Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti: Announcements
Cinergie – ISSN 2280-9481 is an open-access, peer-reviewed, class-A journal. Its first on-line issue first appeared in 2012, but the journal has been published in hard copy since 1999. Cinergie is a wide-ranging film journal, that aims to publish original articles about national and international cinema, building a bridge to related fields.
When We Were Digital: Critical Archaeology of the First Digital Turn
The forceful spread in recent years of an “Algorithmic regime” (Uricchio 2020) in almost every aspect of our daily lives has sparked a lively debate, often marked by alarmist and nostalgic positions, but also by a certain eagerness to label new “turns,” provide definitions, and predict future scenarios. Yet beneath the “futuristic” veneer of terminology and scenarios, the most common arguments used to describe this supposed “Second Digital Turn” (Carpo 2017) are, upon closer inspection (Langdon Winner 1977), the same arguments that accompanied the social, cultural, psychological, and emotional processing of all the major twentieth-century shifts in scientific knowledge and technological development—especially when driven by more or less intelligent forms of automation of the “machine.” And as in the past, today too the fields of visual and audiovisual creation and production, as well as the social and cultural dynamics of our relationship with images, are particularly apt to bear witness to change in especially eloquent ways. This special issue arises, in some respects, as a “reaction” against the discursive practices that daily surround the presence, uses, and products of “artificial intelligence” (an extremely ambiguous term which, as Hito Steyerl suggests, should rather be replaced with the phrase “machine learning-based tools,” 2025). It reacts in particular by proposing a return to the first Digital Turn—the one that, in the early 1990s, globally marked a radical change of paradigm—not simply to distinguish between forms of continuity or rupture, fragmentation or reorganization (or to question the very hypothesis of a first and a second turn), but rather to recover and reread, in all its complexity, the debate triggered by that crucial transition. We are convinced that this debate may prove valuable in helping us better focus on the present, enrich our understanding of the key issues that shape it, and avoid overestimating what is new. After all, just as the digital did in the 1990s (Elsaesser 2016), artificial intelligence today seems to represent, more than a mere technology, a “cultural metaphor” for talking more broadly about the present and the future (crises, ruptures, transitions). And as in that earlier case, the domain of visual and audiovisual production appears, from many perspectives, the most exposed and problematic—and for this very reason the most strategic: “It is only when digitization generates images that something akin to a cultural crisis appears to occur, with exaggerated claims being made by some, and acute anxieties being voiced by others” (ibid.). If this special issue orients itself toward visuality—in all its dimensions: cultural, social, anthropological, technological, creative—it is therefore not merely for disciplinary reasons. Let’s instead use the visual “as a conduit for asking bigger questions about our own situation in the world” (Zylinska 2023). With regard to the first Digital Turn—understood therefore also as a Pictorial Turn—and to the complex, contradictory debate that accompanied the spread of new images and a new visual culture (technologies, devices, forms of knowledge, languages, forms, practices, and media environments), it seems particularly promising today to reconsider certain key nodes. First among them—once again invoking Elsaesser’s contribution—is the profound crisis of the “indexical status of (moving) images” and the consequent crisis this triggered in “held beliefs about representation and visualization, and many of the discourses—critical, scientific, or aesthetic—based on or formulated in the name of the indexical in our culture.” Equally crucial, problematic, and unprecedented was the rearticulation of the relationship between scientific visualization, artistic imagination, social representation, media history, and technical vision (one need only think, for example, of the spread of a culture—not merely a technology—of the “virtual” and the “augmented”), as well as that between visual production and political, military, and financial power (exemplified by W. J. T. Mitchell’s notion of the biopicture and Harun Farocki’s operational images). But from the early 1990s onward, it was above all the fields of cinema and photography—at a time when “personal” and “social” visuality was still far from being established, though already foreshadowed—that prompted the most original and (still today) productive reflections. These were divided between those who viewed the digital transition as the end of an era (Casetti, Batchen), as a “false revolution” (Belton, Marra), or as an inevitable and revealing passage (Aumont). In particular, it was in relation to the nature, production, circulation, and consumption of cinematic and photographic images that primacies (especially cultural and aesthetic ones), orthodoxies, and values (such as realism and truth) were first called into question, while new keywords (convergence, remediation, relocation…) took hold and suffixes (post-cinema, post-photography) proliferated, collectively suggesting the entry of images into a new regime of instability, vitality, and above all autonomy (Fontcuberta, Mitchell). This issue aims to promote a reflection/reconstruction of the complexity of the first Digital Turn, understood as a metaphor for an anthropological and epistemological transformation of which the current “algorithmic condition” appears at once as continuation, deviation, extreme development, intensification, contraction, and epilogue. The goal, however, is not comparison per se, but rather a rethinking and rereading of the set of discourses, interpretations, hypotheses, and definitions through which the first disruptive process of digitization was elaborated, as well as the very idea of a “turn,” its scope, and its impact. Accordingly, the issue seeks to collect contributions primarily, though not exclusively, focused on the following themes: Cultural history of the notion of the digital. Analysis of advertising communication around new technologies (computers, data and image-processing software, digital video cameras and cameras, etc.). History of digital technology, companies, and brands. Debate in specialist journals and the general press. Rhetorics and philosophies of the “new,” with particular reference to media. The social and cultural repositioning of cinema and photography. Theoretical debate on the image, photographic and cinematic. Digital remediations of analog culture and technology. Debate regarding the question of realism. Film and photography theory. Digital cinema and cinema in digital form. Reflection on the notions of the post-photographic, live action, and animation. The inclusion of computer science in debates on cinema and visual culture. Analysis of “post-” culture. High and low definition between technology and aesthetics. Bibliographical References Aumont, Jacques (2012). Que reste-t-il du cinéma ? Paris: Vrin. Balbi, Gabriele (2022). L’ultima ideologia. Breve storia della rivoluzione digitale. Bari–Roma: Laterza. Batchen, Geoffrey (2001). Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Baudrillard, Jean (1987). The Evil Demon of Images. Sydney: Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney. Belton, John (2002). “Digital Cinema: A False Revolution.” October, 100: 98–114. Boehm, Gottfried (2009). La svolta iconica. Roma: Meltemi. Carpo, Mario (2017). The Second Digital Turn. Design Beyond Intelligence. Cambridge–London: The MIT Press. Elsaesser, Thomas (2016). Film History as Media Archaeology. Tracking Digital Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Fontcuberta, Joan (2018). La furia delle immagini. Note sulla postfotografia. Torino: Einaudi. Friedberg, Anne (2000). “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change.” In Reinventing Film Studies, edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, 438–452. London: Arnold. Gaudreault, André and Philippe Marion (2013). La fin du cinéma ? Un média en crise à l’ère du numérique. Paris: Armand Colin. Grusin, Richard (2017). Radical Mediation. Cinema, estetica e tecnologie digitali. Cosenza: Luigi Pellegrini Editore. Lewis, Jon (ed.) (2001). The End of Cinema As We Know It. American Film in the Nineties. New York–London: New York University Press. Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge–London: The MIT Press. Marra, Claudio (2006). L’immagine infedele. La falsa rivoluzione della fotografia digitale. Milano: Bruno Mondadori. Mitchell, W.J. Thomas (2017). Pictorial Turn. Saggi di cultura visuale. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore. Mitchell, William J. (1992). The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Negroponte, Nicholas (1995). Being Digital. New York: Knopf. Quintana, Àngel (2008). Virtuel? À l’ère du numérique, le cinéma est toujours le plus réaliste des arts. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma. Winner, Langdon (1977). Autonomous Technology. Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. Cambridge–London: The MIT Press. Deadlines and Instructions An abstract of 300–500 words (together with a short biography – max 100 words – of the author) should be submitted by April 15, 2026 to luca.malavasi@unige.it [subject: Cinergie]. Notification of acceptance will be sent by April 20, 2026 If the proposal is accepted, the article must be submitted by July 15, 2026, must not exceed 6,000 words in length, and may include images (max 6) and links. Authors are required to clarify permissions and publication rights for any iconographic or archival documents included in the publication. Articles will be subject to double-blind peer review. Publication of issue: December 2026
Tele-Archives. Reframing Archival Research on Local Televisions Across Europe
This special issue of «Cinergie» − developed within the scope of the PRIN 2020 research project ATLas - Atlante delle Televisioni Locali (Atlas of Local Televisions) − intends to bring together a wide variety of contributions on local broadcasting in Europe, with a particular focus on the several ways in which archival research can delve into the evolution of media systems in different contexts, as well as investigate unexplored narratives in European television history. The existing literature has largely relied on memorialist accounts to assess the peculiarities of local TV stations. A thorough and systemic historical inquiry of Europe’s commercial broadcasting is however still lacking. The CFP consequently solicits contributions addressing the many single stories of local broadcasters in relation to more general interpretations of the progressive commercialization of European television. Italy provides an interesting case study to address the evolution undertaken during the 1980s by European televisions, but it also shows the need for a transnational and/or comparative analysis. Between 1974 and 1976, a series of rulings issued by the National Constitutional Court brought about a revolution in the country’s television landscape. Together with the 1975 reform of national PSB Rai, the Court provisions opened a new era in the history of Italian broadcasting, ending State’s monopoly and leading the way towards the growth of Italian local and private televisions. The ensuing commercialisation of Italian broadcasting was however connected to and sustained by larger historical transformations which cannot be confined within the nation’s geographical or political borders: technological innovations in broadcasting, increased market liberalisation, progressive segmentation of consumer habits all contributed to transnationally challenge the hitherto dominant European television paradigm, prompting a greater influence of American commercial television models and programs, as well as a variety of local and national responses. The eventual introduction, in 1989, of the European directive known as “Television without Frontiers” testifies to the strong relation between larger trends impacting media landscapes all across the continent and the evolution of European television broadcasting in the 1980s. Since they represent one of the most valuable resources to study the past, archives can be framed from a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including comparative and cross-media scholarly points of view. Lack of access to audiovisual repositories and documentary sources referring to private TV stations has undermined a full understanding of their role and legacy. Accordingly, the recurrent absence of institutional databases demands a “patchwork” approach, fostering the adoption of an inter-textual outlook connecting the experience of local televisions with other media outlets such as