[ecrea] Special issue of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 5.2

Intellect is delighted to announce that the /Journal of Italian Cinema & 
Media Studies 5.2/ is now available.

This special issue of JICMS is dedicated to ‘Italian Horror Cinema’. In 
both fan culture and the academy (which are frequently connected), 
Italian horror films have been singled out for their alleged 
transgressions, and the challenges they arguably pose to various 
‘norms’, ‘whether these be aesthetic norms of commercial mainstream 
cinema film-making or broader social and ideological norms’ (Hutchings 
2003: 132). This special issue seeks to engage with this developing 
trend, as an outlet for such trans-disciplinary research: sitting within 
the concerns of both Film Studies and Italian Studies, while embracing 
the exigencies of historically informed nuance.

For more information about this issue, please click here 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=215/> or email 
(katy /at/ intellectbooks.com) <mailto:(katy /at/ intellectbooks.com)>

Articles within this issue include (partial list):

All the colours of the dark: Film genre and the Italian giallo 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Article,id=23217/>

*Authors: *Alexia Kannas

Page Start: 173

Recent scholarship on the giallo film – and Italian horror more broadly 
– has emphasised the use of the Italian term filone (‘thread’ or 
‘streamlet’) instead of ‘genre’ to describe the particular production 
contexts of Italian genre film in the post-war period. This article 
considers how and why the giallo problematizes film genre as it is 
traditionally conceived, and argues that the giallo film is uniquely 
positioned to pose fundamental questions about genre as a theoretical 
system, as well as to question the task of genre criticism itself. 
Through an examination of historical approaches to film genre via the 
giallo case study, the article shows how this group of films debunks 
theories of generic evolution and complicates the notion of generic 
hybridity. Whilst challenging the cultural hegemony of Hollywood, 
framing the giallo as a genre demands a radical conceptualisation of 
genre systems that more readily accommodates their propensity to shift 
and change over time.

A comparative analysis of the factors driving film cycles: Italian and 
American zombie film production, 1978-82 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Article,id=23218/>

*Authors: *Todd K. Platts

Page Start: 191

This study shines light on the general factors involved in film cycle 
development and non-development through a focus on /Dawn of the Dead/’s 
(Romero, 1978/79) influence in the Italian and US film markets. Four 
factors, commercial success, sociopolitical events and broader social 
currents, supporting cultural phenomena and ephemera, and industrial 
compatibility, are comparatively assessed with respect to the Italian 
zombie cycle from 1978 to 1981 and the lack of an American cycle from 
the same period. The comparative approach advanced in the article 
properly historicises the development of zombie cinema after one of its 
landmark films. Moreover, while the approach is applied to late 
1970s/early 1980s zombie cinema, it offers a general analytic for future 
film cycle scholarship.


Streaming Italian horror cinema in the United Kingdom: Lovefilm Instant 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Article,id=23221/>

*Authors: *Stefano Baschiera

Page Start: 245

This article investigates the distribution of Italian horror cinema in 
the age of video streaming, analysing its presence and categorisation on 
the platform Lovefilm Instant UK, in order to investigate the importance 
of ‘niche’ in what is known as the long tail of online distribution and 
the online availability of exploitation films. The author argues that 
looking at the streaming presence of Italian horror and comparing it to 
its prior distribution on home video formats (in particular VHS and DVD) 
we can grasp how distribution and access have shaped the understanding 
of the genre. In particular, this article addresses the question of the 
categorisation of the films made by the S-VOD services and the limits of 
streaming distribution, such as lack of persistency in availability and 
the need for enhanced curatorship.


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