Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti

Reframing Film Festivals: Politics, Histories and Agencies

Marco Dalla Gassa — 2022-12-22

Film Festivals and Ideology Critique: A Method

Rachel Johnson — 2022-12-22

Film festivals play an important role in the construction and circulation of not only individual films but entire taxonomies of cinema, from their “discovery of new waves” (Elsaesser 2005: 99) to their production of “hegemonic …canons” (Vallejo, 2020: 158). The effects of this taxonomical power are felt across filmmaking, criticism, and scholarship, foregrounded in renewed calls to decolonize film festivals and film culture more broadly (Dovey and Sendra 2022[forthcoming], Shambu 2019). This article mobilizes and adapts “New Lacanian” theories of ideology critique to propose a methodology for studying the ways in which film festivals construct meaning for films and, cumulatively, entire canons. Outlining concepts such as the festival apparatus, the festival paratext, and the cinematic Real, I trace the coordinates of a three-tier critical procedure that brings into dialogue festivals’ operational and material contexts, their representation of themselves and their films, and the unruly, aesthetic qualities of the films that festivals exhibit. I demonstrate the application of this approach to a recent cause célèbre of Italian migration cinema, Fire at Sea, its awarding and representation at the 2016 edition of the Berlin International Film Festival instantiating the enduring legacy of Neorealism and a “brutal humanist” stance directed towards refugees in the new millennium (Schoonover 2012). Moving between theoretical discussions and the application of this method of ideology critique, I demonstrate how we might interrogate structures of meaning implicit within film festivals’ rhetorical operation, offering a ground from which to better understand film festivals and, if desired, advocate for change.

From Music to Film: On the Emergence and Stabilization of the Film Festival Concept in the 1930s

Christel Taillibert — 2022-12-22

This article explores the social history of film to shed light on the emergence and stabilization of the film festival concept in the 1930s and 1940s. The creation of the Venice Mostra in 1932 appears like the result of a slow process of legitimization both desired by the production representatives and by the nascent cinephile representatives. Nevertheless, if the device experimented in Venice will not be thereafter called into question, the concept of “film festival” does not appear stabilized at that time. It was not until the post-war period that FIAPF’s activities allowed to the enshrining of the association between the concept of “festival” with the cinematographic media. This article highlights the social forces which helped to build and stabilize the film festival concept, on the basis of the analysis of the film press from various countries. Using discourse analysis, in the framework of a method inspired by the archeologic approach proposed by Michel Foucault, the article highlights discourses and controversies surrounding the adoption and the legitimization of this concept by the actors of cinematographic industry, cinephilia, popular education.

Between Politics and Economics: The Locarno Film Festival from Tourism to Cinephilia (1946-1972)

Cyril Cordoba — 2022-12-22

Renowned today as an international hub for emerging cinema, the Locarno Film Festival (LFF) was initially founded in 1946 as a touristic attraction managed by film professionals. This article examines the LFF’s struggles to impose its cultural and artistic ambitions over the economic agenda of its main stakeholders and against the country’s strong anticommunist climate from the 1940s to the 1970s. Underlining the difficulties met by this event situated in the peripheral canton of Ticino, it sheds light on the progressive involvement of the federal state as a mediator in the conflicts between the film and the tourism industries on the one side, and the so-called cinephiles circles on the other.

The Cinematic Battle for the Adriatic: Film Festivals and the Trieste Crisis

Dunja Jelenkovic — 2022-12-22

This article analyses film festival practices related to the Trieste Crisis, the diplomatic struggle over the Northern Adriatic borderlands between (capitalist) Italy and (socialist) Yugoslavia (1945-1954). It explores how different forms of festival activities, from film selecting to establishing of film festivals, have shaped conceptions of national identities in the region, by symbolically labeling disputed territories as “national”. Focusing on the way the local populations have been presented in films on this topic that circulated in major film festivals, it demonstrates the changing role of film festivals as playgrounds for political propaganda, from the early Cold War to contemporary post-socialist, nationalist and populist societies.

Films from Countries in Crisis and Switzerland: The New Argentine Cinema, Greek New Wave and Swiss Film Institutions

Konstantinos Tzouflas — 2022-12-22

This paper will explore the relationship between Swiss film institutions and cinematic New Waves that appear in countries which were or are in crisis. To this end, it will compare how the New Argentine Cinema (NAC) and Greek New Wave (GNW) were received at the Locarno Film Festival, the Fribourg Film Festival and the Visions sud est Fund (case studies). Argentina’s wave emerged just before the country’s default in 2001, while the Greek wave arose at the same time as the sovereign-debt crisis in Greece in 2009. Switzerland plays a role in their success, since it has always maintained a rich cinematic culture with historic festivals and producers, as well as government agencies and foundations assisting filmmakers from (semi-)peripheral countries. The first aim of this paper is to (i) investigate how the NAC and GNW were received at the Locarno and Fribourg festivals. By analysing the material in their official programmes, it will (ii) determine whether there is a proliferation of crisis-related terms in the way these waves are presented. Finally, this paper will (iii) expound on their support by Visions sud est Fund and other Swiss institutions and assess the impact of Swiss funding on the NAC and GNW.

