Cinecittà, from Mussolini to the Dolce Vita

From 1937 to the 1960s, from Scipio the African to La Dolce Vita, Cinecittà was Italy’s true political laboratory. For 25 years, in the heart of these studios created by Mussolini himself to ensure his Fascist propaganda, Italian filmmakers succeeded in circumventing political pressure and censorship, surviving the war and its desolations, and facing American competition. While these challenges could have spelled the end of Italian cinema, it is instead in these difficulties that these filmmakers found the strength to create a leading artistic movement and a new kind of cinema. And they made Cinecittà the privileged witness of the reality of Italian society, its true mirror, and above all the main ambassador of Italy throughout the world.