La Fabbrica dei Sogni: Italian Cinematography, Collective Memory and National Identity Salvatore Giusto Italian cinematography is not a culturally and politically neutral means of artistic communication. A web of historical, political and sociocultural instances, as well as the technical features characterizing cinematography itself, configured the pro- duction of national visual narratives and their fruition in the Italian movie theaters as the two generative poles of a constantly reiterated ritualistic process. This form of social drama aims at a strategic construction of a collective Italian historical memory. Italian films are very much a means of cultural production. Their structural owner- ship by the state is organic to the hegemonic reification of a politically driven feeling of Italian national identity. Cinematography is a powerful artificial device aiming at the construction of an alternative to the real life realities. Real life provides cinematography only with raw materials. —Umberto Eco Cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake. —Alfred Hitchcock BLACK AND WHITE CINEMA: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION The rise and establishment of the Italian Fascist regime during the so-called ven- tennio (1925–1945) was not a random historical phenomenon or the symptom of a peculiar form of Italian sociopolitical illness. Fascism was instead one of the most violent instruments through which the Italian capitalist class attempted to achieve the definitive regimentation of any contending social agency animating the national political debate of that age, including the working class, the labor unions and political parties. Fascism in Italy was a reactionary mass phenomenon SALVATORE GIUSTO is an M.A. student in sociocultural anthropology at Brandeis University. His main academic interests are economic and political anthropology as well as mass-media studies. He will start a Ph.D. program in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Toronto in September 2011. As a literary author, he has published in Italian Ritzomena. Cose che danzano [Lubrina edizioni, 2000] and, with Donato Losa, Le Ragazze non guardano lattai [Sperling and Kupfer edizioni, 2003]. E-mail: sgiusto@brandeis.edu or clearco82@hotmail.com Visual Anthropology, 24: 287–305, 2011 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2011.583564 287