newspapers, radio stations, cinema, etc. Such an integration of sources entails new strategies to collect, preserve and transmit audiovisual heritage, while providing fruitful insights into the history of broader European socio-economic and cultural developments throughout the 1980s. Following the “archival turn” undertaken in film, media and television studies, this special issue of «Cinergie» will gather contributions that deal with − but are not strictly limited to − the following topics and issues: the role of formal and informal TV and media archives in shaping private and public memories, cultures and identities, especially in Europe and with reference to different territorial scales (i.e. transnational, national, regional, local); the rediscovery of hidden TV and media archives, including forgotten or marginalised figures, stories, TV programmes, genres and schedules; the resort to audiovisual archive to shed light on TV production and distribution patterns, with a special focus on industrial details; the integration, in addition to audiovisual records, of different archival sources (i.e. sound recordings, images, scripts, interviews), the role played by grey archives (i.e. those storing administrative deeds and business data) and the enhancement of oral history practices within academic research on local broadcasting; the technical, editorial and commercial structure of TV archives: data treatment, sampling criteria, content hierarchies and discovery tools; academic, historical and public uses of archives: methodological and theoretical standpoints, limits and problems of database access between analogical and digital repositories; data circulation and dissemination strategies, with a special focus on local TV and commercial broadcasting; the evolution and survival of media archives: policies, open science practices, IP protection, alternative approaches towards the revitalisation of cultural heritage. Please send a 300/500-word abstract and a short bio (50-100 words, in English) to Giulia Crisanti and Paola Zeni at giulia.crisanti@uniroma1.it and paola.zeni@unito.it by January 10, 2025 – [subject: Cinergie Application + name surname author(s)]. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 31, 2025. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by May 20, 2025. Articles (in English or Italian) must not exceed 6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please provide proper credits, permissions, and copyright information to ensure that images, clips, and links are copyright-free and can be published. Contributions will undergo a double-blind peer-review. Expected publication: December 2025. Please note that the 16th edition of Media Mutations International Conference - Unlocking Television Archives in the Digital Era, to be held in Bologna in May 26-27, 2025, will focus on some of the topics covered by the issue; cross-applications are welcome. More information are available on the <a id="OWA8bfb6d92-9a0f-0a64-5993-a53e5a197ff1" class="OWAAutoLink" href="https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamutations.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cdorothea.burato%40unipr.it%7C1b5c0d97b3764599f54608dcfcb11392%7Cbb064bc5b7a841ecbabed7beb3faeb1c%7C0%7C0%7C638663084705150291%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wKE%2Bvk3aaXUMoYjMEDlMf%2Fi03xxjTimBiX1vxEgKy48%3D&reserved=0">Media Mutations website.
The ‘Spectral Turn’ in Film and Media. Technology, Images, Identities and Aesthetics in between Presence and Absence
The concept of spectrality has spread in a cross-disciplinary manner following the consolidation of the term ‘spectral turn’ (Blanco and Peeren 2013), courtesy of Derrida's (1994; Derrida and Stiegler 2002) notion of hauntology, subsequently reworked by Simon Reynolds (2011) and Mark Fisher (2014). A spectral perspective has cut across deconstructionist thought, media and film theories, cultural history and queer and postcolonial studies. Roger Luckhurst's (2002) seminal contributions on telepathy in late 19th century science, culture and literature, Terry Castle's (1995) investigations into the invention of the uncanny in post-Enlightenment culture, and Jeffrey Sconce's (2000) analyses of the “electronic liveness” of communication technology, have highlighted the mediumistic dimension of the media, highlighting the pledge to connect the world of the living with that of the dead. These studies attribute a supernatural, magical and occult dimension to the media inventions of the 18th and 19th centuries. The communicative and visual functions of the media are juxtaposed with extra-ordinary uses and a symbolic construction that interacts with everything that appears as liminal. For instance, photography and the wireless telegraph experienced a kind of splitting apart through the spread of “spirit photography” (Gunning 2007, 99), which posed ghosts, phantoms and ectoplasm alongside the actual people portrayed, and the “spiritual telegraph’” (Sconce 2000, 12), which aimed to connect the living with the dead, the worldly with the otherworldly. The study of spectrality is not limited to the analysis of representations of supernatural entities and the deconstruction of their recurrence in media texts. The evocation of spectral figures makes it possible to reflect on issues relating to the construction of identity, the processing of trauma and the creation of a collective memory. Through the reworking of the phantom as a conceptual metaphor, spectrality is expressed as a paradigmatically deconstructive gesture, the “dark third” or trace of an absence that undermines the fixedness of binary oppositions (such as those between life and death, visible and invisible, real and virtual, authentic and replica, wakefulness and sleep, absence and presence) by subverting the chronological dimension of time and history (Weinstock 2004, 4). The ghost provides a figurative, impalpable and elusive structure to the continuity between the visible and invisible, produced through the technology of vision, establishing an osmotic relationship with cultural, political and scientific aspects. Tom Gunning (2007, 99), for instance, traces back one of the moments of intensification of the culture of spectrality to the spread of spirit photography in the second half of the 19th century. Akira M. Lippit (2005) sees X-rays as a form of denuding the invisibility of the human body, a visual revelation that coincides with the invention of cinema. Mireille Berton (in Grespi and Violi 2019, 99-125) traces the continuity between phantasmagoria and