Sardinian, Italian, Mediterranean: the significance of Cagliari’s liminality in post-war documentaries and newsreels

Abstract

A selection of Italian nonfiction films produced in the aftermath of the Second World War represent Cagliari, the capital city of the autonomous region of Sardinia. Taking into account the city’s accumulation of transcultural memories, this article examines the role these newsreels and documentaries played in crafting an image of Cagliari that was intended to be spread across Italian society. The concept of liminality, both in its anthropological and in its postcolonial contexts, is mobilized to explore the extent to which these films re-elaborate the suspended temporality and spatiality of Cagliari’s transcultural memory in relation to Sardinia, the Italian peninsula, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Western world.