This book investigates the Catholic Church’s film policy illuminating for the first time, by means of a systematic analysis, a vast body of documents preserved at the Vatican Secret Archives and at numerous Italian Catholic archives – some of them indexed and opened to scholars, like the Archivio Storico dell’Istituto Luigi Sturzo [Historical Archive of the Luigi Sturzo Institute] and the Archivio dell’Istituto per la storia dell’Azione Cattolica e del Movimento Cattolico in Italia Paolo VI [Archive of the Institute for the History of Catholic Action and the Catholic Movement in Italy Paul VI]; other only partially indexed like the Nazareno Taddei Archive or faced with the risk of closure, like the Associazione Cattolica Esercenti Cinema [Catholic Exhibitors’ Association] Archive.

Gianluca della Maggiore is Postdoc Research Fellow in Contemporary History at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. In 2015 he earned a PhD in Historical Studies with a thesis on the Catholic Church’s film policy during Fascism.

Tomaso Subini is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Milan. He has been the Principal Investigator of a “National Interest Research Project” (PRIN-2012) on the topics of this book. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the “National Interest Research Project” (PRIN-2015) Love Meetings. Cinema and Sexuality in Italy (1948-1978).