séances. If then, as Tom Gunning (2007, 98) states, “in the new media environment based in the proliferation of virtual images, the concept of the phantasm gains a new valency as an element of the cultural imaginary”, is it then not possible to consider the digital avatar as a kind of post-media phantom integrated into the fabrics of contemporary communication? However, specific and historically distinct, practices and techniques from the past show a surprising and inexhaustible conceptual proximity to contemporary ones. Therefore, from Phantasmagoria to Extended Reality, one can begin to trace media archaeology reinterpreted from a spectral perspective, focusing on technology and its cultural space and the ways in which the technical appearance of otherworldly entities has been disseminated on a cultural level. Since the first forms of attraction, the cinema has not only explored the reproduction of the phenomena of reality, but also investigated the realms of the fantastic and the magical. It has nurtured a fascination with the occult that ran through late 19th century culture and society, creating tricks and magic, showing disappearances and reappearances, transformations and deformations, super-impositions and blurring. These techniques gave substance to an impossible world, based on the eerie wonder of seeing ghosts and other supernatural entities appear, infusing them with the illusion of movement. In doing so, cinema reveals its spectral essence and restores a liminal reality. For Maksim Gor'kij (1896), cinema represents a threshold between worlds, while for Edgar Morin there is a profound connection between cinema and the realm of the dead (1956). This legacy stems from phantasmagoria, in which the lanternist often made the faces and portraits of deceased people appear. The return of the dead in phantasmagoria is revived in contemporary technology and digital spaces. Here we see the spread of virtual cemeteries and the “avatarisation” of the dead through algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence; through these it becomes possible to interact and communicate with those who are no longer present. There is also another level on which the concept of spectralisation moves, that of expressive strategies. We can thus distinguish certain spectralising effects, such as backlighting, superimposition, out-of-focus (widely used by Garrone in his first films, e.g. The Embalmer), the handheld shot, the long-take, and various other techniques that tend to dematerialise the image. It is very interesting to note how some of these expressive strategies can even be found in the directors who most often employ and advocate a cinema of the body, such as Pasolini, for example, in whose work a spectralising tendency weaves like a hidden thread, almost as if it were a return of the repressed. We might also mention a more recent film, displaying a counterpoint Pasolini’s poetry: Her by Spike Jonze, exalts the ghostliness of desire and the spectrality of cinema, without facile enthusiasm, but with considerable, fascinating ambiguity, all culminating in a poignant and mysterious finale. If cinema is the art of “walking shadows” (Martini 1998), and an art that has links to the dead, then it is even more an art of spectres and ghosts. Spectrality represents an elusive category based around the dialectics of the oxymoron, thus being strongly evocative; spectrality, in this special issue of “Cinergie”, is meant to be read and framed within theories of cinema and media. Therefore, it is to be examined as a field of archaeological investigation between the techniques and contents of the optical devices of the past and contemporary media, between pre- and post-cinematographic visual experiences, and as aesthetic tension capable of expressing a profound fascination for the impalpable, the immaterial and absence, as a media processing of bereavement. There are several thematic references that we would like to see covered within the special issue: - The representation of ghosts and spectral entities in cinema and digital media. - The spectralisation of media - Spectralisation and the symbolic construction of identity - Spectralisation as a process of expression - The spectral genealogy of cinema and media - Spectrality, bereavement and media - Trauma and cultural memory - Spectrality and expanded cinema Submission Details and Journal Deadlines Please send a 300/500-word abstract (either in English or Italian) and a 50/100-word biographical note (in English) to mirko.lino@univaq.it and massimo.fusillo@sns.it by October 31, 2024. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by February 28, 2025. Contributions will undergo a double blind peer review. The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please, provide correct credits, permissions, and copyright information in order to be sure that the images or archival documents are copyright free and can be published. Number 27 of Cinergie will be published in June 2025. Bibliography Berton M. 2019. “Le fantasmagoria cinematografiche dei medium spiritici”. In Grespi Barbara and Violi Alessandra, Eds., Apparizioni. Scritti sulla fantasmagoria, 99-125. Roma: Aracne. Blanco M.P., Peeren E. 2013. Eds. The Spectralities Reader. Ghost and Haunting in the Contemporary Cultural Theory. New York-London: Bloomsbury. Castle T. 1995. The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny. Oxford: OUP. Costa A. 2020. Il richiamo dell’ombra. Il cinema e l’altro volto del visibile. Torino: Einaudi. Derrida J. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. London: Routledge. Derrida J., Stiegler B. 2002. Ecographies of Television. Cambridge: Polity Press. Eugeni R. 2015. La condizione postmediale. Media, linguaggi e narrazioni. Brescia: Scholé. Eugeni R. 2021. Capitale algoritmico. Cinque dispositivi postmediali (più uno). Brescia: Scholé. Fisher M. 2014. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zer0 Books. Fusillo M. 2018. “Fantasmaticità del desiderio, spettralità del cinema”. In Puglia Ezio, Fusillo Massimo, et al. Eds. Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e teorie della spettralità senza fantasmi. Bologna: il Mulino. Grossi G. 2021. La notte dei simulacri. Sogno, cinema, realtà virtuale. Milano: Johan & Levi. Gunning T. 2007. “To Scan a Ghost : The Ontology of Mediated Vision”. Grey Room. 26: 94-127. Lino M. 2018. “Una ‘singolare’ spettralità tecnologica. L’avatar tra cinema, letteratura e serie TV”. In In Puglia Ezio, Fusillo Massimo, et al. Eds. Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e teorie della spettralità senza fantasmi. Bologna: il Mulino. Lino M. 2017. “Spettri postmediali. Sessualità e singolarità in Ex-Machina”. Fata Morgana. 33: 327-334. Lippit A.M. 2005. Atomic Light (Shadow Optics). Minneapolis: UMP. Luckhurst R. 2002. The Invention of Telepathy: 1870-1901. Oxford: OUP. Martini E. 1998. Ombre che camminano. Shakespeare nel cinema. Torino: Lindau. Morin E. 2016. Le cinéma ou l’homme imaginaire. Essai d’anthropologie sociologique, Paris: Minuit. Puglia E., Fusillo M., et al. 2018. Eds. Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e teorie della spettralità senza fantasmi. Bologna: il Mulino. Reynolds S. 2011. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber. Sconce J. 2000. Haunted Media. Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham: DUP. Shaw K. 2018. Hauntology: The Presence of the Past in Twenty-First Century English Literature. New York: Springer. Sisto D. 2018. La morte si fa social. Immortalità, memoria e lutto nell’epoca della cultura digitale. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Tanner G. 2016. Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave And The Commodification Of Ghosts. John Hunt. Warner M. 2006. Phantasmagoria. Oxford: OUP. Weinstock J.A. 2004. Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination. Madison: UWP. Wunenburger J.J. 1997. Philosophie des images. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Cinephemera. Ephemeral materials for the study of Italian cinema between the 1930s and 1960s
This special issue of «Cinergie» - developed in the context of the research PRIN project Cinephemera. Ephemeral materials for the study of Italian cinema between the 1930s and 1960s - aims to investigate “cinephemera” in the history of Italian cinema during the period of its prime role in the media system and consumer habits (1936–1966), and use them to cast light on unexplored regions fields? of Italian film. The study of the ephemera can aim to rebuild the everyday film experience in terms of memories, materials and mediation processes. They are all objects of transitory nature, which is linked to forms of use on a specific occasion (Makepeace 1985, 10). They mediate, build and extend a constant dialogue between public and industry (Moore 2016, 316) and contain precious evidence of past culture (Wickham 2010). More in detail, we understand cinephemera as a category that includes manufactured objects and collectible items (trading cards, cigarette cards, postcards, envelopes, stamps, pocket calendars, gadgets and other movie-inspired, mass-produced objects); artefacts spontaneously produced by cinema fans (personal and appointment diaries, albums, “schedari” (spectator film files), scrapbooks and other movie-inspired private paper items); and correspondence from admirers and spectators (letters sent to Italian or international stars and columns devoted to reader-spectator correspondence in popular periodicals and in the sector press), all intended as elements mediating the spectator experience and as sources for the social history of “moviegoing” (Wickham 2010; Moore 2016). Thanks to these collectible items and spontaneous artefacts, the moviegoing experience can be rebuilt using senses other than just sight (Casetti 2001), including touch and indeed the whole body. Personal and appointment diaries or objects from a cinema visit kept as a memory act as “portable” records and archives, private memorabilia, “mnestic protheses” (Caneppele 2018) and extensions of the memory of watching the film (Mariani and Comand 2019b). Finally, the activities of writing personal diaries and letters (Guerra and Martin 2019) and creating scrapbooks, and the spaces personal expression in the press (Martin 2019) can be interpreted more directly reserved to as concrete expressions of the mediation process “of retelling, interpreting and recreating social discourses that the spectator does during his or her film experience” (Fanchi and Mosconi 2002, 8). Moving transversally through the traditions of study mentioned above, this issue aims to open a space for reflection on specific case studies, in order to investigate the cinephemera with tools derived especially from the following methodological frameworks: - Material culture: in order to frame ephemera as “social objects”, everyday elements and expressions of a specific historical-cultural moment, whose value lies principally in the information provided by their material form (Kuipers 2004). With specific reference to collectible objects, we will follow the lines of material culture research concerned with mass-produced goods (Dei and Meloni 2015): when looked at as stock resulting from production and consumption infrastructures, ephemeral forms can help disclose new ways of understanding the dynamics and trends of the film industry’s entanglement with apparently distant sectors of industrial activity (cosmetics, food, confectionery, publishing, etc.); - Microhistory: in order to frame ephemera as essential materials to uncover individual experiences and the relational universes that produced them. The eccentric and heterogeneous heritage of paper items and spontaneous artefacts demands a microanalytic approach, safeguarding the singular nature of each material under examination. In addition, concrete imaginative efforts are needed to interpret the social practices that they derive from (Grendi 1977). Facing radically different documentary sources to those used by quantitative studies on the cinema-going public and the film consumption of past audiences, the close-up view and the eclecticism of the methods belonging to microanalytical historiography (Levi 1991) enable an alternative way to rebuild spectator presence, which is not deduced so much from data, but more empirically and inextricably linked to “hands-on work” on the media and the objects at our disposal. - Fandom studies: in order to frame ephemera as evidence of an active and participatory experience in the film spectacle. To this end, we propose to finetune the tools that “fandom archaeology” has already applied to objects produced by and for fans, to the swap groups and networks revolving around informal collection-building practices, and to identifying the cultural intermediaries of cinema discourse (Fuller-Seeley 2018). By raising fan mail columns, diaries and scrapbooks to the status of historical source, we can trace the different fan culture discourses that have been present in Italy, either on cinema fandom, or actor fandom (McQuail 1997). More in general, we will try to make an original contribution to research