Forms of experimentalism and independence in the panorama of Italian cinema date back to the birth of cinema, and have continued to emerge and develop, with varying intensity, throughout the history of Italian filmmaking. Overall, the same cinematic, artistic and anthropological merits have been largely overlooked by the official academies of human and social sciences, both within and beyond the nation's borders. The historical avant-garde phenomenon of the Italian Futurists, with their excursions into various forms of art, are an exception, probably due to their provocative nature, systematic propositions and revolutionary intentions. Italian fringe-like work in the cinema has received institutional ‘adoption’, and subsequent attention by mainstream venues, only when its narrative has complied with marketable agendas – such is the case from the silent period to Rossellini's postwar films. Forms of independence or experimentalism, which were deemed extravagant, idiosyncratic, or marginal, remained largely unnoticed and unappreciated, even by experts in the field of visual-arts. In recent decades, however, a number of Italian scholars, and scholars of Italian descent, have questioned the lack of attention, study and analysis, given to unconventional forms of Italian cinema, its peculiar character and practices. Other national histories have exhibited a similar pattern, as supported by cases such as that of P. Adams Sitney – one of the rare historians of neglected forms of American experimental cinema – who happened to also write in the 1990s about the crisis within Italian cinema. In Italy, an increasing number of film historians and scholars are picking up on the wealth and body of work of experimental and independent Italian cinema. The ‘discovery’ via cinema d’essai and cineclub festivals, as well as gallery and media-lab exhibits, of alternative forms of art and modes of dissemination, has led to systematic studies into and penetrating criticism of the significance and import of art expressions, and forms of independence, that mirror novel socio-cultural trends as well as alternative, innovative, or revolutionary worldviews. Italian cinema has been at the forefront of international film practices throughout several periods of cinematic history, for its originality and independence, as well as its ground-breaking styles, techniques and thematic concerns.