The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute, the Italian Embassy in Tirana, the Municipality of Cesena and the Malatestiana Library. It is curated by Brunella Garavini of the Malatestiana Library in Cesena and Elton Koritari of EjAlbum.

“20th-century Italian cinema is more than a collection of films; it represents the most extensive reflection a country has ever undertaken on itself. From the streets of Neorealism to Fellini’s dreams, it is a journey in which the camera undergoes two fundamental transformations,” curator Elton Koritari writes.

He explains that the exhibition captures the Italy that Albanians watched, almost mesmerised, during the years of dictatorship, while also revealing the very mechanism that created that fascination.

For generations of Albanians, Italian cinema and television offered a forbidden glimpse of life on the other side of the Adriatic. Seventy kilometres of sea and a television signal secretly tuned in were all that stood between, and connected, the two peoples. Long before it became a destination, Italy existed in the Albanian imagination as something bright, desirable and dreamlike.

The photographs in the exhibition document the transformation of Italian society, not only as seen on the big screen but also behind the scenes.

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