Luca Caminati

Luca Caminati's research deals with post-colonial theory and orientalist discourses in post-WWII Italian cinema and media, with a specific interest in non-fiction film and media arts. In 2009-2010 he was the recipient of the Paul Mellon/National Endowments for the Humanities "Rome Prize", a residential fellowship awarded by the American Academy in Rome. His new book, titled Traveling Auteurs: the Geopolitics of Post-War Italian Cinema (Indiana UP, 2023) investigates the "Third World" documentary films of Roberto Rossellini in India, Pier Paolo Pasolini in Africa and the Middle East, and Michelangelo Antonioni in China. He’s currently at work on a new SSHRC-founded project titled “The Italian Anticolonial Film Archive: Global Counterculture (1955-1975).” He is also serving as associate editor for the journal Italica.He previously taught at Colgate University and the University of Florida.

Education

PhD (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Laurea (Università Statale di Genova, summa cum laude)

Graduate Courses

FMST 801: The Anticolonial Film Archive: Global Counterculture (1955-1975)

FMST 804: Cinema and Exploration

FMST 807: PhD Pro-seminar: The Moving Image in the Postcolonial Condition

FMST 660: Approaches to Pasolini’s Cinema

FMST 600: Methods in Film Studies

FMST 800: PhD Pro-seminar: The Geopolitical Imaginary of Film Studies

FMST 655: The Essay Film

FMST 665: Cinema and Exploration

FMST 635G: Postcolonial Theory and Cinema

FMST 625D: Italian Neorealism in its Global Context

FMST 803B: Theories and Practice of Realism in the Cinema

Undergraduate Courses

FMST 328: Non-Fiction Film Since 1956

FMST 412: Geographies of Cinema: The Anticolonial Italian Films

FMST 412: Geographies of Cinema: Radical Italian Cinema

FMST 318: The Moving Image and Society

FMST 425: Contemporary Film Theory

FMST 498: Fake Documentary

FMST 321: Studies in Film Directors

FMST 315: Introduction to Film Theory

Supervisions

Postdoctoral Supervision:

André Hallak (PBEEE / Bourses de stage postdoctoral Québec-Brésil, 2024-2025)

Graduate Supervision

Doctoral Thesis Supervision

Emelia Steenekamp (PhD, Film and Moving Image Studies, 2024-)

Clara Casian (PhD, Humanities, in progress, 2022-2023)

Augustin Rugiero (PhD, Film and Moving Image, in progress, 2020-)

Katie Zozula (PhD, Film and Moving Image, 2019-2021)

Giuseppe Fidotta (PhD, Film and Moving Image, 2022. Title: Antimafia/Media: Value, Imaginary, and Community in Western Sicily Mafia/Media)

Egor Shmonin (PhD, Film and Moving Image, in progress, 2015-)

Patrick Smith (PhD, Film and Moving Image, 2020. Title: Capital, Carcerality, Borders: Documentary Spatiality)

Fulvia Massimi (PhD, Film and Moving Image, 2018. Title: Mosaic Men: Critical Masculinities and National Identities in Contemporary Subnational Cinemas (Québec, Scotland, and Flanders)

Master Thesis Supervision

Armaan Chainani (Film Studies 2024-)

Nikolas Vasilakos (Film Studies, 2023-)

Théa Trudeau-Tremblay (Film Studies, 2023. Title: Plastic Trees Tell no Tale: The Non-Subjective Accounts of ‘Nature’ in Philippe Grandrieux’s Sombre and Un Lac)

Malorie Urbanovich (Film Studies, 2024. Title: Idle Cinema: A Crisis of Knowledge in Narrative Film.

Laura Fattori (Film Studies, 2021. Title: Narratives of Post-Conflict: Representation of Violence in Colombian Contemporary Cinema)

Julia Huggins (Film Studies, 2016. Title: Analog Amnesia in the Digital Age)

Dominique Glassman (Film Studies, 2015. Title: Paris, “En Carton”)

Traveling Auteurs: The Geopolitics of Post-War Italian Cinema. Indiana University Press, 2024.

Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice (co-edited with James Cahill). New York: American Film Institute/Routledge. 2021.

Roberto Rossellini documentarista. Una cultura della realtà. Rome: Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia/Carocci, 2012, 142 pp.

Il cinema come happening. Il primitivismo pasoliniano e la scena

artistica italiana degli anni Sessanta/ Cinema as Happening. Pasolini’s Primitivism and the Sixties Italian Art Scene (bilingual edition). Milan: Postmedia, 2010, 61pp.

Orientalismo eretico: Pasolini e il cinema del Terzo Mondo. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2007, 131 pp.