Headshot of Dr.Luca Peretti

Dr. Luca Peretti

Assistant Professor of Italian Studies
Curriculum Vitae

  • Profile

    My current research project investigates cultural exchanges between Italy and the Global South at the peak of the anticolonial era (late 1950s-early 1970s). It focuses on cinema alongside other cultural forms and media practices, such as photography, exhibitions, television. Currently, I am mostly writing and researching on the collaborative works between Italians and Algerians, including Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966): on this topic, I am completing a book in English, and I wrote a monograph in Italian. My interests also include industrial and sponsored cinema (particularly oil and cinema), the presence of foreigners in Italy and Italians abroad, the relationship between film and history, and Jewish Italian culture. I wrote and coproduced the film Mister Wonderland (dir. Valerio Ciriaci, 2019), I collaborate with newspapers and magazines, and I also have experience in podcasting.

    Photo by Luana Rigolli, November 2022. Courtesy of the British School at Rome.

  • Publications
    Books
    • Italian Anticolonial Cinema, with Luca Caminati, in progress (expected publication, 2026)
    • Beyond The Battle of Algiers. Fiction, non-fiction, and militant cinema between Algeria and Italy in the 1960s, in progress (expected publication, 2026)
    • Un dio nero un diavolo bianco. Storia di un film non fatto tra Algeria, Eni e Sartre, Venice, Marsilio, 2023
    • “Postcolonial Italian Cinema”, Cinema e Storia. Rivista di studi interdisciplinari, forthcoming 1/2024 (with Luca Caminati, Valeria Deplano, and Damiano Garofalo)
    • Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022 (co-edited with Paola Scarnati)
    • Pier Paolo Pasolini, Framed and Unframed: A Thinker for the Twenty-First Century, London and New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018 (paperback: 2020) (co-edited with Karen T. Raizen)
    • Immagini di piombo. Cinema, storia e terrorismi in Europa, Milan, Postmediabooks, 2014 (co-edited with Vanessa Roghi)
    • “Media-Enterprise Discourses and Practices of Cinema and the Media in Corporate Culture”, Cinema e Storia. Rivista di studi interdisciplinari, 1/2022 (with Diego Cavallotti, Simone Dotto, and Jennifer Malvezzi)
    Journal Articles
    • “L’occhio e le vene del Novecento: cinema e petrolio”, Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale, 64 (2024), pp. 14-33
    • “Algerians in Rome, Italians in Algiers: before and after The Battle of Algiers”, Film History: An International Journal, Volume 35, Number 2, Summer 2023, pp. 52-71
    • “‘Everything is going to begin’: Pasolini, Antonioni, and Branca in the U.S. circa 1968”, The Italianist: Film Issue, 43:2, special cluster on Transnational Screens, pp. 198-211
    • “Build to Last? Material Legacies of Italian Colonialism. A roundtable”, Interventions: International journal of postcolonial studies, special issue on Postcolonial Italy, edited by Sebastian Depretto and Markus Wurzer, pp. 1-18
    • “‘Purché ne salvi lo spirito’. Tempo di uccidere, made and unmade films”, in Annali d'Italianistica 2023 – Fascism in Italian Culture: 1945-2022, pp. 269-286
    • “La battaglia d’Algeri di Gillo Pontecorvo, rifiuti e ‘censure’”, special issue “Tra mito, storia e attualità: i sessant’anni della Rivoluzione algerina”, Il Ponte, 5-2022, pp. 68-76.
    • “Italian screen studies alla conferenza annuale dell’American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS)”, La Valle dell’Eden. Semestrale di cinema e audiovisivi, special issue on “Italian Cinema and Media Studies Beyond Italy”, n. 37/2021, pp. 71-82*
    • “Non-Theatrical Circulation Circuits of Italian Films in the American Midwest. A Case Study”, L’avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media, 1, 2021, pp. 23-40 (with Damiano Garofalo)*
    • “Timira, romanzo meticcio e stratificato”, Forum Italicum, Volume 55, issue 1, 2021, pp. 68-84 (with Michela Bertossa, Lawrence Gianangeli, and, Enrico Zammarchi)*
    • “«Ciak, azione!». Alcune note su cinema e conflitto”, Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale, 52 (2020), pp. 168-175
    • “Between auteurism and sponsored cinema: Joris Ivens, Bernardo Bertolucci and ENI’, Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, 7:2 (2019), pp. 199–215*
    • “Unfinished projects, unmade films, unfilmed objects: the difficult relationship between cinema and the Italian anni di piombo”, in The Italianist: Film Issue, 38:2 (2018), pp. 189-203*
    • “Gramsci, no longer a communist”, in Historical Materialism 25.3 (2017), pp. 191-209 (Review Article)*
    • “Before The Battle of Algiers: Sartre, Colonialism, Industrial Cinema, and an Unmade Film”, in Senses of Cinema, Issue 84, September 2017 (online, 5987 words)*
    • “Parodie sul web. Gli effetti di Gomorra La serie sulla gente”, in Arabeschi. Rivista di studi su letteratura e visualità., n. 9/2017, online
    • “The diplomatic promotion of Italian cinema in English-speaking countries”, in Comunicazioni Sociali 2016 – 3. Italian Quality Cinema: institutions, legitimation, taste, edited by Claudio Bisoni, Danielle Hipkins, and Paolo Noto, pp. 398-411 (with Paolo Noto)*
    • “La nostra fratellanza nel dolore. The Jewish Community of Rome and the ‘other’ genocides” in Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC, special issue on multidiretional memories, edited by Robert Gordon and Emilano Perra (2016, online, 9063 words)*
    • “Occasioni mancate, il cinema italiano e gli anni di piombo” in Jean Gili (ed.), Storie del Bel Paese. L'Italia attraverso il cinema dal Risorgimento ad oggi (1861-2011), “Quaderni del CSCI» 2011/7, Barcelona, 2011, pp. 130-133
    • “Paolo Benvenuti e Segreti di stato: un incontro tra cinema e storia”, in Storiografia, rivista annuale di storiografia, Fabrizio Serra Editore, 13, 2010, pp. 171-204

