Abstract

The film files of the General Directorate for Performing Arts, preserved at the Italian Central State Archives, have provided an invaluable source of information in the reconstruction of the post-World War II Italian film industry and its history. However, the scope of such studies has been limited by the chronological thresholds of these documents, which date from 1949 to 1965, when a new act, known as the «Corona Law», radically reformed the Italian state-driven industrial system. For this reason, the Prin project Modes, Memories and Cultures of Film Production in Italy (1949-1976) is engaged in a cataloguing operation of a previously unavailable archival series from this fund, labelled «Co» and comprising the files of Italian film co-productions made between 1966 and 1994. The aim of this essay is to perform a first overview of these new documents, in order to explore the issues in the implementation processes both of the Corona Law itself and the new post-1966 film co-production agreements. Drawing from methodologies pertaining to the field of public policy analysis, the article investigates the institutional and industrial environment created by this new legal framework, and the role played by the General Directorate in this new relational network.