The small gauge cinema and the artist's and experimental film: new opportunities for production and dissemination

With the advent of Super8 and other small gauge film formats, opportunities for production, dissemination and distribution multiplied. Italian artists were faced with the possibility of being able to make films at home and it was the desire to reproduce, easily develop the film and generate copies for distribution that allowed exchanges, especially international ones. Film is much easier to circulate than an artistic artefact: a complete novelty and a game-changer for the time. For experimental filmmakers, too, the small gauge film formats offers an unprecedented opportunity for production and distribution. Thus the Cooperativa di cinema indipendente was founded in 1967 on the model of the more famous Filmmaker's Coop in New York. Italian artists as well as filmmakers and film lovers converged in the cooperative. Jennifer Malvezzi traces the Italian framework of artistic and experimental cinema, presenting the cases of some important festivals, including the Piacenza festival in 1972, and the production of artist Valentina Berardinone.