    (* peer reviewed)

    Book Chapters
    • “Elio Germano: Not Just an Actor”, in Italian Contemporary Screen Performers. Training, Production, Prestige, edited by Luca Barra, Cristina Formenti, Mariapaola Pierini and Francesco Pitassio, Palgrave MacMillan (forthcoming, 2800 words)
    • “Ennio Flaiano, Marcello Pagliero e Tempo di uccidere”, in Ennio Flaiano oltre i luoghi comuni, edited by Alberto Pezzotta, Mimesis, pp. 133-148 (with Paolo Noto)
    • “’There exists no life more daring and adventuresome than that of an oil drigger’. ENI’s geologists-filmmakers in Iran”, in Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film, edited by Vinzenz Hediger, Yvonne Zimmermann, with S. Anthony, Amsterdam University Press, 2024, pp. 581-609*
    • “I confini negli USA: evoluzioni, emergenze e margini”, in Sui confini d’Europa. Storie di frontiere e di resistenze, edited by Gabriele Proglio, Il Manifesto libri, 2023
    • “Prima di Pontecorvo e Lorenzini: solidarietà militante e nascita del cinema algerino”, in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 99-111
    • “La prima grande produzione cinematografica algerina”, Les Mains libres dal 1964 al 2022” in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 227-237
    • “Scambi, memorie, incontri: Zineb Sedira al padiglione francese alla Biennale d’Arte 2022, in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 265-271
    • “Portella della Ginestra e il cinema, film fatti e non fatti”, in La strage di Portella della Ginestra tra storia e memoria, edited by Tommaso Baris and Manoela Patti, Istituto Poligrafico Europeo, 2022, pp. 211-232
    • “Italians the world over. The glorification of Italian labor abroad”, in Italian Industrial Literature and Film: Perspectives on the Representation of Postwar Labor, edited by Carlo Baghetti, Jim Carter, and Lorenzo Marmo, Peter Lang Press, 2021, pp. 449-458
    • “Propaganda Live, la TV come comunità intermedia”, in Luca Barra and Fabio Guarnaccia (ed.), SuperTele. Come guardare la televisione, Minimum Fax, 2021 pp. 160-172 (with Damiano Garofalo)
    • “Al cinema col PCI. La critica cinematografica sulla stampa non specializzata (1945-1956)”, in Michele Guerra and Sara Martin (ed.), Culture del film. Il cinema e il pensiero critico italiano, Il Mulino, 2020, pp. 197-217 (with Marco Zilioli)
    • “Mafia, Mobility, and Capitalism in Italy circa 1960” in Companion to the Gangster Film, edited by George S. Larke-Walsh, Hoboken [NJ], Wiley Blackwell, 2018, pp. 244-261*
    • “Compromessi e difficoltà. Note a proposito di alcuni film non fatti sugli anni di piombo”, in Luca Peretti e Vanessa Roghi (ed.), Immagini di piombo. Cinema, storia e terrorismi in Europa, Milan, Postmediabooks, 2014, pp. 75-84
    • “Caratteri dell'antigiudaismo a Roma nei primi dell'Ottocento in due film italiani: Il Marchese del Grillo (1981) e Nell'anno del signore”, in Giuseppe Capriotti (ed.), Antigiudiasmo, antisemitismo e memoria. Un approccio pluridisciplinare, Macerata, Eum (University of Macerata Press), 2009, pp. 93-126