ABSTRACT
Antonio Gramsci has been the subject of a substantial number of biopics, docudramas, non-fiction films, and interviews with still living comrades, descendants, and scholars from the late 1950s to the present, listed in the closing credits of Gramsci: La forma della memoria (Isaja and Melandri 1997). The distinctiveness of this film resides in what the Audio-Visual Archive in Rome describes as being “a study of the diverse forms of memory, transmitted in the idiom of audio visuality.” The film’s focus on Gramsci includes extracts from classic political documentaries on film and television, feature films, animated cartoons and drawings, interspersed with commentaries by individuals who knew him and by family members, and a montage of images of his works in Italian, European, Latin American and Asian languages. Judging by the books, articles, and even films that continue to appear on the life and writings of Antonio Gramsci, his work continues to be germane to cultural and political analysts. Thus, the film offers an initial testimony to Gramsci’s influence in and on media.