Film Festivals and Ecological Sustainability in the Age of the Anthropocene

Laura Cesaro — 2022-12-22

Over the past two decades, film scholars have offered new theoretical frameworks that define and strengthen ecocinema studies. In this regard, sensitive environments (Parikka 2015) are the film festivals that scholars mainly refer to as sites for promoting the consumption of ecocinema (Monani 2013). This contribution attempts to highlight what have become established practices aimed at educating an audience aware of the issue of environmental sustainability (Cubitt 2005). After a historical excursus, the author proposes an analysis of the Italian case: AFIC constitutes a space of discursive elaboration that has developed guidelines and parameters.

Who’s Choice? Who’s Voice? Can Festival Programmers and Film Critics Stand Away from the Market Diktats but not from Societal Issues?

Jean-Michel Frodon — 2022-12-22

This paper aims to emphasize first the decisive role played by festivals in the creation and circulation of films according to other guidelines than those dictated by the market. With different tools, programmers and critics are the main agents of this inevitably asymmetric but nevertheless vital endless battle. In this context, this paper unfolds the necessary and sometimes counterintuitive strategies to remove the dominance of an archaic power built through decades (actually, since the origins of cinema) of masculine and euro-centrist definition of the art of cinema. This necessary purpose must be pursued without destroying the level of demand in terms of originality and ability to keep re-interrogating political, social et esthetical frames and therefore to resist the submission to pre-established market oriented or militant/propaganda patterns that constantly intends to overwhelm filmmaking and film viewing.

Venice Immersive. 79a Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia

Alberto Brodesco — 2022-12-22

Magia violenta e vento tra le barbe. Sicilia Queer Film Festival 2022

Eleonora Santamaria — 2022-12-22

Entra nei miei sogni. Giancarlo Grossi, La notte dei simulacri. Sogno, cinema, realtà virtuale, Johan & Levy, Monza 2021

Giulia Andreini — 2022-12-22

Media-azioni nella geografia. Marcello Tanca, Geografia della fiction: opera, film, canzone, fumetto, Franco Angeli, Milano 2020

Luca Bertoloni — 2022-12-22

Teorie e diacronie del documentario animato. Cristina Formenti, The Classical Animated Documentary and Its Contemporary Evolution, Bloomsbury Academic, New York-London-Dublin 2022

Massimo Bonura — 2022-12-22

Media panottici e video-sorveglianza. Laura Cesaro, Geografie del controllo nella scena audiovisiva contemporanea, Bulzoni, Roma 2022

Rossella Catanese — 2022-12-22

Schermi femministi. Dalila Missero, Women, Feminism and Italian Cinema: Archives from a Film Culture, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2022

Ilaria Antonella De Pascalis — 2022-12-22

Attorno e oltre la Loggia. Mario Tirino e Adolfo Fattori (a cura di), Black Lodge. Fenomenologia di Twin Peaks, Avanguardia 21 Edizioni, Sermoneta (LT) 2021

Emiliano Rossi — 2022-12-22

The Belle Époque of Scientific Cinema: Attraction, Vulgarisation, Avant-garde

Maria Ida Bernabei — 2022-12-22

This article examines the circulation of the first scientific films at the turn of the XXth century, primarily in the French context, when one could witness their sporadic diffusion in entertainment venues and a growing enthusiasm surrounding the reception of the first popular science series. Following the unearthing of some traces of scientific films in the cinéma forain, this article focuses on the reception of scientific series by Charles Urban, which were screened at the London Alhambra Theatre in 1903, and of the first micro-cinematographic films (1908) by Jean Comandon. Thus, the article provides a brief review of scientific films’ positioning within the screening programming practices of the 1910s, revealing that, in those years, scientific films continued to be perceived as “highly attractive” spectacles. In conclusion, by analyzing these films’ resonance in the press, the article will identify several tropes of estrangement. These tropes borrowed from the tradition of the magic lanterns’ scientific projections, which will reappear shortly thereafter – carrying new meanings – within the theories of the medium specificity in the 1920s, when scientific films were integrated within avant-garde screening practices.

