A Girls' Eye-view: Girlhood on the Italian screen since the 1950s

In 2019 we asked a group of Italian young women, aged 18-25, what they thought of screen representations of girlhood produced in Italy. 'Where is the product for us?' the group asked. A second group, of girls aged 14-16, took it for granted that 'their' product was in fact US-produced film and television, and that Italian cinema and television were 'for their parents'. Where indeed are the Italian-made products that address and depict younger women? As platform services blur the boundaries between film and television and shift traditional power structures, they are opening up new opportunities to address young women (Buccifero, 2019). Recent television series like 'My Brilliant Friend' (RAI/HB0, 2018) and 'Baby' (Netflix original, 2018) are attracting younger female audiences. This promising shift makes this a timely moment for the Italian film industry to build these audiences. Whilst Italian audiences have always valued US products, in the 1950s young women were a strong element of Italian cinema's address (Morreale, 2011). Over the decade, however, it turned towards male audiences, and stayed there (Fanchi, 2007). This project will contribute in a timely fashion to a new inclusivity for Italian cinema. It aims to re-engage the film industry with female audiences, and female audiences with Italian cinema, around the question of girlhood, using a feminist, intergenerational perspective that brings girls' and women's voices to the foreground.

Working between the UK and Italy, with an intergenerational team, our project will produce a book in English and Italian, an article, and a bilingual multimedia website and database. Our monograph will initially trace the relationship between press discourse and girls on screen from the 1950s. We will chart the history of representations of girlhood in and around Italian cinema and television; preliminary archival research shows that these are always closely tied to questions of sexuality and the body politic. With the turn towards male audiences and the proliferation of pornography, these patterns established a voyeuristic gaze upon the figure of the girl, still present on today's screen. Through archival research we will also interrogate how postfeminist and popular feminist discourses have become entangled in contemporary ways of talking about girls in Italy. In the context of this history, we will then carry out a more detailed analysis of contemporary Italian cinema and selected television from the last decade. The bulk of our textual analysis will integrate the responses of Italian girls (aged 14 to 18) into our analysis, drawing upon data generated through individual interviews, screenings and focus group discussion. Our project will also set young women's consumption of Italian products in the context of their broader patterns of media consumption, and ask just how important Italian productions are, or could be, to their process of growing up. If they do not perceive them as relevant, why is that? When it is, how do they respond to them? These findings will be central to the impact of our project, as we ask stakeholders in the film industry to address these questions too.

This project also examines cultural memory as a key element of being a girl. As historian Franca Bimbi argues, in Italy becoming a woman is still as dependent on previous generations' understanding of the process as it is on that of the peer group. Therefore, in its final stage the project will use a participatory oral history method to put young women in dialogue with previous generations of women about the relationship between cinema and growing up. In this way we return to the periods examined at the beginning of our book, through oral history. Female audiences in Italy have largely been ignored. Not only does this project want to contribute to their recovery, but it aims to put them at the creative centre of that recovery process, thereby finally making them stakeholders in the future of the industry.

Research and impact are profoundly intertwined in this project. The screening and discussion of girl-oriented films with larger groups in schools, in preparation for the focus groups, will serve to boost self-confidence on a micro-level, as will giving new attention to girls' viewpoints through our interviews and focus groups. At the same time, the experience of sharing overlooked memories of girlhood through oral history interviews will also enhance a sense of intergenerational connection and well-being in the older women who participate, whilst equipping the student interviewers with new knowledge and awareness. However, on a macro-level the research will also increase girls' and women's roles as stakeholders in Italian culture by making every-day female cultural experience more visible and transforming it into cultural capital, challenging industry norms to become more female-facing, and creating a new mainstream account of Italian cinema history. New and more inclusive approaches to cultural history can have a powerful impact on women of all ages and their access to cultural capital. Our impact will follow four specific pathways:

Our website itself, supported by social media activity, will offer the primary means of dissemination of selected findings, video essays and a database relating to the project, along with blog posts and podcasts; it will also encourage interaction with a broad range of users. The video essays in particular are intended to be an accessible and easily spread form of engagement for the general public, raising awareness about female audiences' perspectives. By monitoring usage, we will also shape the website in response to feedback.

Film industrial: The primary impact of this project would involve setting up a series of roundtables about the findings from our project at key events in the Italian film calendar, namely the Pesaro (June 2022), Turin (November 2022) and Venice (Sept 2023) film festivals. This would involve major figures in the film industry, from script-writers to producers to film directors, in dialogue with young female consumers and performers. We already have agreements to participate from a number of producers, a film critic, scriptwriters, a film director, and a representative of the film commissions, which have a significant role in the support of film-making in Italy. We expect to identify and secure more participants over the course of the project.

Film programming and audience building: Students involved in the project would be encouraged to curate a programme of selected girl films, with introductions by the participant volunteers in the project, which could be screened in the UK (at the Exeter Phoenix) and in Italy. The PI has already introduced seasons of films in both countries. The cinemas involved would reach out to local schools to encourage a broader inclusion of younger audiences and enhance intergenerational interaction.

Intergenerational education: Engaging women of all ages in dialogue about the portrayal of girlhood and femininity in film can empower them, by strengthening a sense of intergenerational connectedness. Our video essays based on young women's responses and also dialogues between generations in Italy about film will be subtitled to make them accessible in Italy and the UK. The project team would work to bring together local groups for the older generation, such as the University of the Third Age in Italy and in the UK, as well as the National Women's Register, the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, and local schools in Exeter and Rome. We would offer groups of older women and female students in the UK and Italy the opportunity to enter into further dialogues and to add their own narratives to our website. We will use methods that involve historical objects and creative writing, as well as further interviews. Through this approach young people and older generations can learn to become co-curators of their own history.