The L’Aquila Film Institute “La Lanterna Magica” and the Region of Abruzzo signed an agreement on April 16 that establishes their collaboration with Regional Library “Salvatore Tommasi” to further their common purposes. The agreement was proposed by Daniele D’Amario, the Regional Councilor responsible for culture, and with technical collaboration for drafting from director Carlo Tereo de Landerset and Alessandra Lucantonio, in charge of the library. In this historic moment, the bond between the two institutions is an occasion for a socio-cultural restart in which cinema will represent an opportunity for reflection and comparison. The union of the valuable literary heritage preserved in the “Salvatore Tommasi” Library with the rich and broad genres in the Film Institute’s Archive gives birth to a unique entity in Italy due to the characteristics of the preserved material. Both are centers of documentation, and serve as regional legal depositories for books and audiovisual materials. Additionally, the archives of “La Lanterna Magica” have been declared of cultural interest particularly with respect to the Law D.Lgs 42/2004 and ss.mm.ii with the MiBACT ordinance of 01/31/2018. The archives include the “Giovanni Tantillo” Library with volumes dedicated to the seventh art, the “Maria Pia Casilio” film library with its collection of films from the early 1900’s to the 90’s, and the video library which holds about 10,000 audiovisual documents. The archive also contains the newspaper and journal library, a photo library with over 50,000 images and a collection of paper materials with photographs of famous Italian and American film stars, sketches, figurines, set photos, clippings, postcards, notes, notebooks, posters, and photo envelopes.

(Translation by Paula Qefaliaj with Danielle Maus)