Roberta Di Carmine gave a talk about her recent book “Cultural Metamorphoses in Contemporary Italian Cinema” at the Western Illinois University Art Gallery on Friday. Di Carmine, a WIU professor of English who specializes in film studies, looked into four social areas that influenced contemporary Italian cinema: migrants struggling to adjust to a new country, the elderly being isolated from society, the decline of the middle class and gender inequality, and a film that corresponds with each social area. 

The four films that Di Carmine looked into for her cultural metamorphoses film study were the 2011 film “Shun Li and the Poet,” the 2007 film “Days and Clouds,” the 2008 film “Mid-August Lunch” and the 2013 film “A Five Star Life.” During the talk, Di Carmine showed clips from “Shun Li and the Poet” and “Mid-August Lunch.”