Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia

History

The idea for a national cinematography school dates to 1930, when Alessandro Blasetti proposed it, and the following year Anton Giulio Bragaglia submitted a report describing an institute dedicated to training all cinema professions. A first school was created as a branch of the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, with Blasetti as director. In 1935 Luigi Freddi, head of the newly formed Direzione Generale per la Cinematografia, replaced that school with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and placed Luigi Chiarini at its head. The new centre began courses on 1 October 1935 in the basement of a middle school in Via Foligno, while the Via Tuscolana complex was being planned.

Chiarini was joined by Umberto Barbaro, translator of Eisenstein and Balázs, and by Francesco Pasinetti, who at twenty-three had directed Il canale degli angeli. Teaching was divided into five branches — acting, optics, sound, set design and production — with shared courses in aesthetics, film history, the social function of cinema and art history. The course lasted two years, with an optional third. The centre built up a library and a film archive, and began publishing the journal Bianco e Nero. From 1938 it collaborated on professional feature films, and in 1942 it self-produced Via delle cinque lune by Chiarini. In the final phase of the war the centre was forced to close and was looted by the Wehrmacht; most of the film archive’s materials disappeared, except for about ten films hidden by employees. The centre reopened in 1946 under Umberto Barbaro.

The school trained figures who shaped postwar Italian cinema, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Giuseppe De Santis, Luigi Zampa, Clara Calamai, Alida Valli, Pasqualino De Santis and Dino De Laurentiis. Since 1997 it has operated as the Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, a private-law foundation.