When disability ended up on the screen: filmography and analysis of Italian cinema’s origins

Abstract

Cinema is often used as a tool for education on disability issues, but it remains a powerful form
of expression with its own codes and logics that in turn build an imaginary on disability. A filmography
of Italian cinema of the origins allows to fill a historiographical void and to identify the
reasons, extra-filmic, for which disability has been brought to the screen. Understanding the
ways in which disability is brought to the screen and the social and cultural effects of these representations
is an opportunity to ask ourselves about our relationship with cinema and to grasp
the evolutions and permanence that have marked these representations.