Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti: Announcements

Crime Unmasked: Exploring the Morphologies of Italian Giallo through Transnational Influences and Intermedial Hybridization

Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti — 2023-06-29

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

Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti — 2022-10-06

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.

Next Issue Announcement - The Agency of Film Festivals. Geopolitics, Economies and Networks

Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti — 2022-07-19

Throughout the last ten years, Cinergie. Il cinema e le alter arti has represented an important platform of discussion and study for the interdisciplinary field of film festival studies in Italy, accommodating several special issues and a variety of articles which have explored the position of festivals within cinephilia, film industry and circulation. Rowing in this direction, the next issue draws from academic research which was presented at the Reframing Film Festivals conference, (Venice, February 2020) and hinges on three key concepts in studies of film festivals – geopolitics, economies and networks. The articles included in the next issue make use of different methodological approach (historical research, economical and institutional analysis, ideological critique) to unravel a variety of institutions, sub-circuits, exchanges and relationships in the domain of film festivals, adopting), spanning across a variety of research topics. These topics include the genealogy of the concept of festival in 1930s Europe, the mediating role and activities of festivals like Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Pula and Venice in the context of the Trieste Crisis, the establishment of the Locarno and its founding relationships with (touristic, industrial, cultural) stakeholders, and the proposal of a systematic mode of engaging with film festival’s public utterance and modus operandi from the lens of ideology critique. Therefore, although fragmented in different localities and historical formations, this issue demonstrates the branching-out and multidisciplinary nature of research on festivals and indicates viable ways to make the study of festivals relevant to the understanding of geopolitical relations, local economies and transnational histories.

UPDATED CALL FOR PAPERS - Critical Performances. Actors and Actresses at the Time of the COVID-19 Crisis in Italy

Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti — 2021-10-25

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted on media production, distribution, and experience. Long-established practices have undergone dramatic interruptions or major shifts and respective laborers have been forced to strongly revise their activities (Hediger, Keidle, Melamed, Somaini 2020; Damasio 2020; Adgate 2021; Fortmueller 2021). For instance, film sets and television studios reconsidered their modes of operation in the face of Covid-prevention rules, protocols and requirements. Likewise, in an epidemic scenario in constant change, film festivals and awards found themselves in the need to repeatedly revise their rituals and forms, to be able to carry on at least part of their activities. Media practitioners have thus been faced with the need of reflecting and discussing pitfalls and opportunities brought to light by the pandemic, while also implementing strategies for facing and countering the crisis.

In Italy, actors and actresses have been among the most affected groups of professionals. Whereas the usual pace of film, television and media production, release and promotion has met deep alterations, as much as usual networking activities during periods of lockdown, fame and exposure have foregrounded film and TV stars in social engagement activities and as testimonials of public health campaigns (including the first tentative rules, the lockdown periods, and the efforts towards mass vaccination).

The aim of this issue of Cinergie is surveying and understanding the manifold impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Italian actors and actresses. Topics within the scope of this issue include but are not limited to:

Training actors and actresses at the time of the COVID-19 crisis: schools, academies, coaching
Media production, acting performance, and restrictions: emergency, strategies, and tactics
Actors, actresses and the promotion of media products: from testimonials to remote endorsers?
Actors, irregular work, labour activism: workers’ solidarity and institutional and commercial policies during the pandemic
Acknowledging actors and actresses: festivals, awards, and the economy of prestige during the COVID-19 crisis
Stardom, public health, and social engagement
Social networks, self-promotion, and actors and actresses during the COVID-19 crisis
Job-seeking: finding acting jobs at the times of the pandemic
Actors, intermediaries, and the COVID-19 crisis: coaches, agents, management, casting departments, press agents, and social media managers during the pandemic
Theoretical and methodological contributions on actors and actresses in the pandemic
Case histories on specific actors or actresses, film productions, television shows, digital platforms in the national context and/or in the transnational connections between Italy and other markets.

Submission details

Please send an abstract and a short biographical note to Luca Antoniazzi, Cristina Formenti, and Giulia Muggeo at: luca.antoniazzi3@unibo.it, cristina.formenti@uniud.it, and giuliafrancesca.muggeo@unito.it by November 21, 2021 — [subject: Cinergie Media Performers + name surname author(s)].

