In “Penser les festivals de films. Approches universitaires, institutionnelles et professionnelles: regards croisés”, Nice, 7-8 october 2024.

Incontri internazionali del Cinema di Sorrento was founded in 1963, quickly becoming one of Italy’s leading film festivals. By the end of its first three years, with the appointment of Gian Luigi Rondi as artistic director, the festival had already established its innovative model, based on national monographic retrospectives. This non-competitive approach, which began in 1996 with a film review of French cinema, became a cornerstone of Incontri, transforming the Campanian seaside town into a global hub for artists and filmmakers from around the world. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to present the research carried out by the “Aldo Moro” research group of the University of Bari as part of the PRIN project “Reframing Italian Film Festivals: Histories, Politics, Cultures”; secondly, to propose a methodological approach to the case study based on an in-depth analysis of the documentation preserved in the Rondi Fund of the Cineteca Lucana. Through the study of various materials such as catalogues, private correspondence and press releases, the paper seeks to reconstruct the history and memory of Incontri, highlighting key figures who contributed to its innovative development. An approach that seeks to deepen our understanding of the relationships between festivals, authorship and different forms of film circulation.