Olive Face, Italian Voice: Constructing Super Mario as an Italian-American (1981–1996)

Marco Benoît Carbone — 2022-12-22

This study examines the development of Super Mario’s Italian-American character in the United States (1981-1996) to suggest looking at vocal typecasting and aural representation as overlooked signifiers of performed ethnicity in the arts. As a technological and cultural history of Italian face and voice, the study draws on emerging conceptualisations of aural blackface to discuss the more ambivalent place of Italianicity in the transnational space of ethnically charged signifiers. Framing Mario’s characterisation through the notions of olive face and olive voice, the study addresses the ambiguous place of visual and aural Italian-ness as Otherness as an in-between of whiteness and blackness. Approaching character development through voice acting by combining screen, stardom, celebrity, franchise, and digital games studies, the paper looks at the production and cultural history of two milestone video games from the Nintendo franchise, Super Mario Bros. (1985) and Super Mario 64 (1996), in relation to related artwork and character-licensed products, including the Super Mario Bros. film (Buena Vista Pictures 1993), and the animated/mixed live action Super Mario Bros. Super Show (DIC/Viacom 1989). The study thus approaches diachronically, through the lens of performance and comedy, the cross-media development of Mario’s olive voice through its domestication in the United States, leading to licensing processes and the establishment of Mario’s Italian-American features. Considering the ambivalent historical alignment of Italianicity with white privilege in the United States and globally, the paper frames Super Mario as an ambivalently “ethnic” construction, cautiously navigating global audiences by encapsulating commonplaces of Italian-ness, Mediterranean-ness, and Latin-ness.

“Il primo film tutto parlato in italiano”. The Debate on Sei tu l'amore? in Magazines

Denis Lotti — 2022-12-22

La canzone dell’amore – directed by Gennaro Righelli and produced by Cines Pittaluga in 1930 – according to historical studies, is the first sound film direct driven in Italian. The issue is more complex referring to reviews of that time. Sei tu l’amore? – italian movie directed by Alfredo Sabato and produced in the same year by Italotone – comes narrowly before the Cines movie. The film Italotone will be screened with immediate success all over Italy due to the great innovation of the sound, but in the meanwhile shows to italian public cultural and normative models in contrast with the patriarchal rhetoric of Fascism. This caused a little but harmless case of Hollywoodian soft power in fascist Italy.

Early 1980s: Phototeca and Racist Visual Practices in Italian Colonialism

Giovanni Perillo — 2022-12-22

The exhibition catalogue La menzogna della razza. Documenti e immagini del razzismo e dell’antisemitismo fascista (1994) is an important reference point for theoretical production on race and racism in Italy. The exhibition and its catalogue marked the beginning of studies focusing no longer just on anti-Semitism, but also on colonial racism before and especially during the Fascist period. However, already in the early 1980s some reflections and studies investigated the racist visual practices used for a “construction” of colonised men and women as inferior people and designed as “evidence”, by contrast, of the Italian racial superiority. In particular, we will examine some issues of Phototeca magazine from the early 1980s, partly to highlight its interest in the processes of image production, distribution, circulation, and consumption, as well as in the cultural significance of images and vision, which is in line with the approach that visual culture studies would develop a few years later. However, the materials of the early 1980s will mainly concern pre-fascist and fascist cultural racism, whereas the exhibition catalogue La menzogna della razza (1994) will also examine political racism, highlighting the fundamental shift from cultural to political discrimination.

Applying Automatic Text Analysis Methodologies to Audiovisual Serial Product

Marta Rocchi — 2022-12-22

The goal of this paper is to explore the application of automatic text analysis methodologies to contemporary audiovisual serial narratives. As a case study we use the Apple TV+ series Servant (Apple TV+, 2019-). We first focused on the primary text (the English dialogue used in the TV series) to examine the role of the dialogue and the characters’ interactions through an exploratory application of Social Network Analysis. In particular, tagging the dialogue in XML format allowed the identification and quantification of scenes, characters and speaker-receiver pairs that were used to implement Social Network Analysis. Secondly, we collected tweets as the secondary text (the text produced by the Twitter audience), and analysed users’ behaviours and preferences considering both semantic and quantitative points of view. We underlined how analyses conducted on tweet sentiment can help to monitor this social engagement mechanism and how it may evolve over time. The paper is highly experimental in that, in addition to findings related to the narrative structure of the serial product (thanks to the primary text) and analysis of the relationship over time with the audience (thanks to the secondary text), it aims to test a shared analytical framework that can enable large-scale comparative investigations of contemporary TV series.

Hermeneutics of the Cinematic Autobiopic: The Charlie Kaufman Case

Bruno Surace — 2022-12-22

Cinema and contemporary TV series seem to have firmly embraced a new “genre”, the biopic, as an audiovisual story of individual lives that extends more and more towards subjects once outside the criteria of common “biographability”. If until a few decades ago the audiovisual biography was in fact reserved to characters whose noteworthiness was considered consolidated on the basis of specific socially shared assumptions (politicians, kings, leaders), today almost anyone seems potentially deserving of a biopic. This spasmodic attention towards audiovisual biographies is also manifested in the evident and growing production of “autobiopics”, which foresee a more or less marked intersection between the enunciating and the enunciated instance. The categories of analysis related to the traditional biopic therefore require reviewing, because they are only partially able to detect the specificities of the cinematic-autobiographical tale. At the same time, the formulation of a hermeneutics of the autobiopic can provide updates on the functioning of the cinematic narrative of the self. The case of Charlie Kaufman, screenwriter and director whose complete work appears as a gigantic and at times convoluted self-description, is the ideal laboratory for testing this new analytical system.