Dr Luca Peretti

St John's College
  • Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture
Dr Luca Peretti

Contact

Location

  • St John's College, St John's Street, CB2 1TP

About

Luca Peretti works on Italian cinema and cultural history, particularly in their transnational and postcolonial dimensions. He has co-edited volumes on terrorism and cinema, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian cinema and Algeria, and Italian cinema and the former Portuguese colonies. His first monograph, Un dio nero un diavolo bianco. Storia di un film non fatto tra Algeria, Eni, e Sartre, focuses on the history of the unrealised project for a film – written, among others, by Jean-Paul Sartre – which was supposed to be shot in Algeria at the beginning of the 1960s. Published at the end of 2023, the book has enjoyed wide circulation and was reviewed in important Italian magazines (Alias-Il Manifesto, Il Venerdì di Repubblica, Film TV etc). Currently, he is co-writing with Luca Caminati (Concordia) a book on Italian Anticolonial Cinema, and he is completing two further monographs on the collaborative work between Italians and Algerians in the 1960s, including Gillo Pontecorvo’s well-known film, The Battle of Algiers (1966): the first is specifically dedicated to the film, focussing on a social and political history of its making and its reception; the second is provisionally entitled Beyond The Battle of Algiers. Fiction, Non-fiction, and militant cinema between Algeria and Italy in the 1960s.

He regularly contributes to newspapers and magazines on a variety of topics, trying to build bridges between the university and the wider culture and political world. He wrote and produced an award-winning documentary on Italian-American film impresario S.Z. Poli (Mister Wonderland, dir. Valerio Ciriaci, 2019) and has organised film series and retrospectives at Yale, the British School at Rome, the Cinemateca Portuguesa, and several film festivals in Italy. He is the founder and curator of the Richmond Italian and French Film Festival, whose first edition will take place in March 2026 in Richmond (Virginia), after a pilot festival dedicated to Italian cinema in 2025.

Dr Peretti offers supervision across a range of topics in Italian, European, North African, and global cinema; postcolonial Italian literature and cinema; Jewish Italian culture; Italian intellectual history.

Dr Peretti welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to his interests.

Research

Research interests: 

Italian cinema; Postcolonial Italy; Anticolonialism and ‘Thirdworldism’; Mediterranean studies; Film and media history; Environment and the media; Jewish Italian culture.

Published works: 

Books

• Un dio nero un diavolo bianco. Storia di un film non fatto tra Algeria, Eni e Sartre, Venice, Marsilio, 2023

• Labanta! Ex colonie portoghesi e cinema italiano Annale AAMOD 23, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2024 (co-edited with Andrea Gelardi and Paola Scarnati)

• Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022 (co-edited with Paola Scarnati)

• Pier Paolo Pasolini, Framed and Unframed: A Thinker for the Twenty-First Century, London and New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018 (paperback: 2020) (co-edited with Karen T. Raizen)

• Immagini di piombo. Cinema, storia e terrorismi in Europa, Milan, Postmediabooks, 2014 (co-edited with Vanessa Roghi)

 

Edited issues

• “Postcolonial Italian Cinema”, Cinema e Storia. Rivista di studi interdisciplinari, 1/2024 (with Luca Caminati, Valeria Deplano, and Damiano Garofalo)

• “Media-Enterprise Discourses and Practices of Cinema and the Media in Corporate Culture”, Cinema e Storia. Rivista di studi interdisciplinari, 1/2022 (with Diego Cavallotti, Simone Dotto, and Jennifer Malvezzi)

• “Cinema and Social Conflicts”, Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict, Volume 6 (2020) (co-edited with Daniel Fairfax and André Keiji Kunigami)

• Dossier “The Legacy of Pier Paolo Pasolini”, Senses of Cinema, Issue 77, December 2015 (co-edited with Daniel Fairfax)

 

Journal articles

• “In compartecipazione. Italian and Algerian films in the 1960s”, Cinéma&Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal, issue 45, forthcoming

• “Di film festival e terzomondismo”, Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale, 66, pp. 168-180 (with Andrea Gelardi)

• “L’occhio e le vene del Novecento: cinema e petrolio”, Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale, 64 (2024), pp. 14-33

