needs.

Staged on the reception floor of the Mole Antonelliana and produced in collaboration with Eni, the exhibition — featuring scene photographs, film stills, images, and commercials — explores how Italian cinema transformed petrol stations and service areas into symbolic places of modernity, reflecting the social, economic, and cultural evolution of the country. From simple compulsory stops along the new roads of mobility, AGIP stations gradually became recurring presences, meeting points from which stories emerged, crossing genres, eras, and imaginaries.

The exhibition follows a chronological path and is told through film stills and scene photographs from 37 films: it begins in 1943 with Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione, passes through Francesco Rosi’s The Mattei Affair from 1972, and reaches 2014 with Edoardo De Angelis’s Perez.

At the heart of the exhibition is a reproduction of the Agip service station in Piazzale Accursio, Milan, designed in 1953 by Mario Bacciocchi: a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture and a symbol of Italy’s economic boom. Inside, a monitor shows two alternating montages alongside advertising commercials, while images and drawings on the walls illustrate the evolution of service station design. These works come from Eni’s Historical Archive, an institution that tells not only the story of a company, but also that of the Italian landscape and the communities that inhabited it. Among the images on display is the one from 1932 with which New York’s MoMA presented a petrol pump for the first time, recognizing it as a symbol of rationality and modernity.

In Italy, in the 1950s, AGIP transformed its design thanks to the work of Marcello Nizzoli, who made its petrol pumps iconic by enhancing Luigi Broggini’s “six-legged dog”. These are just some examples of the collective memory embodied by Eni’s Historical Archive, whose value goes beyond the corporate sphere and takes on a civic and cultural meaning. Across its 6 km of documents, 500,000 images, 5,000 audiovisual materials, and 70,000 technical drawings, one can trace the transformations of cities, countryside, infrastructure, and workplaces throughout the 20th century.

As cinema moved from black and white to colour, service stations appeared like chromatic and stylistic sequences in Italian-style road movies. Icons of the years of the economic boom, they also became expressions of a collective imagination that intertwined technology, design, and aspirations to well-being. Located along the country’s main road arteries, on those motorways that redefined time and space and shortened distances, service stations and the “six-legged dog” established themselves as some of the most recognizable symbols of a country projected towards modernity.

In Italian cinema, the Agip station is both a familiar and suspended place: a stage for encounters, departures, night-time stops, and moments of personal transformation. At the same time, it is a privileged tool for observing how seemingly ordinary places have helped shape the country’s collective memory.

Through the materials on display, A schermo pieno (Full screen) thus reconstructs a constantly changing landscape: that of an Italy crossed also by the American myth, the euphoria of the economic miracle, and the emergence of new models of consumption and sociability.

The exhibition is designed according to Design for All principles, in order to ensure easy access and enjoyment for all visitors. At the beginning of the exhibition route, an introduction to the exhibition is available in LIS — Italian Sign Language — and in easy-to-read text.

Completing the exhibition is the catalogue "A schermo pieno. Eni nel cinema italiano" (Full Screen: Eni in Italian Cinema), published by Allemandi, featuring a rich selection of images and essays by Sergio Toffetti, Giuseppe Lupo, Gianni Canova, Paolo Mereghetti, Giulio Sangiorgio, Marco Grifo, Fabio Pezzetti Tonion, Chiara Alessi, and Laura Greco.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, on Thursday, May 21, 2026, Cinema Massimo will present a screening of Dino Risi’s Il sorpasso (The Easy Life, Italy, 1962, 108’, b/w), one of the films that best captured the many faces of Italy’s modernization in the post-war period. Marco Risi will attend the evening.

From June 15 to 29, 2026, again at Cinema Massimo, the film series "A schermo pieno. Eni nel cinema italiano" (Full Screen: Eni in Italian Cinema) will present four films that helped portray the Italy of progress between the 1960s and 1970s. The programme includes Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943), Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960), Mario Bava’s Kidnapped – Cani arrabbiati (1974), and Elio Petri’s A ciascuno il suo (We Still Kill the Old Way, 1967), all by filmmakers who captured a country undergoing profound social change.

Last admission one hour before closing.