Napoli/New York andata e ritorno. La comunità italiana dello spettacolo e la nascita del cinema italoamericano

As a roundtrip Naples/New York through silent cinema’s world, this book suggests how Neapolitan entertainment traditions, exported to the Americas, favored the creation of the Italian American culture in the East of the United States and the birth of an “Italian American cinema” as early as the Thirties. The revision of the historiography of Neapolitan silent cinema has suggested an in-depth study of Elvira Notari’s cinema, as a first female director in Italy and Europe, and of Francesco Pennino, Neapolitan composer in New York (as well as distributor and cinema exhibitor) and maternal grandfather of Francis Coppola.

This original research leads to the discovery of about twenty unknown titles and outlines the network of distributors-exhibitors who, by their translating and subtitling activities, created an operational bases for films production in Neapolitan or Italian language, in New York and on the east coast of the United States (including Notari’s Dora Film of America).