"Bertellini moves with ease through social history, art history, anthropology, and theories and histories of cinema. . . . His work offers an important and unique scholarly treatment . . . fascinating reading for Italians, Italian-Americans, and general readers interested in the history, culture, and ideology of immigration." —Marcia Landy, University of Pittsburgh

"Italy in Early American Cinema is a terrific book: erudite, wide-ranging, and eye-opening. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the early cinema or in the complex history of Italy’s relations to the wider world." —Donna R. Gabaccia, University of Minnesota

"To read Bertellini’s superb book is to enter into an intense, rich, and intricately layered experience of Italian immigrant culture in the New York of the 1900’s and 1910’s." —Millicent Marcus, Yale University

Once associated with landscape painting in Northern Europe, the picturesque painting style came to symbolize Mediterranean Europe through comforting views of distant landscapes and exotic characters. Showing readers how this aesthetic traveled to America and was transferred from 19th-century painters to early 20th-century photographers and filmmakers, Bertellini moves from Western films and travelogues to urban melodramas featuring Southern Italians, the picturesque's original characters.

THE AUTHOR / L'AUTEUR

The author is Domitor member, Giorgio Bertellini. He is Assistant Professor of Screen Arts and Cultures and of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He is author of Emir Kusturica. His edited and co-edited volumes include The Cinema of Italy and (with Richard Abel and Rob King) Early Cinema and the "National" and the forthcoming Silent Italian Cinema: A Reader.

Contact : 

Giorgio Bertellini
Screen Arts and Cultures
Romance Languages and Literatures
University of Michigan
6545 Haven Hall
505 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

ph. (734) 763 1144 o.
fax. (501) 423 2964 h.
giorgiob@umich.edu
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/sac/faculty_staff/bertellini.html