Newsreels
CENSORSHIP IN THE NEWS AND IN ADVERTISING SINCE 1946 by Alfredo Baldi
Newsreels and on-screen commercials were also subjected to the control of film revision commissions. Newsreels were actually born along with cinema itself. Italy saw a boost of this medium with the “Giornali LUCE”, created in 1927. During the second post-war period, several new newsreels were founded. Between 1946 and 1978, over 8,000 titles were revised, 116 of them did not obtain the censor’s certificate or were restricted. The causes for censor restrictions were usually to be found in some debonair eroticism, but also derisive irony against politicians and civil and religious institutions, especially at the turn of 1960. On-screen commercials would also incur similar vicissitudes.
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JACOPETTI AND CENSORSHIP by Luca Martera
In the landscape of Italian film, mention should be made of the Gualtiero Jacopetti case because of the film-maker’s peculiar style in portraying reality, openly in contrast with the priggish censorship of the Sixties. Jacopetti’s nonconformist irreverence towards facts, combining satire, parody, and documentary, marked a break with the then current journalistic practice. This approach was not welcomed by censorship, which inexorably cut countless metres of his newsreels that scorned and exposed the contradictions of those times. His pungent style actually touched on various themes, from politics to journalism (see the Carlo Mazzarella case), including royals, an approach to be found also in his feature films. These were equally hatcheted by censorship.
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