Christopher G. Wagstaff Film Collection

The Christopher G. Wagstaff Italian Film collection encompasses more than two thousand Italian films and television programs. Amassed over many years by the late Professor Christopher Wagstaff of the University of Reading, UK, the collection spans over one hundred years of Italian film history from Inferno (1911), the first feature-length film to be produced in Italy, to La grande bellezza (2013), winner of the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film. The collection also includes international productions from England and the United States as well as Italian TV movies such as the Rai-produced Il commissario Montalbano series. Additional content includes rare interviews with Italian actors, directors, and scholars, documentaries, movie extras, and commercials.

Professor Wagstaff donated his collection to the University of Notre Dame in 2015. Information on individual films is available through the catalog of Hesburgh Libraries. An index of all film titles and directors is available here.

For further inquiries or to access films from the collection, please contact Julia Schneider, Italian Studies Librarian. Please note that access to the films requires a 3-4 week advance notice.