Abstracts, in English or Italian, should be from 300 to 500 words of length. Notification of acceptance will be sent within November 28, 2021.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by January 16, 2022.

The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000 words and can 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 July 2022.

Bibliography

- B. Adgate (2021), The Impact Covid-19 Had on the Entertainment Industry in 2020, “Forbes”, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2021/04/13/the-impact-covid-19-had-on-the-entertainment-industry-in-2020/?sh=50049538250f (Last access: July 9, 2021).

- M.J. Damasio (2020), Covid 19. The End of the Audiovisual Sector?, “CST online”, https://cstonline.net/covid-19-the-end-of-the-audiovisual-sector-by-manuel-jose-damasio/ (Last access: July 9, 2021).

- K. Fortmueller (2021), Hollywood Shutdown. Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.

- Vinzenz Hediger, Philipp Dominik Keidl, Laliv Melamed, and Antonio Somaini (eds) (2020), Pandemic Media: Preliminary Notes Toward an Inventory, Meson, Lüneburg.

Call for Papers - Critical Performances. Media Performers at the Time of the COVID-19 Crisis in Italy

Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti — 2021-07-20

In Italy, media performers have been among the most affected groups of professionals. Whereas the usual pace of film, television and media production, release and promotion has met deep alterations, as much as usual networking activities during periods of lockdown, fame and exposure have foregrounded celebrities in social engagement activities and as testimonials of public health campaigns (including the first tentative rules, the lockdown periods, and the efforts towards mass vaccination).

The aim of this issue of Cinergie is surveying and understanding the manifold impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Italian media performers. Topics within the scope of this issue include but are not limited to:

Training media performers at the time of the COVID-19 crisis: schools, academies, coaching
Media production, performance, and restrictions: emergency, strategies, and tactics
Promoting media products: from testimonials to remote endorsers?
Performers, irregular work, labour activism: workers’ solidarity and institutional and commercial policies during the pandemic
Acknowledging performers: festivals, awards, and the economy of prestige during the COVID-19 crisis
Celebrities, public health, and social engagement
Social networks, self-promotion, and media performers during the COVID-19 crisis
Job-seeking: finding acting jobs at the times of the pandemic
Performers, intermediaries, and the COVID-19 crisis: coaches, agents, management, casting departments, press agents, and social media managers during the pandemic
Theoretical and methodological contributions on media performers in the pandemic
Case histories on specific performers, film productions, television shows, digital platforms in the national context and/or in the transnational connections between Italy and other markets.

Submission details

Please send an abstract and a short biographical note to Luca Antoniazzi, Cristina Formenti, and Giulia Muggeo at: luca.antoniazzi3@unibo.it, cristina.formenti@uniud.it, and giuliafrancesca.muggeo@unito.it by October 24, 2021 — [subject: Cinergie Media Performers + name surname author(s)].

Abstracts, in English or Italian, should be from 300 to 500 words of length. Notification of acceptance will be sent within November 5, 2021.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by January 16, 2022.

Contributions will be submitted to double-blind peer-review.

The issue will be published in July 2022.

Bibliography

- K. Fortmueller (2021), Hollywood Shutdown. Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.

- Vinzenz Hediger, Philipp Dominik Keidl, Laliv Melamed, and Antonio Somaini (eds) (2020), Pandemic Media: Preliminary Notes Toward an Inventory, Meson, Lüneburg.

Call for Papers - Film Heritage and Digital Scholarship: Computer-Based Approaches to Film Archiving, Restoration and Philology

Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti — 2020-12-28

Edited by Rossella Catanese (University of Udine), Adelheid Heftberger (German Bundesarchiv, Berlin), and Christian Gosvig Olesen (University of Amsterdam/Utrecht University)