on past audiences in the form of “bottom-up” film history. We will not deduce spectator presence so much from data, but more empirically from “hands-on work” on the media and the objects at our disposal. - Gender studies: in order to frame ephemera as active places in the construction of a “gendered” subjectivity from Fascist Italy up to the post-war period of recovery. While making use of the knowledge and methods offered by the literature on the condition of women audiences (Cardone 2009), a close-up analysis of the ephemeral materials will nevertheless enable us to call into question the assumption that places some of these practices – writing fan mail, scrapbooking, etc. – exclusively in the female domain (Grubey Garvey 2013). This evidence of “active” reprocessing will instead be investigated as a field of social tension between the male and female models of discourse put forward by film and the different access to film consumption permitted to men and women spectators. Submission Details and Journal Deadlines Please send a 300/500-word abstract (either in English or Italian) and a short biographical note to princinephemera@gmail.com by February 15, 2024. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by May 31, 2024. Contributions will undergo a double blind peer review. The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please, provide correct credits, permissions, and copyright information in order to be sure that the images or archival documents are copyright free and can be published. The Number 26 of Cinergie will be published in December 2024. Bibliography Aasman S. e Montrescu-Mayes A. 2019. Amateur Media and Participatory Cultures: Film, Video, and Digital Media. New York-Londra: Routledge. Buckley R. 2017. “Italian Female Stars and Their Fans in the 1950s and 1960s”. In Burke Frank, ed., A Companion to Italian Cinema, 157–178. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Caneppele P. 2018 “Protesi mnestiche. Memorabilia ed esperienze spettatoriali”. Cinema e Storia. 1: 191–200. Cardone L. 2009. “Noi donne” e il cinema. Dalle illusioni a Zavattini (1944-1954). Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Casetti F. 2001. “L’esperienza dello spettatore attraverso le cartoline del cinematografo Centrale”. In Della Torre R., Mosconi E, eds., I manifesti tipografici del cinema. La collezione della Fondazione Cineteca Italiana 1919-1939. Milano: Quaderni della Fondazione Cineteca Italiana. Cubitt S. e Papastergiadis N., McQuire S. 2008. “Transient Media”, in Public 37: 76–85. Comand M. e Mariani A. eds. 2019a. Ephemera. Scrapbooks, fan mail e diari delle spettatrici nell’Italia del regime. Venezia: Marsilio. Comand M. e Mariani A. 2019b. Effemeridi del film: Episodi di storia materiale del cinema italiano. Milano: Meltemi. De Berti R. 2000. Dallo schermo alla carta. Romanzi, fotoromanzi, rotocalchi cinematografici: il film e i suoi paratesti. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Dei F. e Meloni P. 2015. Antropologia della cultura materiale. Roma: Carocci. Druick Z., Cammaer G. 2014. Cinephemera: Archives, Ephemeral Cinema and New Screen Histories in Canada. Montreal-London: Kingston-MQUP. Fanchi M. e Mosconi E., eds. 2002. Spettatori, forme di consumo e pubblici del cinema in Italia. 1930-1960. Roma-Venezia: Marsilio. Forgacs D., Gundle S. 2007. Cultura di massa e società italiana: 1936-1954. Bologna: Il Mulino. Fuller-Seeley, K. 2018. “Archaeologies of fandom. Using Historical Methods to Explore Fan Cultures of the Past”, in Click, M. A., Scott, S., eds., The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, 27–35. New York-London: Routledge. Grainge P, ed. 2011. Ephemeral Media. Transitory screen Culture from Television to YouTube. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gray J. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers. And Other Media Paratexts. New York-London: New York University Press. Grendi E. 1977, “Micro-analisi e storia sociale”, Quaderni storici (35), 2: 506–520. Gruber Garvey E. 2013. Writing with scissors. American scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press. Guerra M., Martin S. eds, 2019. “La cultura della lettera. La corrispondenza come forma e pratica di critica cinematografica”. Cinergie – Il cinema e le altre arti. 15 Hastie A. 2006. “The Miscellany of Film History”. Film History (18), 2: 222–230. Kuipers J. M. 2004. “Scrapbooks: Intrinsic Value and Material Culture”. Journal of Archival Organization (2) 3: 83–91. Lanzilotta G., ed., 2017. L’arte in tasca. Calendarietti, réclame e grafica. 1920-1940. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini. Levi G. “On Microhistory”. 1991. In Burke P. ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 93–113. Cambridge: Polity Press. Makepeace C. E. 1985. Ephemera: A Book on its Collection, Conservation, and Use. Aldershot : Gower. Martin S. 2019 “Minie Piquet e le altre. Le rubriche di moda su alcune riviste cinematografiche negli anni del Regime”.In Comand M., Mariani A. eds. Ephemera. Scrapbooks, fan mail e diari delle spettatrici nell’Italia del regime, 231–246. Venezia: Marsilio. Manzoli G. 2012. Da Ercole a Fantozzi: cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958-1976). Roma: Carocci. McQuail D. 1997. Audience Analysis. London: Sage. Moore P. S. 2016. “Ephemera as Medium: The Afterlife of Lost Films”. Moving Image 16 (1): 134–139. Noto P., Pesce S. eds., 2017. The Politics of Ephemeral Media. Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts. London: Routledge. Rickards M. 1977. This is Ephemera: Collecting Printed Throwaways. Brattleboro: Grossamer Press. Rickards M. 2000. The encyclopedia of ephemera: a guide to the fragmentary documents of everyday life for the collector, curator, and historian. Routledge: New York. Scarpellini E. 2008. L’Italia dei consumi: dalla Belle Epoque al nuovo millennio. Bari-Roma: Laterza. Tortora M. 2006. “Modi di transitare: dai fotoalbum cinematografici agli screen captures”. In Autelitano A., Re V., eds. Il racconto del film. La novellizzazione dal catalogo al trailer, 293–299. Udine: Forum. Vitella F. 2015. “Forbice, album e carta da lettere. Hollywood come fan magazine”. Fata Morgana 27: 51–64. Vitella F. 2016. “Mia carissima Alida. Le lettere degli ammiratori nell’Italia mussoliniana”. Bianco e Nero 58: 92–114. Wickham P. 2010. “Scrapbooks, Soap Dishes and Screen Dreams: Ephemera, Everyday Life and Cinema History”. New Review of Film and Television Studies 8 (3): 315–330. Young T. G. 2003. “Evidence: Toward a library definition of ephemera”. RBM 4 (1): 11–26.
