This panel seeks to explore the explosion of cinematic excellence and exploration, perhaps unparalleled in cinema history, that occurred in Italy following the end World War II and continued until the 1970's. While this panel welcomes papers on some of the more artistically ambitious and celebrated of these films and filmmakers, it is also very much interested in the numerous ways that Italian cinema changed not only the art film but a host of popular genres as well, such as the Western, police drama, the horror film, and even science fiction. From neorealism to fantasy, from grand historical drama to the pepla, from Spaghetti Western to the Poliziotteschi, from the giallo to the Commedia all'italiana, Italian cinema transformed the medium, both in Italy and around the world. Papers are thus of course welcome on the films of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchinio Visconti, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, but of equal interest are the films of Mario Bava, Mario Monicelli, Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima, Elio Petri, Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, and many, many others. What was it about Italy during this period that produced such groundbreaking films and filmmakers? How did these films reflect the state of Italy during this period? In what ways do they still speak to us today? This panel should be of interest to anyone studying Italian cinema, World cinema more generally, the history of development of genre, and film in relation to historical and political context.  Please email abstracts to jackie.cameron@gmail.com or to the NeMLA site (https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/cfp) by Sept. 30.