JICMS 8 (3) pp. 399–403 Intellect Limited 2020 Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies Volume 8 Number 3 © 2020 Intellect Ltd Translation. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/jicms_00029_7 www.intellectbooks.com 399 This article is one of the many documents, now readily available in the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia’s digital library, which attest to the cosmopoli- tan atmosphere of pre-Second World War Italian film culture (pace the autarky promoted by the Duce) and the direct link between debates on realism and the nascent neorealist movement. It was penned by the Brazilian-born, French- educated intellectual of Italian origin Alberto Cavalcanti, a key figure in the development of documentary, first in France and subsequently in the United Kingdom when in 1934 he joined John Grierson, becoming one of the driv- ing forces behind the British documentary movement. Cavalcanti acted as a go-between among different European capitals, promoting a very specific brand of documentary filmmaking which he dubbed documentario romanzato, narrative- or story-documentary. In this piece, Cavalcanti makes the claim that effective propaganda comes from narrative documentary, since it is the best rhetorical strategy to promote the current Italian political system. By blend- ing reality with fiction, following films such as Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) and Moana (1926), Ernest Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper’s LUCA CAMINATI Concordia University MICHAEL CRAMER Sarah Lawrence College Alberto Cavalcanti: ‘Propaganda documentaries’ TRANSLATION