Introduction

The Milanese cinema represents one of the many traditions of Italy's independent cinematic culture, which developed in various parts of the country, often in antithesis and in a subaltern position to the national film industry based in Rome – where it had been merged since Mussolini's policies of the 1930s, and where it has been further centralised after the Second World War when the American funds of the Marshall Plan flooded into the country.

Traditionally, the Milanese cinematic culture is defined by a number of important traits: (1) its aspiration to counter the often commercial nature of films produced in Rome and their mode of production; (2) its strong association with the local industries and the industrial culture typical of the region; (3) its tendency to produce films which are intrinsically embedded in the Milanese urban fabric as well as in Lombardia's regional landscape; (4) its fruitful collaborations and interdisciplinary links with intellectuals, professionals and artists from very different fields (including literature, theatre, publishing, architecture, performing and traditional arts, advertising and so forth); and, finally, (5) its idea of a cinema oriented towards meaningful social issues with which the younger generation of viewers, in particular, can identify. These themes emerge as early as the themes pertaining to the theoretical debates surrounding cinema, which appeared in film and cultural journals printed in Milan during the 1930s and, thereafter, continued to define the Milanese independent cinema movement for many decades.

In this chapter we discuss how the ‘politics of locations’ affected the development of some specific traits of the Milanese independent cinema. We decontextualise here a well-known concept coined within the context of feminist theory to stress the importance of the influence and the specificity of place when countering gender generalisations. Our analysis addresses the extent to which, given the absence of state infrastructures to regulate the development of a film industry locally, the socio-culturalpolitical milieu of Milan during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, shaped the specificity of both the cinematic culture and production modes of the film scene in the city.

One line of investigation examines the political impegno (commitment/ engagement), which infiltrated Milanese society during the 1970s, and its influence on both social interactions and on the output of cultural products.