The Cineguf period and the birth of experimental cinema

The story of a film practice in small gauge formats that emerges and defines itself in the course of little more than a decade, in Italy during Fascism: the so-called 'experimental cinema'. This took shape and was articulated within the structures of the Fascist University Groups, giving rise to one of the most original associationist formulas in the history of Italian cinema: the Cineguf. Within the Cineguf there were in fact two significantly intertwined activities strongly promoted by the Regime. One part of the activities focused on the promotion of film culture and education in the language of film while the other important activity was production. The Cineguf in fact produced amateur films, mainly in 16mm. Andrea Mariani tells this story, focusing on the main points from which the importance of Cineguf's experimental cinema emerges, which was an inescapable production and a crucial and complex passage for understanding the later season of Neorealism.