The Museum of Contemporary Art presents an interesting survey of Italian cinema this month with the Italics Film Series, a program running in conjunction with “Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution 1968-2008,” the museum’s current showcase exhibit.

While “Italics” examines Italian art and creativity from the 1960s to the present, the complementary film series isolates one particular phase: 1969 to 1981. These dozen years were a transitional period for the Italian film industry, one that saw the rise and influence of international co-production and popular and art films battling exploitation fare for audience attention.

The MCA’s series captures this era wonderfully with eight works by filmmakers in fitting retrospection and reflection. Viewers can expect to see films that examine, satirize, and confront the church, the state, politics, the family unit and the self. Not to mention history stretching from the Renaissance to World War II.

Acclaimed films by a who’s who of great Italian directors — Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Francesco Rosi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti — fill the schedule. The lean towards the more prestigious cinema squeezes out some of the era’s wilder offerings (nothing by Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci?) but there’s still much to see.

The series opens January 7 with a screening of Bertolucci’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), a mid-career feature from the mind behind Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers.

Based on a true story, the tragicomedy details the effects of a kidnapping on its victim’s father (Ugo Tognazzi, who won the Best Actor Award at Cannes for his performance). The ransom demand threatens to bankrupt the wealthy Parmesan cheese factory owner, but is the abduction merely a ruse perpetrated by his son’s leftist friends?

The series continues with a run of essential viewing, including:

The Decameron (1971), Pasolini’s erotic adaptation of Boccaccio’s epic Renaissance novel;

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), Petri’s dark, satirical police procedural that won a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award;

A rare screening of Illustrious Corpses (1976), Rosi’s giallo-tinged mystery about a detective investigating the murders of judges;

The Passenger (1975), Antonioni’s overlooked classic starring Jack Nicholson as a reporter searching for his identity in the Sahara (screened from a restored print with scenes previously cut from the original U.S. version);

The Inglorious Bastards (1978), Enzo G. Castellari’s action-packed WWII flick that provided the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s recent blockbuster;

Fellini’s Casanova (1976), a fictionalized, fantastical look at the world’s greatest lover by one of the world’s most nostalgic and whimsical directors;

The Damned (1969), Visconti’s epic, controversial depiction of a wealthy family living a life of decadence, grotesquerie and perversion while the Nazis rise to power around them.

All films will be screened from 35mm prints.