Ilaria Puliti

Background

I am an Early Career Fellow at Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Study and a sessional tutor in the Department of Film and Television Studies (Warwick), where I was awarded my PhD in 2024 and, prior to my doctoral studies, an MA with Distinction in Film and Television Studies (2018). I have contributed chapters and articles on various topics, including the cinema of Alice Rohrwacher, Italian film exhibition, the aesthetics of toxicity, and queer adolescence in Italian TV. My research interests include cinematic representations of rurality, remote film locations, and how screen space reflects the politics of the environment, geopolitics, and production cultures.

PhD thesis

Rural Modernities: the Politics and Aesthetics of Extra-Urban Experiences in Italian Cinema

My thesis explores the depiction of the countryside as a site of modernity in Italian cinema. It argues that, as the boundaries between town and country continue to blur, Italian film studies should move away from the urban-rural dichotomy and notions of landscape rethinking conceptually the rural on and off screen. The research repositions the relationship between postwar and 21st-century Italian cinema through an aesthetic and material approach to cinematic rural spaces. Some of the films analysed include Le quattro volte (2010), Le meraviglie/The Wonders (2014), Lazzaro felice/Happy as Lazzaro (2018), Call Me by Your Name (2017) as well as Riso amaro (1949), L'albero degli zoccoli/TheTree of the Wooden Clogs and Journey to Italy (1954). Structured in three parts, it investigates the politics of past rural labour and contemporary capitalist agriculture, environmental shifts in southern Italy, and the impact of class and socio-cultural changes on rural inhabitants. By combining formal analysis with an interpretation of films as historical traces, the thesis challenges the dismissal of Italian rurality as nostalgic, backward or idyllic. It demonstrates how our understanding of cinema’s portrayal of modernity changes when the politics and aesthetics of the rural are taken into account.

My research project was supervised by Professor Stephen GundleLink opens in a new window and Professor Karl SchoonoverLink opens in a new window and funded by the Wolfson Foundation. I am currently working on my first monograph based on the PhD thesis.

Publications

Conference papers

• ‘The Sound of the Cave: Non-Anthropocentric Perceptions in Frammartino’s Rural Calabria’, British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS), University of Warwick, 28 March 2025.
• ‘Early Practices of Film Exhibition in Ascoli Piceno: From 1908 to World War II’, Film Exhibition: The Italian Context Symposium, University of Cambridge, 2 July 2022.
• 'The critical reception of Lazzaro Felice in the United States, practices of eco-cinema and the absence of a tourist gaze', American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS), University of Bologna, 1 June 2022.

• 'Against touristification: an analysis of rural locations in Alice Rohrwacher’s Lazzaro felice/Happy as Lazzaro (2018)', Film and Television Research Day, University of Warwick, 19 May 2021.

• 'Rural modernities: the politics and aesthetics of extra-urban experiences in Italian cinema', Film and Television Research Day, University of Warwick, 13 May 2020.
• 'Finding Alternative Girlhood. Adolescenza e non-conformità di genere nel cinema di Alice Rohrwacher e Céline Sciamma', Contemporary Women's Cinema and Media: Aesthetics, Identities and Imaginaries, Roma Tre University, 20-22 November 2019.
• ‘Digital Learning and Cultural Awareness’, American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS), Sorrento (Italy), 14-17 June 2018.

Teaching

• 2024/25: I led seminars and delivered one lecture on the first-year core module Screen Technologies.
• 2024/25: I led seminars on the first-year core module Theories for Film Studies.
• 2023/24: I led seminars and delivered one lecture on the first-year core module Screen Technologies.
• 2021/22: I led seminars on the first-year core module Film History.

Public engagement and Event organisation

• Chaired the panel ‘Rural Aesthetics in Global Cinema’, BAFTSS Conference, University of Warwick, 28 March 2025.
• Co-founded the Italian Cinema GroupLink opens in a new window at the University of Warwick’s Film and Television Studies and co-organised a series of research seminars and events on Italian cinema and television from 2022 to 2024.
• Event and project assistant for the opening workshop of the AHRC project ‘Women in Italian Film Production: Industrial Histories and Gendered Labour, 1945-85’ (University of Warwick/Oxford Brookes University), PI Professor Stephen Gundle (Warwick), University of Warwick, 2 Jun 2023.
• Member of editorial board for the Cinema e Storia journal, 2022 - present.
• Co-organized the International Conference on Postcolonial Italian Cinema where I chaired a film screening and presentation event, Sapienza University of Rome (16-17 Sept 2021) — University of Warwick (1 Oct 2021).
• Podcast guest on ‘First Impressions. Notes on Films and Cultures’ - José Arroyo in Conversation with Ilaria Puliti on Luca (dir. Enrico Casarosa, 2021), 18 Aug 2021.
• Co-organizer of the Film and Television Departmental Research Day, University of Warwick, 19 May 2021.
• PhD representative of the Film and Television PGR Student-Staff Liaison Committee, 2020/2021.
• Member of AAIS (American Association for Italian Studies), BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies), and CUC (Consulta Universitaria Cinema).

Contact

i.puliti@warwick.ac.uk

ilaria.puliti.1@warwick.ac.uk

@ilapul.bsky.socialLink opens in a new window