Marco Bellocchio: Individualism and Anarchy

In Italy, Marco Bellocchio has long been considered the equal of Bertolucci, Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni, and is one of the most important auteur film-makers of the last forty years. Indeed, Lino Micciché, one of Italy's most respected film critics, has recently ranked Bellocchio as the greatest post-1960s director. However, Bellocchio is practically unknown in the English-speaking world, and no monographs on him in English exist. In Italy and France, monographs have been written on Bellocchio, but tend to follow the format of the film-by-film analysis, which does not allow for the in-depth discussion of underlying themes. In Italy there have also been many edited works and collections of articles published, especially in the past 5 years, but these present a fragmentary analysis of the director's work, and none treat the two arguments that I explore (politics and psychoanalysis) in any depth. The research is timely as it fits into a growing interest in Bellocchio's cinema, evidenced in a number of recent papers given on his work in England and America, in new postgraduate research, and in retrospectives of his cinema screened recently in London and elsewhere.

Aims and Objectives.
This monograph proposes to introduce Bellocchio's cinema to the English-speaking public, focusing on the most significant aspects of his work - politics and psychoanalysis - and locating his filmmaking within the context of Italian and European filmmaking more generally.

The objectives are:
1. To analyse the political side of Bellocchio's cinema, in particular exploring the relationship between recording political events through documentary(style)-filming, though allegorical filming and re-recording events from different points in time and different perspectives.

2. To analyse the psychoanalytical side of Bellocchio's cinema, looking particularly at issues of filming subjectivity.

3. to provide a research resource for further research on Bellocchio and on political and psychoanalytical filmmaking in Italy by the provision of complete filmographies and bibliographies.

Applications and Benefits.
The main potential applications of the research will be in teaching and research. The monograph should provide a better understanding of a director who has been neglected in the English-speaking world, thus expanding the boundaries of the rigid canon of Italian filmmakers discussed in the Anglo-American academic environment. In addition, the monograph will also be of interest to scholars working on the cultural and political history of contemporary Italy, and to film scholars in general who are interested in the representation of political and psychoanalytical ideas in cinema.