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Full-text articles to support research in history and genealogy and lesson plans to support student learning.
1) La Bohème
Language
Italiano
Description
Puccini's bittersweet opera of high-spirited bohemians and the doomed love between Rodolfo, the idealistic poet and Mimi, the consumptive flower-maker, is a beautifully balanced series of tableaux depicting the infectious joie de vivre of youth and the tragic waste of disease and separation.
Language
Italiano
Formats
Description
Samuele is twelve years old and lives on an island in the middle of the sea. He goes to school, and loves shooting his slingshot and going hunting. He likes land games, even though everything around him speaks of the sea and the men, women, and children who try to cross it to get to his island. But his is not an island like the others, its name is Lampedusa and it is the most symbolic border of Europe, crossed by thousands of migrants in the last...
4) L'immensità
Language
Italiano
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Clara and Felice struggle to raise their three children in the 1970's Rome. Their trans son Andrew yearns for another life, escaping into his own imagination to defuse family tension in this creative and moving film about growing up and breaking the mold.
Series
Language
Italiano
Description
This drama is set in Italy in 1938, when Mussolini's anti-Semetic edicts began to isolate the Jews from their communities. Among them were the Finzi-Continis, an aristocratic Jewish family forced for the first time to acknowledge the world beyond its fenced garden.
6) Vincere
Language
Italiano
Description
About fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and the woman he loved. Ida Dalser was scorned, denounced, and then written out of history. Mussolini's rise to power and Dalser's descent into an insane asylum are tragic counterpoints in a doomed romance. Dalser may have been written off at the time, but Bellocchio and Mezzogiorno allow her a final, unexpected triumph in this cinematic masterwork.
Series
Criterion collection volume 235
Language
Italiano
Description
Recounting the years of Italy's Risorgimento-when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a democratic Italy. Contains the original Italian version with optional subtitles, the English-language version and special features.
Series
Criterion collection volume 747
Language
Italiano
Formats
Description
Follows the exploits of two pansexual young men, the handsome scholar Encolpius and his vulgar, insatiably lusty friend Ascyltus, as they move through a landscape of free-form pagan excess.
9) Roma
Series
Criterion collection volume 848
Language
Italiano
Description
Virtually a plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens. Blending autobiography with scenes from present-day Roman life.
10) Baarìa
Language
Italiano
Description
Grand-scale, semi-autobiographical portrait of life and love over three generations in a small town in Sicily. Set against the background of major events in the history of 20th century Italy.
Series
Criterion collection volume 500
Language
Italiano
Description
When the Nazis occupied Rome, a brave few fought against it. An underground agent who is cornered by the Germans in a certain quarter of Rome, flees the Germans. In the course of his flight he imperils his resistance friends.
13) The leopard
Series
Criterion collection volume 235
Language
Italiano
Description
After the reunification of Italy, an aging Sicilian prince sees his influence slipping away with the growth of national movements and his nephew's attempts to take power.
Language
Italiano
Formats
Description
A rising young follower of Mussolini must assassinate his former professor, now in political exile, to demonstrate his loyalty to the Fascist state. He uses his honeymoon with his wife as a cover, but he becomes entranced by his former teacher's wife, and begins to question the fascist tenants he has accepted all of his life.
Series
Criterion collection volume 500
Language
Italiano
Description
With their stripped-down aesthetic, largely nonprofessional casts, and unorthodox approaches to storytelling, these intensely emotional works were international sensations and came to define the neorealist movement. Shot in battle-ravaged Italy and Germany.
Language
Italiano
Description
It is the Night of San Lorenzo, the night when dreams come true. While watching shooting stars, Cecilia tells her son about a similar night in 1944, when she was six years old, and the residents of San Martino, her small Tuscan hometown, struggled against Nazi oppression during the final days of WWII.
17) The conformist
Language
Italiano
Description
A weak-willed young follower of Mussolini must arrange the assassination of his former teacher, who is now a political threat.
18) Film d'amore e d'anarchia, ovvero, Stamattina alle 10 in via dei fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza
Series
Language
Italiano
Description
A country peasant goes to Rome with a plan to assassinate Benito Mussolini. His underground contact in the network of anarchists offers him a hideout in her brothel where he falls in love with a young prostitute.