Rethinking the Cinematic Cold War

Stefano Pisu is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Cagliari. Previously an International Fellow at Oxford University’s Research Center in the Humanities, his work considers the history of international cultural relations through cinema. His publications include Il XX secolo sul red carpet. Politica, economia e cultura nei festival internazionali del cinema, 1932-1976 (Franco Angeli, 2016) and La cortina di celluloide. Il cinema italo-sovietico nella Guerra Fredda (Mimesis, 2019).

Introduction: Expanding the Cinematic Cold War or: How We Learned to Cross Boundaries and Look at Bigger Pictures

Stefano Pisu, Francesco Pitassio, and Maurizio Zinni



Chapter 1. The Burden of Winning: American Cinematographic Policy in Italy in the Years of the Allied Military Administration (1943–1945)

Maurizio Zinni



Chapter 2. The Struggle to Save Progressive Unions: Carl Marzani and Union Films

Rosemary Feurer and Charles Musser



Chapter 3. A ‘Trojan Horse in the Enemy Camp’: Vatican Plans for a Catholic Third Way on the Chessboard of Cold War-Era Cinema (1939-1958)

Gianluca della Maggiore



Chapter 4. An Impossible Cinematic Hegemony: Soviet Films in Italy between Postwar and the Cold War (1944–1953)

Stefano Pisu



Chapter 5. Soviet Cinematic Diplomacy from New York to Beijing, 1949: Sergei Gerasimov and his Documentary Films

Marsha Siefert



Chapter 6. The Rise and Fall of Sino-Soviet Film Festival Diplomacy (1957-1966)

Elena Razlogova



Chapter 7. Making Ground for Film Export: Soviet Films’Competition with Hollywood in India in the 1950-1960s

Severyan Dyakonov



Chapter 8. The Film Market at the Time of Independence: France’s Former African Colonies and the Cinematic Cold War in the 1960s

Gabrielle Chomentowski



Chapter 9. The Troubles of Non-Alignment: International Pacifism, Transnational Style and Production Strategies in the Case of Rat (Atomic War Bride, Veliko Bulajić, 1960)

Francesco Pitassio



Chapter 10. From Anticommunism to Third-Worldism: The Transformation of Mexican Cinema in the Cold War of the 1970s

Israel Rodrìguez



Chapter 11. Cold War and Film Festivals in the Aftermath of 1968

Dina Iordanova



Chapter 12. To Catch Up and Overtake… Europe: Technology Transfer and Its Limits in the Soviet Cinema under Brezhnev

Catriona Kelly



Chapter 13. Missed Opportunities and Unexpected Success: Film Relationships between France and the GDR in the 1970s

Perrine Val



Chapter 14. The Chilean Cultural Project during Unidad Popular (1970–1973): The Interview between Roberto Rossellini and Salvador Allende

Margherita Moro



Chapter 15. ‘Ideological Threat of Italian Movies’: The KGB, Mafia, Punk-Rock, and Rise of Neo-Fascism among Soviet Youth (1982-1985)

Sergei Zhuk



Conclusion: Close Encounters around the World

Stefano Pisu, Francesco Pitassio and Maurizio Zinni



Filmography

Index