Uno sguardo dal carroponte

The Fiat film collection – over 25,000 reels preserved by the Archivio Nazionale Cinema d’Impresa in Ivrea – reminds us that the history of cinema is an invention of the stories of cinema structured in a canon of memory. The production of industrial films is in fact not only an indispensable source for economic and social history, but an integral part of the cinematographic panorama. From this point of view, Fiat uses cinema as a “language of modernity” perfect for telling the story of a “product of modernity” such as the automobile, starting with Gli stabilimenti Fiat di Corso Dante by Luca Comerio in 1911, up to Elegia russa by Nikhita Mikalkov in 1990. Propaganda for corporate hegemony, professional training, union competition, product promotion, Fiat from 1951 identifies cinema as a key sector of the company organization, flanking the workshops with a real production structure: Cinefiat.