Filmmaker Nanni Moretti denounced "the violence and crudeness" of the political intervention. His colleagues Marco Bellocchio, Paolo Sorrentino, Luca Guadagnino, Alice Rohrwacher and over 600 other film professionals expressed their concern by signing an appeal published in the press. In an interview with the Turin daily La Stampa, director Mario Martone said he was more concerned by this affair than by the social conflict paralyzing Hollywood. Since mid-July, the Italian film world has been shaken by the special attention that the far-right-dominated government majority has shown towards one of its most precious monuments, the Experimental Cinematography Center (Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, CSC) in Rome.
With no prior announcement or declaration, this foundation, which brings together a top-notch film school and the priceless archives of Italy's Cineteca Nazionale, has seen its governance overhauled and its management effectively dismissed by means of a decree passed in the middle of summer. According to its detractors, this reform could pave the way for a political takeover of this prestigious institution by the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. In any case, it comes at a time when, from public broadcasting to museums, the Italian radical right's ambitions for the world of culture are gradually becoming a reality, driven by a stated desire to challenge the "hegemony" that the left has held until now.
"The state funds the institution, and of course, the government has a say in the direction it takes, but this rush to take control and turn everything inside out is inexplicable," said director Michele Vannucci, who taught at the CSC. A paradoxical legacy of Fascist cultural policy and of a period whose characteristic architectural style it has preserved, the CSC, founded in 1935, was one of the breeding grounds of post-war Italian cinema. Directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Giuseppe De Santis received their education there in the 1940s, and Bellochio was a frequent visitor at the turn of the 1960s. To this day, the institution has provided the industry with generations of directors, screenwriters, producers and actors.
The amendment aimed at transforming its operations was introduced by four MPs from the far-right League party, the second-largest party in the coalition led by Meloni, in a decree meant to set out the measures to be taken for organizing the Vatican's 2025 Jubilee. Adopted on August 3, these unexpected provisions bring the appointment of members of the institution's scientific committee under the direct control of the executive branch and give them greater power over its operations. They also ended the terms of its current directors, which was due to expire in 2025.
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