AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Capturing Italy’s Golden Age - The Hollywood Reporter

Nation marks 100 classics for preservation

Federico Fellini’s iconic “La Dolce Vita” and Vittorio De Sica’s neo-realism classic “Ladri di Biciclette” (The Bicycle Thieves) are among the 100 films that will be protected and highlighted as part of the “Hundred Films and One Country” project.

The initiative, unveiled during the Venice Days sidebar at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and officially launched there a year later, will protect 100 films made from 1942-78, Italy’s so-called Golden Age of film.

The films selected will be refurbished if necessary, and protected, promoted and made available free of charge for educational and cultural uses.

Organizers of the project caution that the list should not be seen as a list of the 100 best films of the period in question but rather a “cinematographic examination” of Italy during those decades.

Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli, on hand for the official launch last year, likened the project to a “cinema-based cultural archive.”

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