• “‘Everything is going to begin’: Pasolini, Antonioni, and Branca in the U.S. circa 1968”, The Italianist: Film Issue, 43:2, 2024, special cluster on Transnational Screens, pp. 198-211

• “Algerians in Rome, Italians in Algiers: before and after The Battle of Algiers”, Film History: An International Journal, Volume 35, Number 2, Summer 2023, pp. 52-71

• “Build to Last? Material Legacies of Italian Colonialism. A roundtable”, Interventions: International journal of postcolonial studies, 2024, special issue on Postcolonial Italy, edited by Sebastian Depretto and Markus Wurzer, pp. 1-18

• “‘Purché ne salvi lo spirito’. Tempo di uccidere, made and unmade films”, in Annali d'Italianistica 2023 – Fascism in Italian Culture: 1945-2022, pp. 269-286

• “La battaglia d’Algeri di Gillo Pontecorvo, rifiuti e ‘censure’”, special issue “Tra mito, storia e attualità: i sessant’anni della Rivoluzione algerina”, Il Ponte, 5-2022, pp. 68-76.

• “Italian screen studies alla conferenza annuale dell’American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS)”, La Valle dell’Eden. Semestrale di cinema e audiovisivi, special issue on “Italian Cinema and Media Studies Beyond Italy”, n. 37/2021, pp. 71-82*

• “Non-Theatrical Circulation Circuits of Italian Films in the American Midwest. A Case Study”, L’avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media, 1, 2021, pp. 23-40 (with Damiano Garofalo)*

• “Timira, romanzo meticcio e stratificato”, Forum Italicum, Volume 55, issue 1, 2021, pp. 68-84 (with Michela Bertossa, Lawrence Gianangeli, and, Enrico Zammarchi)*

• “«Ciak, azione!». Alcune note su cinema e conflitto”, Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale, 52 (2020), pp. 168-175

• “Between auteurism and sponsored cinema: Joris Ivens, Bernardo Bertolucci and ENI’, Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, 7:2 (2019), pp. 199–215*

• “Unfinished projects, unmade films, unfilmed objects: the difficult relationship between cinema and the Italian anni di piombo”, in The Italianist: Film Issue, 38:2 (2018), pp. 189-203*

• “Gramsci, no longer a communist”, in Historical Materialism 25.3 (2017), pp. 191-209 (Review Article)*

• “Before The Battle of Algiers: Sartre, Colonialism, Industrial Cinema, and an Unmade Film”, in Senses of Cinema, Issue 84, September 2017 (online, 5987 words)*

• “Parodie sul web. Gli effetti di Gomorra La serie sulla gente”, in Arabeschi. Rivista di studi su letteratura e visualità., n. 9/2017, online

• “The diplomatic promotion of Italian cinema in English-speaking countries”, in Comunicazioni Sociali 2016 – 3. Italian Quality Cinema: institutions, legitimation, taste, edited by Claudio Bisoni, Danielle Hipkins, and Paolo Noto, pp. 398-411 (with Paolo Noto)*

• “La nostra fratellanza nel dolore. The Jewish Community of Rome and the ‘other’ genocides” in Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC, special issue on multidiretional memories, edited by Robert Gordon and Emilano Perra (2016, online, 9063 words)*

• “Occasioni mancate, il cinema italiano e gli anni di piombo” in Jean Gili (ed.), Storie del Bel Paese. L'Italia attraverso il cinema dal Risorgimento ad oggi (1861-2011), “Quaderni del CSCI» 2011/7, Barcelona, 2011, pp. 130-133

• “Paolo Benvenuti e Segreti di stato: un incontro tra cinema e storia”, in Storiografia, rivista annuale di storiografia, Fabrizio Serra Editore, 13, 2010, pp. 171-204

(* peer reviewed)

 

Book Chapters

• “Italian Anticolonial and Anti-Imperialist Cinema: a Taxonomy”, in Turning the Map Upside down. Connected Histories of Decolonization, Third Worldism and Radical Activism, edited by Andrea Brazzoduro and Damiano Matasci, Leiden University Press, forthcoming

