My Italian Connections: TALK Adventures watching 1960s Italian television

While most people recognise the genius of 1960s Italian cinema, fewer people outside Italy know about the Italian television shows of the same period.

During an event of the series “My Italian Connections” Emma Barron, cultural historian of post-war Italy, will discuss the cultural phenomenon that was Carosello (1957-77), a ten-minute television programme made up entirely of advertisements, but with strict and unusual rules: the product could only be mentioned in 35 seconds of the 2 minute and 15 second advertisement, with the intervening time filled with entertainments including comic sketches, cartoons and popular singers.

For many Italians these advertisements represent their childhood and generate nostalgia for more innocent times, while for others, the programme epitomises the heavy hand of the State and Church and a push for traditional values.

Emma will show that Carosello has a lot more to tell us about a time of rapid social change and the role of early television in Italian people’s lives.

Refreshments will be offered to all attendees.

My Italian Connections: Adventures in Italian TV Shows of the 1960s

• Italian Cultural Institute, 125 York Street
• at 6:00 PM
• Free admission with reservations on our Eventbrite website
• In English
• Organised by the Consulate General of Italy in Sydney and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Sydney

Emma Barron is a cultural historian of post-war Italy. Along with language classes at the Italian Institute of Culture in Sydney and through several study scholarships to Florence, Venice and Bologna, her unlikely path led her to a History PhD at the University of Bologna. Her research projects on social change in the 1950s and 1960s took her to the historic Archiginnasio Library in Bologna, the Vatican Apostolic Library, and the Italian television archives in Turin and Rome. She is now recognised internationally for her work on Italian television audiences and the popular programmes of the state monopoly broadcaster. Her book Popular Italian Media 1950-70: Mona Lisa Covergirl (2018) is used in film and television courses and textbooks in Italian universities. She is currently working on high-profile ‘morality’ trials, looking at media coverage of trials for adultery, concubinage and bigamy in the years before divorce became legal with case studies including bigamy charges against Carlo Ponti and ‘accessory’ to bigamy charges against Sophia Loren.

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