The Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro and the Cinematographic Conquest of the Non-Urban

The National Afterwork Club (Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro or OND) played an important role in establishing small-town film exhibition in the 1930s. This article aims to reconstruct the peculiar and overlooked role of the agency in the context of Italian Fascist cinema policies. The analysis takes into consideration OND’s official publications, national and regional data (the latter from the CinEx research project), and municipal archives. Taking Lombardy as a case study, the aim is to show how local archives and statistical data can work together. The essay scrutinises the OND phenomenon, highlighting its geographical presence, management models, political, educational and ethical goals. Moreover, it analyses how the Fascist regime used OND to make up for the absence of commercial cinemas, especially in the areas where they were financially unsustainable.