The neo-experimental way of Italian cinema
by Adriano Aprà There was Roberto Rossellini. There was (overground) Michelangelo Antonioni. There was Federico Fellini (but not always to my taste). There were, in the '60s and later, Pier Paolo Pasolini (including documentaries), Marco Bellocchio (including documentaries), Ermanno Olmi (including documentaries), Bernardo Bertolucci, Marco Ferreri, Vittorio De Seta (including documentaries). And there was a very marginalized – but today re-evaluated – Italian underground (Piero Bargellini, Alberto Grifi, Tonino De Bernardi, Alfredo Leonardi, Massimo Bacigalupo, Adamo Vergine, Guido Lombardi-Anna Lajolo, Paolo Brunatto, Gianfranco Brebbia), even with a few stars who did not consider themselves underground: Carmelo Bene (from theater), and Mario Schifano (from visual arts). Then came the crisis of the mid-70s. The older managed to keep going but the younger felt orphans, without fathers or culture medium. Meteors. The attempt to make new films, new forms, collides with produc...