Dear colleagues, 

Please find below the CFP for articles on the Italian giallo for a forthcoming issue of the Italian journal Bianco e nero. Contacts for questions or to submit a proposal at the bottom.

All the best,
Dom Holdaway



CFP BN I/2017
Giallo all’italiana: the giallo and cinema in Italy (1910-1972)
edited by Luca Mazzei and Paola Valentini

In 1929, the publishing house Mondadori launched a book series that was destined to become historic: the “libri Gialli” that were entirely dedicated to crime novels. In Italy, crime stories – sombre narratives, recounting fictional adventures à la Dumas with grisly back drops in the style of Grand Guignol – had existed for a long time, in fact from as early as 1872. In Mondadori’s “Gialli”, however, everything was new. The conjecture of the narratives was Cartesian, with rigorous logic, yet at the same time they were open to limitless interpretation (Morpurgo-Tagliabue 1986). Gialli were aimed at a new readership, a reinvigorated and international bourgeoisie. From 1931, in part following the demands of a decree of the Fascist government, the series published the first Italian Giallo writers. From this moment onward the Italian crime novel took off, it became a “genre”, initiating a lengthy, intense inter-medial dialogue (Quazzolo 2000, Valentini 2007). The Giallo phenomenon intersected theatre, cinema and radio: from L’anello di Teodosio by L. Chiarelli, 1929 to Giallo di M. Camerini, 1934; from L’ombra dietro la porta, A. De Stefani, 1934, to Il gran Cinema by G. Gherardi, 1930, from Grattacieli by G. Giannini 1930, to L'anonima Roylott, 1936, G. Giannini and R. Matarazzo. Though momentarily interrupted by the Second World War, the Giallo wave re-emerged in the post-war period, cross-contaminating and becoming influenced by the noir, the polar, the procedural drama and even the coarse realism of hard boiled detective fiction. The moment therefore witnessed the emergence of the solitary detective all’italiana (from Sheridan to the TV adaptation of Maigret, from Lizzani to Germi, from Petri to Di Leo or Castellari), who was contaminated, redefined, parodied, but nevertheless an internationally recognized brand. In 1972, the cultural hybrid changed again, and as the “Giallo all’italiana”, or that specific filone of the thriller known as the “Italian Giallo”, it took on a clear shape and identity – albeit articulated in various manifestations - that was highlighted in 1972 alone, a year of particularly prolific filmmaking, via the work of Lucio Fulci or Riccardo Freda, Dario Argento or Umberto Lenzi, of Aldo Lado or Emilio P. Miraglia. However, it was specifically the preceding culture of the Giallo (in film but not only) – which was just as pervasive as the more widely studied comedy – that matured into a stable identity in 1972, producing a historically important juncture and provocation, which is the object of study of this issue.

Much scholarship has addressed the Italian Giallo in literature (Benvenuti, Rizzoni 1979; Cremante 1989; Crovi 2002; Pistelli 2006; Milanesi 2009); a few scholars have also focused on the cinematic context (Vermander, Jansen, Lanslots 2010); there is a rich bibliography on specific individuals, in particular Mario Bava and Dario Argento (Pugliese, 1996; Carluccio, Manzoli, Menarini 2003; Lucas 2007; Zagarrio 2008; Jones, Kermode 2012; Pezzotta 2014); and more recently, some attention has been paid to production dynamics (Shipka 2011), moving beyond the traditional thematic analyses (Koven 2006). However, the object’s relevance deserves an “ecosystemic” investigation that takes full account of the intermedial context, the professionals employed, the reconfiguration of production that took place around the Giallo, the technological modernization that it inspired, or the new types of audience that it generated, not to mention the close-knit relationship the genre created and maintained with the surrounding cultural industry, starting with the extremely fruitful link to television.

From this perspective, issue I/2017 of Bianco e nero aims to reflect on all aspects of the Giallo in Italy, in film and across the media and cultural panorama, from literature to theatre, from literary illustrations to graphic novels, from radio plays to TV dramas, all sectors with which the Giallo has intersected in an intense dialogue. In this sense, the field of study of the Giallo in Italy will be bracketed by the earliest cinematic manifestations and the conquest of television, with magical Gialli and detective shows like Geminus (Luciano Emmer, 1969) or Il segno del comando (Daniele D’Anza, 1971). It offers the chance to reflect on personalities and professionals, not only directors but also screenwriters, musicians or set designers; on single films but also sub-genres or TV programmes; on expressive techniques but also technological ones; and on the critical discourses that have closely intersected with the Giallo between 1910 and 1972.

The editors encourage proposals that address the Giallo while privileging little considered historical moments and personalities (silent film, pre-war, etc.) with a historical-cultural approach that is able to account for the entire cultural and media panorama.

Areas of study may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Proposals, consisting of a brief abstract (no more than 200 words), five keywords and a concise author’s biography, should be sent by 30 September 2016 to the following email addresses: [log in to unmask][log in to unmask][log in to unmask]. Once the proposal has been approved, the deadline for the complete essay will be 30 December 2016. Articles should be between 20,000 and 30,000 characters, and they will undergo a double blind peer review.


Bibliography
Stefano Benvenuti, Gianni Rizzoni, Il romanzo giallo: storia, autori e personaggi, Mondadori, Milano 1979
Bertusi 1997
Giulia Carluccio, Giacomo Manzoli, Roy Menarini (a cura di), L’eccesso della visione. Il cinema di Dario Argento, Lindau, Torino 2003
Renzo Cremante, Le figure del delitto: il libro poliziesco in Italia dalle origini a oggi, Grafis, Casalecchio 1989
Luca Crovi, Tutti i colori del giallo. Il giallo italiano da De Marchi a Scerbanenco a Camilleri, Marsilio, Venezia 2002
Claudio Gallo 1994
Alan Jones, Mark Kermode, Dario Argento: The Man, the Myths & the Magic, FAB Press, London 2012
Mikel J. Koven, La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film, Scarecrow, Toronto - London 2006
Tim Lucas, Mario Bava. All The Colors Of Dark, Cincinnati, Video Watchdog, 2007
Claudio Milanesi (a cura di), Il romanzo poliziesco. La storia, la memoria, Astraea 2010
Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue, Metacritica del romanzo giallo, «Intersezioni», 1986, n. 2.
Alberto Pezzotta, Mario Bava, Il Castoro Cinema, Milano 2014
Maurizio Pistelli, Un secolo in giallo. Storia del poliziesco italiano (1860-1960), Donzelli, Roma 2006
Roberto Pugliese, Dario Argento, Il Castoro, Milano 1996
Paolo Quazzolo, Delitti in palcoscenico. La commedia poliziesca, Campanotto, Udine  2000
Danny Shipka, Perverse Titillation: the Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960-1980, McFarland, Jefferson – London 2011
Paola Valentini, Presenze sonore. Il passaggio al cinema sonoro in Italia tra cinema e radio, Le Lettere, Firenze 2007
Dieter Vermander, Monica Jansen, Inge Lanslots, Noir de noir: Un'indagine pluridisciplinare, Peter Lang, Paris 2010
Vito Zagarrio, Argento vivo: il cinema di Dario Argento tra genere e autorialità, Marsilio, Venezia 2008


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