Tag: italian cinema

Newton Talks #16 Blood in the Streets – Italian Crime Films of the 70s with Austin Fisher

In the latest episode of my podcast, Newton Talks, author Austin Fisher joins me to talk about his book, Blood in the Streets, which looks at Italian crime films cycles of the 1970s, such as the police thriller, vigilante movies, mafia narratives, and the giallo, and how they responded to the violent political turmoil happening in Italian cities at the time.

We discuss the use of locations, how cyclical film production in the 70s relied upon repetition, and how these films reflected the ‘Years of Lead’, an extraordinary period of political violence that lasted the decade.

Listen here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7801151-newton-talks-16-blood-in-the-streets-italian-crime-films-of-the-70s-with-austin-fisher

Nunsploitation: the forgotten cycle

Here is a link to my essay on the Nunsploitation cycle published in Offscreen film journal.
http://offscreen.com/view/nunsploitation
saint archangel torture ls
Abstract: In an era of renewed critical appreciation of Italian genre/exploitation cinema (such as Austin Fisher’s Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western) there is one cycle of films where any appreciation appears to be absent: the Nunsploitation movie. These films, set in convents where a nascent lust bubbles just under the surface, examine themes of feminism, radical left wing politics, and the role of the Church and religion in society. This paper examines the way two films, The Nuns of Saint Archangel, and Flavia, the Heretic, tackle these issues through their mise en scene and narrative structure.