Curated by Guido Gambetta and Salvatore Mirabella, Pais del Cinema presents 200 black & white and colour photographs by Rodrigo Pais (Rome, 1930-2007).

Pais started working as a photojournalist in 1950, and for almost 50 years his photos were published in leading Italian newspapers and weeklies. His archive of about 400,000 images, meticulously sorted by date and topic, is held in the Bologna University archive at Bertinoro. During the 1960s, Pais made more than 8,000 photo reportages (almost three per day), documenting the shooting of over 100 films.

This informative and entertaining exhibition doesn’t only present the glamorous aspects of "Hollywood on the Tiber" and Cinecittà, portraits of Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren, Monica Vitti, Virna Lisi, Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Jayne Mansfield, Liz Taylor, Grace Kelly, and glimpses of the sets of Antonioni, Fellini, Maselli, Lizzani, Vancini, Pasolini, Risi, Godard and others, but also historical and documentary aspects of Rome and Italian life – writers including Calvino and Moravia; literary prizes such as the Premio Strega; the Rome building boom; filmmakers’ protests against censorship; and the campaign for divorce.

These images beautifully convey the vibrancy of a period that, amid serious social contradictions, marked some of the greatest achievements of modern Italy.

Jacopo Benci