Crime Unmasked: Exploring the Morphologies of Italian Giallo through Transnational Influences and Intermedial Hybridization
If a lively intermedial dialogue emerges between the two world wars in Italy, pushing the Giallo beyond the boundaries of literature (Mazzei and Valentini, 2017; Curti 2022), it is after the end of the Second World War, and especially with the advent of television, that the crime genre (Calabrese and Rossi, 2018; Pieri 2011; Priestman 2009; Knight 2004) branches out into popular culture, exploding in a multitude of forms, productions, atmospheres, styles, and characters. The representations of crime within the transmedia macro-genre of the Giallo have thus accompanied and interpreted some fundamental cultural and social transformations in Italy, from the 1950s to the present. The polarity between detection and the criminal act – the core of the Giallo – expresses, on the one hand, the morphological complexity of the genre, its permeability to both indigenous and international narrative models and archetypes, and on the other hand, it serves as an amplifier of social anxieties regarding criminal phenomena in contemporary liberal democracies (Biressi 2001) and the tensions and desires of Western societies (Perissinotto 2008). In this respect, the Giallo becomes a heuristic device capable of capturing and deciphering the symptoms of an ongoing socio-cultural change, as well as revealing the traumatic signs of past historical events (Pezzotti 2014) or the traces of the evolution of criminal law theories and practices, especially in the oscillations between the inquisitorial and the accusatory models (Amodio 2016). At the narrative level, these models are often reflected in the development and hybridization of two different narrative paradigms: detective fiction and procedural drama. Equally significant from a cultural perspective is Giallo's ability to intersect and reinterpret the paradigms of femininity and masculinity within specific historical periods. It accomplishes this through the use of plots and visual strategies that problematize the relationship between socially prescribed roles, characters, and gender identity, often highlighting contradictions related to stereotypes and hegemonic positions (Dresner 2007; Gates 2011; Buonanno 2017; D’Amelio and Re 2021). The aim of the monographic issue – developed within the Prin 2020 project The Atlas of Italian “Giallo”: Media History and Popular Culture (1954-2020) – is to analyze the depiction of criminals and representatives of the law and institutions, exploring the intermedial connections between television, cinema, radio, fictional imagery, investigative journalism, and crime reporting. The analysis of how these figures are portrayed will reveal their significance and role in shaping and distorting the public perception of crime and justice. Through the examination of recurrences and variations of patterns and expressive formulas, this issue aims to open a space for reflection on the diachronic, synchronic and geographical trajectories that have shaped new identity and cultural configurations within Italian crime narratives. The subjects that navigate the realms of detection can be studied in their diverse aesthetic and representational evolutions, taking into account changes in production contexts. Furthermore, it is important to consider the audience responses, including the impact of branding (Turnbull, 2019) and the mechanisms that sometimes associate a star image with a particular role. Similarly, an interdisciplinary approach to the Giallo represents a privileged access to the complex web of interpretive pathways that span Media Studies, sociology, criminology, Legal Studies, and philosophical reflections on themes of guilt and responsibility. By interweaving these disciplines, this monographic issue aims to shed light on cognitive, political and gender identity issues. This issue of Cinergie aims to collect contributions that focus on, but are not exclusively limited to, the following points: The figure of the investigator, whether inside or outside state institutions, including law enforcement officers, investigative journalists, writers or private citizens, between professionalism and amateurism. The developments and modes of representation of figures related to the defense of the accused and the staging of the victim as a civil party in the trial, beyond traditional patterns of detection and often in a problematic off-screen position, both in the investigative and procedural phases. The relationship between investigation, trial and truth in the national representation of crime or true crime in a diachronic, intermedial and interdisciplinary perspective. How the hybridizations of different genres and international influences redefine masculine and feminine models of detection as discursive positionalities in the Italian context. The relationship between gender identity and the staging of violence in the dialectic between criminal transgression and the punitive restoration of social order. The symbolic and narrative significance of atmospheres and spaces in the Giallo genre, where the exploration of different locations becomes an expressive practice that activates further levels of identity research. The different sites involved in criminal, investigative, judicial, and punitive actions, such as crime scenes, police stations, courts, prisons, and more. References E. Amodio, Estetica della giustizia penale. Prassi, media, fiction, Giuffrè Editore, Milano 2016. A. Biressi, Crime, Fear and the Law in True Crime Stories, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London 2001. M. Buonanno, Television Antiheroines. Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama, Intellect, Bristol-Chicago 2017. S. Calabrese, R. Rossi, La crime fiction, Carocci, Roma 2018. R. Curti, Italian Giallo in Film and Television. A Critical History, McFarland & Company, Jefferson 2022. L.M. Dresner, The Female Investigator in Literature, Film and Popular Culture, McFarland, Jefferson 2007. P. Gates, Detecting Women. Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film, State University of New York Press, New York 2011. S. Knight, Crime Fiction 1800-2000, Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2004. L. Mazzei, P. Valentini (a cura di), Giallo italiano, «Bianco e nero», 587, 2017. A. Perissinotto, La società dell’indagine, Bompiani, Milano 2008. B. Pezzotti, Investigating Italy’s Past through Historical Crime fiction, Films, and TV Series. Murder in the Age of Chaos, Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2014. G. Pieri (a cura di), Italian Crime Fiction, University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2011. M. Priestman, The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009. V. Re, E. D’Amelio, «Un lavoro inadatto a una donna»: protagoniste femminili nella serialità crime italiana, «Arabeschi», 18, 2021. G. Scomazzon, Crimine, colpa e testimonianza. Sulla performatività documentaria, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2021. S. Turnbull, Crime. Storia, miti e personaggi delle serie TV più popolari, Minimum Fax, Roma 2019. Submission details Please send an abstract of 300/500 words and a short biography to Giulia Scomazzon and Arianna Vergari at giulia.scmzn@gmail.com and a.vergari@unilink.it by October 17, 2023 - [subject: Cinergie Volti e scene del crimine+ name surname author(s)]. Notification of acceptance will be sent within October 23, 2023. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by December 15, 2023. Articles must not exceed 6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please provide proper credits, permissions, and copyright information to ensure that images, clips, and links are copyright-free and can be published. Contributions will be submitted to double-blind peer-review. The issue will be published in July 2024.
Call for Papers - Repositioning Film Criticism. Critical Displacements among the Film Critics from 1930 to 1970: Space, Connections, Movements
The numerous and recurring cycles of institutionalization that film criticism has undergone throughout the decades have never fully disciplined this professional field, which is instead marked by a fruitful lack of specialization and uniformity. The history of film criticism therefore consists less of intellectual positions achieved once and for all than of cultural operators constantly moving across geographical space (for example along the center/periphery, or city/province axes, defined by the biographical experience of many cinephiles and film critics), across political, educational and military institutions (that are often the professional destinations of critics), across different media system (with connections between publishing industry, radio, tv, and digital media) and national as well as cultural contexts. Film criticism creates both occasional and enduring connections by means of ritual moments (such as film festivals and heated controversies in the press) that redefine the geography of cultural production. Criticism is also the gateway to the world of intellectual production for traditionally marginalized and underrepresented subjects for reasons related to gender, class, ideology, race and religion, that is the practice that allows such intellectuals to enter well-established and respected professional environments In accordance with the related research project “A private history of Italian film criticism 1930-1970” (funded by the Italian Ministry of Research), the purpose of this monographic issue is to invite articles that question film criticism as a relational system and as a practice generating physical and symbolic repositioning, displacements, and transgressions. The main focus is on Italian film criticism, although proposals shedding light on other national contexts are more than welcome. Proposals revolving around written and non-written sources related to the work of film critics (such as correspondence, recordings, photographs, editorial materials, ephemera), as well as methodologies capable of highlighting innovative ways of visualising critical work (such as new cinema history and digital humanities), will be assessed with particular interest. The time span insists on a long period, in the conviction that this can reveal long-lasting dynamics, overall developments of institutionalisation processes, but also “encroachments” that transcend macro-historical caesuras. Moreover, the period examined (with particular regard to the 1930s/1940s and the 1970s) sees several generations of critics confronting each other, thus increasing the complexity and multidimensionality of the fluctuations in the field. The monographic issue invites contributions concerning topics such as (the list is not meant to be exhaustive): the relationship between centre/periphery and city/province in the geography of film criticism; trajectories of film criticism and critics within media environments and contexts; the generational - geographical gap (e.g. young provinces vs. snub old center) the repositioning of film critics in professional and ideological terms; travel, cooperation and transnational networks; film criticism as a form of cultural diplomacy; the film critics’ work environment; the entry of film criticism into educational, cultural, religious and political institutions; film criticism as a gateway to the cultural ecosystem for under-represented subjects (minorities, opposition communities, women). Submission details Please send a 300/500-word abstract and a short bio to Jennifer Malvezzi, Andrea Mariani, and Paolo Noto at jennifer.malvezzi@unipr.it paolo.noto2@unibo.it andrea.mariani@uniud.it by November 12, 2022 – [subject: Repositioning Film Criticism+ name surname author(s)]. Notification of acceptance will be sent within November 22, 2022 If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by February 02, 2023. The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please, provide correct credits, permissions, and copyright information in order to be sure that the images, clips, and links are copyright free and can be published. Contributions will be submitted to double-blind peer-review. The issue will be published in June 2023.