Notes on the History of Italian Nonfiction Film 1 Luca Caminati and Mauro Sassi Abstract Throughout its history, Italian nonfiction film production has been systematically subsumed within other disciplines, such as anthropology and ethnography, or propaganda initiatives. Only recently, a mutated social context allowed nonfiction film to emerge as a genuine form of artistic expression. In the 1960s and 1970s, the end of state subsidies for documentary films, together with the well-known radicalization of Italian politics, opened new spaces for experimentalism in both style and production forms. Inspired by the first auteur documentaries of Silvano Agosti, Daniele Segre, and Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, a new generation of Italian documentarians has become, arguably, the most innovative face of contemporary Italian cinema. Keywords Nonfiction, documentary, Italian cinema, film history, filmmakers, Italian film directors Beginnings In recent years, debates on the nature of realism in art and mass culture and on the massive role played by nonfiction in cinema, television, and—more virally—on the Internet, have taken hold of the field of film studies. Even scholars of Italian cinema have been forced, a posteriori, to revaluate the role of documentary and recalibrate its import in the teleological narratives currently available in North America. 2 The role of nonfiction film and, more specifically, the intersection between fictional and documental narratives must be an essential factor in evolving discourses on Italian modernity. 3 The “weak ontological frontier” (Levy 1982, 249) between fiction and nonfiction is indeed at the core of a good portion of the heroic beginnings of Italian cinema. According to