Alberto Zambenedetti

Associate Professor; Associate Chair - Graduate
Carr Hall, Room 209, 100 St. Joseph Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3L5
(416) 978-6557

Campus

Cross-Appointments

Cinema Studies Institute

Areas of Interest

  • Italian Cinema
  • Mobilities
  • Film Noir
  • Location Studies
  • Transnational Cinema
  • Postcolonial Theory
  • Temporality

Biography

Alberto Zambenedetti is Associate Professor in the Department of Italian Studies and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. His monograph Acting Across Borders: Mobility and Identity in Italian Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), investigates how the national film industry has grappled with social and cultural anxieties related to human mobility over the last century. His edited volumes World Film Locations: Florence (Intellect Book, 2014) and Cleveland (Intellect Book, 2016) explore how the cinema has engaged with these cities both as locations and as g/local sites of film production and consumption. Alberto also co-edited two collections on Federico Fellini: Federico Fellini. Riprese, riletture, (re)visioni (Franco Cesati Editore, 2016); and Federico Fellini. Centenary Essays (University of Toronto Press, 2024). His scholarship has appeared in journals such as Annali d'Italianistica, Studies in European Cinema, Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Short Film Studies, The Italianist, Quaderni d’Italianistica, The University of Toronto Quarterly, ACME, and Space and Culture. Alberto’s film criticism is posted on Gli Spietati (www.spietati.it). He has curated the Italian editions of Home (Yann Arthus-Bertrand, 2009), It Seems to Hang On (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2015) and Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison, 2016). Alberto also contributed essays to the home video releases of Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016). Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison, 2016), and Fellini’s Casanova (Federico Fellini, 1976 (2021)). He is preparing a critical edition of Francesco Pasinetti’s unpublished scenarios and screenplays for Marsilio Editori (2024). Zambenedetti teaches a variety of courses in Italian cinema, on time and temporality in film, on film noir (particularly in the Mediterranean context), and on cities and urbanism in film.

Education

Ph.D., New York University
M.A., New York University
Laurea, Università degli Studi di Venezia Ca' Foscari

Publications

Administrative Service

Associate Chair - Undergraduate, Department of Italian Studies, 2021-2022
Associate Chair - Graduate, Department of Italian Studies, 2023-present