“Manuale di cinematografia per dilettanti – Vol. I” is a film essay set during the Fascist era in Italy, where a wealthy but historically insignificant man observes the world through his amateur camera. Guided by a technical manual, he begins to understand how vision is never neutral: even the most objective lens carries an ideological framework.

Combining archival aesthetics, commentary, and historical speculation, the film explores the relationship between technology and ideology, how image-making encodes knowledge, and how resistance can emerge — subtly, visually — from within the very apparatus designed to control.

It’s a meditation on how the act of filming becomes an epistemological gesture, shaped by manuals, tools, and unseen frameworks. 

Edited by Guglielmo Trupia and directed by Federico Di Corato, the film was presented at the Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti section, 2022).