Navvies at work, farmers in town, an amateur painter, children playing or looking at us: the suspended atmosphere in the wake of WWII. Nothing would be like it was before, but the future was as of yet unimaginable. Every shot recounts the fragment of a story, waiting for cinema to piece them together.
The fifty black & white shots by Luigi Comencini constitute a remarkable find, showing him as a photographer shortly before becoming a director.
The images are accompanied by a series of writings by various authors who shed light on the connections between Comencini’s photographs and his work both as a director and, together with Alberto Lattuada, as one of the founders of the Cineteca Italiana in Milan in 1947: the very first film archive in our country.

Luigi Comencini (1916-2007) was one of the leading post-war Italian film directors. After a neorealist debut, he moved on to direct almost all kinds of movie genre. His many memorable works include Bread, Love and Dreams (1953), Everybody Go Home (1960) and The Scientific Cardplayer (1972). He also directed various highly successful television series: I bambini e noi (1970), Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972) and L’amore in Italia (1978). In his youth, spent in Milan, he was among the founders of the Cineteca Italiana.

Texts by: Antonio Monda, Cristina Comencini, Giorgio Gosetti, Mario Sesti, Giovanna Calvenzi, Matteo Pavesi