Let's close the film and architecture thread that started on Thursday by looking at another installation at the 14th Venice International Architecture Exhibition.
Entitled "Cinecittà Occupata" (Occupied Cinecittà), this installation by Ignacio G. Galán looks at the dichotomy between Italian history/reality Vs cinematic fiction through a scale model that tries to recreate some key events occurred in the famous film studios.
Conceived in 1928 by Luigi Freddi, General Director of Cinematography within the fascist Ministry for Press and propaganda, commissioned to architect Gino Peressutti by Carlo Roncoroni, Cinecittà was opened in 1937 by Mussolini.
Cinema was originally used by Fascism to promote the regime, but, little by little, Italian audiences started being exposed also to different kind of materials, with movies featuring engaging stories and plots.
Things changed during the Second World War: in 1943 the German troops occupying Rome converted the studios into a base for field marshal Albert Kesselring, some of the materials were taken by the Germans, while others were brought to Venice by the Minister of Popular Culture of the Repubblica di Salò that also created new film studios in the Giardini of the Biennale.
In 1944 the studios were converted into a camp to house 3,000 thousand refugees, while neo-realist film-makers moved to the streets to film on location.
After the war American film-makers started using the studios: famous block-busters such as Ben Hur (1959) were shot there, while Italian directors like Visconti and Fellini arrived on the scene.
As the years passed and directors abandoned its studios, Cinecittà went through another kind of expansion thanks to television programmes, reality shows, advertising and music video production. Cinecittà workers also built the façades of "Strada Novissima", Hans Hollein's project for the 1st Venice Architecture Biennale in 1980.
Cinecittà remained suspended between fiction and reality: while inside its studios manufactured stories took place, jobless extras and prospective actors who weren't hired quite often protested outside.
Privatised in 1997, the studios turned into an unstable enterprise: different strategies were devised to relaunch Cinecittà, one major project consisting in building a cinema-themed amusement park with sets designed by Dante Ferretti (the installation also includes photographs of the sets).
Further protests by local workers marked the more recent history of Cinecittà (a history of decadence anticipated by the deserted studios shown in Godard's Le Mépris), with workers occupying the studios to disagree with the new strategies and highlight how their skills, talents and expertise are being diverted from cinema towards the entertainment and tourism industries.
The most interesting point in this installation remains the focus on the mutable architectures of Cinecittà suspended between reality and fiction that adapted throughout the years, producing along the way propaganda for the fascist regime, blockbusters and vapid reality shows à la Big Brother, and shaping in this way Italian history and society.
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