Roberto Vezzani

Vezzani's dissertation is entitled "Reframing Italianness: Circulation of Italian Fiction Films in the United States During the 1930s."  Vezzani’s original work focuses on a never-explored chapter of both American and Italian film culture—the distribution and exhibition in interwar America of fiction films produced during Fascism. By relying on evidence gathered from archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Vezzani has compiled a list of about 130 Italian films, mostly melodramas, historical epics, and romantic comedies, that were exhibited in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s.

In his work, he discusses their distribution path, from Rome to New York, and their U.S. reception in light of both their programmatic ideological charge and America's own cultural landscape. Vezzani’s research stands at the crossroads of different disciplines, with significant implications for scholars interested in Fascism’s international propaganda and the circulation of foreign films in America before the emergence of the so-called art cinema.

Vezzani is currently a member of the World Languages Faculty at North High School in Grosse Pointe (MI) where he teaches Italian language.