Stefano Pisu

After completing a doctorate in history in 2008, Stefano Pisu worked on several research projects on the history of Italian-Soviet relations at the University of Cagliari and Rome 3. From 2019 to 2022, he was a researcher at the University of Cagliari, where he was appointed lecturer. His main areas of research are the history of international cultural relations in the 20th century, particularly through cinema. He is a research associate at the Centre d'Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines - université de Versailles-Saint Quentin en Yvelines. In 2020, he was an International Fellow at Oxford University. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Wurzburg (2022) and at the Central European University in Budapest (2023).

The project

Title: "Les relations italo-françaises après la seconde guerre mondiale à travers le cinéma : réseaux et pratiques de coopération (1945-1955)"

"My research project aims to deepen the study of cinema in the history of Franco-Italian relations from the post-war period to the mid-1950s. The project aims at investigating several areas: firstly, the extent to which similar institutions in the two countries came into contact with each other (particularly in the field of film festivals and schools); secondly, how the networks of professionals in the two countries functioned; and finally, what role these networks and the joint actions undertaken played in the reconstruction of more general relations between France and Italy after the Second World War. More concretely, the research project will take two directions. The first is to develop a study of the relationship between the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, in order to ascertain the extent to which the two institutions operated in competition and/or collaboration in the first ten years of the post-war period. In addition, I intend to investigate the relations - both institutional and informal - between the film schools present in the two countries after the Second World War, i.e. the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC) and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia."

Host institution : Centre d'histoire sociale des mondes contemporains, Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers

Selective Bibliographye

• La cortina di celluloide. Il cinema italo-sovietico nella Guerra fredda, Mimesis, Milano 2019
• Cultura e mobilitazione di massa in URSS. Cinema e pubblico dalla NEP al realismo socialista, Morlacchi University Press, Perugia 2018
• “Envisioning the Revolutionary South: The Soviet-Italian Coproduction Life is Beautiful (1979)”, in Alice Lovejoy and Mari Pajala (eds.), Remapping Cold War Media. Institutions, Infrastructures, Translations, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2022, pp. 245-259
• « Les co-productions italo-soviétiques (1950-1970): coopération réelle entre Est et Ouest ou occasion manquée? », In: Paola Palma, Valérie Pozner (sous la direction de), Mariages à l’européenne. Les coproductions cinématographiques intra-européennes depuis 1945, AFRHC, Parigi 2019, pp. 51-7
• “A Transnational Love-Hate Relationship: The FIAPF and the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals (1950-1970)”, in T. Jenkins (ed.), International Film Festivals. Contemporary Cultures and History Beyond Venice and Cannes, I. B. Tauris, London 2018, pp. 109-131