Review of Cavigioli R. (2010) I giovani raccontano gli anziani. Il contributo del VideoConcorso Francesco Pasinetti alla riflessione su invecchiamento, dialogo intergenerazionale e trasmissione culturale in Italia

Age studies are greatly needed in order to understand not only how intergenerational relations are changing, but also how social images and stereotypes associated with the different age groups are changing. Rita Cavigioli’s book is an interesting contribution to this field of research. The author, analyzing short films from the archive of the VideoConcorso Francesco Pasinetti, provides us with an insightful exploration of Venetian students’ images and stereotypes of the elderly. Clearly, the iconic value of Venice for the study of aging places and societies adds to the value of this study. Overall the book in quite successful in providing scholars interested in Italian society with rich material on the images and stereotypes about the elderly among young people living or studying in Venice. However, one possible criticism relates to the weakness of the sociological analysis conducted in the first section of the book, and to the fact that the two parts of the book are scarcely related. The loose connection between the analysis of the shorts from the VideoConcorso Pasinetti and the sociological analysis of the Veneto region is also at the basis of a second limitation of this book. This said, it is worth underlining that this book has the great merit of establishing a dialogue between cultural, historical and sociological studies of aging and intergenerational relations. Next, it also sheds light on a rich ‘database’ for the analysis of images and stereotypes of the elderly and aging in Italian society.