Presentat' arm! Il cinema muto nella grande guerra

PresentAt-Arm! the cAtAniA film Production in the GreAt WAr – The years of Fin de siècle correspond to the beautiful season of Ca tania both from an economic and cultural point of view. The city looked like an open-air construction site and was enriched by the portent of some new discoveries, such as electric lights, trams, the first cars and the cinema. Just a year later the first public screenings in Paris, even Catania was able to enjoy the extraordinary invention of the Lumière brothers. In 1897 there were the first real shots of the city and between 1913 and 1916 four film companies were born. The first of them was the Etna film, founded by the entrepreneur Alfredo Alonso to whom we also owe the construction of an imposing cinevillage. The article aims to reconstruct the birth of the Etna studios and, in particular, to analyze the patriotic-themed production of the Catania production companies in the years of the First World War