Book excerpt: “Defining proximity cinema, a concept in which only apparently distant experiences are associated, such as private and underground cinema. This is the goal of the book: to challenge and redefine the boundaries of stale and automatic critical categories. Tracing a transversal path that combines family cinema and experimental cinema, in the name of innovation, freedom from industrial and market conventions. Mapping writings for images emancipated from the usual narrative, from the general canon. Familiar or avant-garde works, which beg to be looked at through eyes free from superstructures, devoid of both pre-packaged intellectual meanings and the contemporary perverse desire for fun at all costs. Proximity cinema goes to the beating heart of things. It is amateur cinema in the etymological, amorous sense: it asks to be experienced without prejudice, it makes a clean sweep of interpretative vices, it reveals itself openly, offering portions of life, it often reaches the abstract consistency of painting through an obstinate observation of reality. Under the aegis of Roger Odin and deployed, like Stan Brakhage, in defense of the amateur, proximity cinema looks at the production of images with the aim of restoring dignity — artistic, historical, and sociological — to simple yet extraordinarily complex, intimate, and revolutionary cinematographic gestures, which are constantly and dully underestimated if not derided." Ilaria Pezone is a teacher at Brera Academy. Since 2009, she has been dedicated to the study and practice of private cinema. She’s made short, medium, and feature-length films, including France, quasi un autoritratto (2017); Indagine su sei brani di vita rumorosa dispersi in un’estate afosa - raccolti e scomposti in cinque atti (2016); Concerto Metafisico (2015); Vedere Tra - Luigi Erba improvviso e dialogato (2014); 1510 - sogno su carta impressa con video (2013); Masse nella geometria rivelata dello spazio-tempo (2012); Andare tornando a rilievi domestici (2011); GREISTTMO (2010); Polittico Preludio Adagio Altalenante (2009); Leggerezze e gravità (2008).