This volume offers an open, transdisciplinary living space (also green) through which to explore the different connections between Basilicata and Southern Italy, cinema, and ecology, and thus to reflect on the different forms through which the historical, cultural, and social contexts of Southern Italian regions have been variously identified and represented. In order to explore these connections, the volume embraces a wide range of perspectives that may all be grouped under the key term film ecocriticism, offering the reader a thorough analysis not only of the different ways of representing reality but also of the processes of signification through which reality itself can be understood, rethought, and transformed. This is the general framework within which the authors consider film as a proper, effective medium for ecocritical and ecophilosophical reflections concerning not only Basilicata (to which the greater part of the volume is dedicated) but also Southern Italy and, therefore, its history and its territories, communities, and identities. Furthermore, in an even more general sense, Basilicata and Southern Italy reconnects with the very idea of the South, and of all Souths, to which this volume is dedicated.

Alberto Baracco is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Basilicata, Italy. His main research interests are film philosophy and film ecocriticism. His recent publications include the book Italian Experiences of Trauma through Film and Media (2022), and the monograph, Philosophy in Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man (2019).

Manuela Gieri is Associate Professor at the University of Basilicata, Italy. Her main research interests are film history, contemporary Italian women’s writing, and new historiography. Among her works, deserving special mention are Contemporary Italian Filmmaking: Strategies of Subversion (1995), Cinema. Dalle origini allo studio system (1895-1945) (2009).