'The new king of light and shadow is a good constitutional king': the use of cinema at school in the first two decades of the 20th century

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, Western culture was marked by the spread of photography and cinema, which soon gave rise to a significant debate on the use of these tools in classrooms: figures from different institutional backgrounds, political ideologies and roles wrote numerous essays in specialist journals of the time, united by a concern to reflect on the potential of cinema in schools as part of an educational project. At the same time, schools began to embrace this new teaching tool. This article aims to offer an initial partial analysis of the reflections on the introduction of cinema in schools that appeared in the pages of the magazine La Coltura Popolare.