Giacomo Lichtner is Senior Lecturer in History and Film at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is a cultural historian and his research focuses specifically on the relationship between history and film, cinema as both a mirror and creator of social trends and the political uses of cinema to create national and political identities. In addition to a number of articles and essays, he is author of Film and the Shoah in France and Italy (Vallentine Mitchell, 2008).