ABSTRACT
After the Second World War, Italy was considered to be the third biggest film market in Europe. However, within a climate that remained 'torn between the Catholic and the Socialist-Communist worlds, the Roman Catholic Church argued that cinema had to address urgent moral, educational and political problems. This chapter discusses the ambiguities underpinning the Church's 'double pedagogy' didn't prevent Italian Catholics from developing a wide range of initiatives and activities in the field of cinema. The chapter discusses Italian Catholic engagement with film productions such as Federico Fellini's La dolce vita and P. P. Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo and Teorema. From the 1980s to the 2000s, Rivista del Cinematografo repositioned itself within the Italian editorial scene as a critical magazine that addresses concrete expression of the 'culture of dialogue' promoted within the general cultural project of the Church. In the early 1960s, the Church Italy and Rome in particular experienced the Second Vatican Council.