• “Rendering Solidarity: Mobilizing Italian Anticolonial Cinema”, in Cinemas of Global Solidarity, edited by Matthew Croombs and Masha Salazkina, Oxford University Press, forthcoming (with Luca Caminati)

• “National identity and thirdworldism: the rise of film festivals and in Italy in the 1960s”, in Staging italianità, edited by Beatrice Falcucci and Maria Bonaria Urban, Edizioni Quasar, forthcoming (with Andrea Gelardi)

• “Anticolonialismo, cinema italiano, e colonie portoghesi” in Labanta! Ex colonie portoghesi e cinema italiano Annale AAMOD 23, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2024, pp. 27-40 (with Luca Caminati)

• “Elio Germano: Not Just an Actor”, in Italian Contemporary Screen Performers. Training, Production, Prestige, edited by Luca Barra, Cristina Formenti, Mariapaola Pierini and Francesco Pitassio, Palgrave MacMillan, 2024, pp. 241-247

• “Ennio Flaiano, Marcello Pagliero e Tempo di uccidere”, in Ennio Flaiano oltre i luoghi comuni, edited by Alberto Pezzotta, Mimesis, 2024, pp. 133-148 (with Paolo Noto)

• “’There exists no life more daring and adventuresome than that of an oil drigger’. ENI’s geologists-filmmakers in Iran”, in Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film, edited by Vinzenz Hediger, Yvonne Zimmermann, with S. Anthony, Amsterdam University Press, 2024, pp. 581-609*

• “I confini negli USA: evoluzioni, emergenze e margini”, in Sui confini d’Europa. Storie di frontiere e di resistenze, edited by Gabriele Proglio, Il Manifesto libri, 2023

• “Prima di Pontecorvo e Lorenzini: solidarietà militante e nascita del cinema algerino”, in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 99-111

• “La prima grande produzione cinematografica algerina”, Les Mains libres dal 1964 al 2022” in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 227-237

• “Scambi, memorie, incontri: Zineb Sedira al padiglione francese alla Biennale d’Arte 2022, in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 265-271

• “Portella della Ginestra e il cinema, film fatti e non fatti”, in La strage di Portella della Ginestra tra storia e memoria, edited by Tommaso Baris and Manoela Patti, Istituto Poligrafico Europeo, 2022, pp. 211-232

• “Italians the world over. The glorification of Italian labor abroad”, in Italian Industrial Literature and Film: Perspectives on the Representation of Postwar Labor, edited by Carlo Baghetti, Jim Carter, and Lorenzo Marmo, Peter Lang Press, 2021, pp. 449-458

• “Propaganda Live, la TV come comunità intermedia”, in Luca Barra and Fabio Guarnaccia (ed.), SuperTele. Come guardare la televisione, Minimum Fax, 2021 pp. 160-172 (with Damiano Garofalo)

• “Al cinema col PCI. La critica cinematografica sulla stampa non specializzata (1945-1956)”, in Michele Guerra and Sara Martin (ed.), Culture del film. Il cinema e il pensiero critico italiano, Il Mulino, 2020, pp. 197-217 (with Marco Zilioli)

• “Mafia, Mobility, and Capitalism in Italy circa 1960” in Companion to the Gangster Film, edited by George S. Larke-Walsh, Hoboken [NJ], Wiley Blackwell, 2018, pp. 244-261*

• “Compromessi e difficoltà. Note a proposito di alcuni film non fatti sugli anni di piombo”, in Luca Peretti e Vanessa Roghi (ed.), Immagini di piombo. Cinema, storia e terrorismi in Europa, Milan, Postmediabooks, 2014, pp. 75-84

•“Caratteri dell'antigiudaismo a Roma nei primi dell'Ottocento in due film italiani: Il Marchese del Grillo (1981) e Nell'anno del signore”, in Giuseppe Capriotti (ed.), Antigiudiasmo, antisemitismo e memoria. Un approccio pluridisciplinare, Macerata, Eum (University of Macerata Press), 2009, pp. 93-126

Teaching and supervision

Course contact for: 

ITA3/IT1: Introduction to Italian Language: Texts and Contexts

IT3: Italian Cinema

IT4: Autobiography and Self-Representation in Italian Culture

IT6: Modern Italian Culture

IT9: Text and Image