In recent years, film and media studies have witnessed an emerging interest in integrating computer-based techniques for analyzing and visualizing both quantitative and qualitative data relating to film. This emerging interest can be seen in the development of approaches that involve new and practice-based audiovisual methods, such as videographic criticism and video annotation, as well as various data visualization and digital humanities techniques that rely on empirical methods such as data mining, linked data, geo-tagging and mapping, in order to study, among others, filmic structure, style, discourse, storytelling and reception (Grant, 2012; Ingravalle, Prelinger & Latsis 2015; Ferguson, 2016; Verhoeven, 2016). This development has opened new paths for film history scholarship and its traditional focus on the cultural significance of films in terms of aesthetics and medium specificity, while also leading scholars to explore and reflect on potential new paths for interdisciplinary research methods (Grant, 2012; Acland & Hoyt, 2016). Through new tools and collaboration with scholars from disciplines that were traditionally distant from film and media studies - such as data, computer and information science, and practice-based research - the relation between researchers and their sources, films and related materials, is being reconfigured.

This development creates new expectations and challenges for film heritage institutions as well, specifically with regard to the role that they may play in relation to digital scholarship in creating and offering access to archival collections and data. As still larger digitization projects have continued to emerge in recent years, within a political climate that promotes and stimulates digitization and development of digital research infrastructure for studying collections, film heritage institutions need to develop sustainable and critical models for facilitating, shaping and benefiting from digital scholarship in film and media studies, all the while being mindful of their own institutional core values and missions. This endeavor, we suggest, entails that film heritage institutions develop a greater sensitivity towards key concerns of digital scholarship in film and media studies at large, while also making sure that digital scholarships in turn develop a better sense of archival concerns in their practice (Heftberger, 2014).

Taking the cue from this suggestion, this special issue offers a platform for thinking through productive connections, synergies and frictions between emerging methods in film and media studies and the current work of film heritage institutions. In doing so, we encourage contributors to stage speculative encounters between approaches and practices as well as to discuss concrete case studies, so as to imagine future paths.

With the issue we are looking for a broad range of approaches and contributions pertaining to a wide variety of practices. Some of the questions we specifically invite contributors to consider are:

How may the comparative study of film prints, an integral part of film philology and restoration, benefit from videographic approaches to film analysis and data visualization, both elements that often involve comparative analysis of film “texts”?
How may scholarly annotations made within online research infrastructures or environments feedback into archival databases through linked data and inform archival work in a “virtuous cycle” (MEP/Williams, 2018), and what may best practices look like?
How may film heritage institutions support the concerns of digital scholarship by highlighting bias, ambiguity and uncertainty in collection data so as to avoid the risk of “engaging in positivist reductionism and of fundamentally ignoring philosophical aesthetics and its analytical tradition” (Flueckiger 2017)?
How may film heritage institutions nurture “distant viewing” of collections (Tilton & Taylor, 2019) through interface development based on existing collection data and/or on data created with visual analysis software?
How may the affordances of high-resolution scanning and scanning of the edge area of film elements benefit aesthetic and historical analysis of archival film as a material artefact, as well as close reading approaches?

In addition to these questions, contributors are invited to take into consideration theoretical issues as well as specific case studies related (but not limited) to these themes:

Theoretical reflections on the relationship between digital humanities and film archiving, restoration and philological analysis, with regard to digital film historical research methods and traditions focusing on specific questions, epistemes, and assumptions;
Specific case studies involving application of digital methods and tools in the context of film history research projects;
Research design in digital humanities projects, i.e. the development of databases, algorithms, software, tools, digital and virtual research environments;
Digital archives (online database, data management systems, online exhibitions, etc.), indexing and distribution for film heritage;
The role of digital humanities in the development of technology for film restoration (scanners, laser printers, etc.).
Mapping and sharing of filmographic data, as well as developing new (interactive) platforms.

Submission details

Please send an abstract and a short biographical note to Rossella Catanese, Adelheid Heftberger, and Christian Gosvig Olesen at: rossella.catanese@uniud.it, a.heftberger@bundesarchiv.de, and c.g.olesen@uva.nl by April 1st, 2021 — [subject: Film Heritage and Digital Scholarship + name surname author(s)].

Abstracts should be from 300 to 500 words of length (English). Notification of acceptance will be sent within April 10, 2021.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by June 15, 2021.

Contributions will be submitted to double-blind peer-review.

The issue will be published in December 2021.