This course will explore the animating role that Italian cinema has played in the philosophical and political imagination of film. On the one hand, it will consider the distinctly philosophical sensibility of the filmmaking movements that have defined Italian cinema since the postwar era, taking the films themselves as contributions to a range of reflections on the nature of existence, humanity, images, ethics, justice, and collective social life. On the other hand, the course will explore the pivotal role these same films played in prompting philosophical and political writings about cinema and the culture of art cinema more broadly, working through a range of philosophical treatments of the medium and its relation to the world that emerged in response to the films’ provocations.