I sogni cinematografici di Jean-Paul Sartre

During the making of Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940), John Huston and Wolfgang Reinhardt decided to realize a movie about Freud. Huston suggested the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to wrote the screenplay. The idea was to discuss a fundamental period in the history of the Freudian theory of the unconscious mind: 1885-1890, the years of the self-analysis, the work with doctor Breuer, Charcot and the hypnosis, the discovery of the importance of dreams for the diagnosis of neurosis. The first screenplay written by Sartre (1958) shows a very deep knowledge of Freudian thought. I conjecture that two books issued at the time (The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones and The Birth of Psychoanalysis, containing the correspondence between Freud and his friend Wilhelm Fliess) may have influenced the description of Freud created by the writer. Sartre discovers the contradictory personality of a man, always in conflict with himself. The quarrel with Huston led Sartre to ask for his name to be removed from the credits. According to the director, the final version of the movie is too long, but nonetheless the changes destroyed Sartre’s work. Hysteria, a subject in which Sartre had always been interested, and dreams were his main objects of interest. The goal of this article is to study the oneiric scenes of Sartre’s screenplay. I would like to analyze the philosopher’s conception of dream as a “belief” and to show how the same scenes have changed in the final version of the movie as well as explore the relationship between oneiric writing and its representation in a movie. The movie Freud: the Secret Passion is a unique piece of work. Its oneiric scenes are among the most interesting ever seen on screen. All of this because of a challenge set by Huston: direct a movie about Freud written by an anti-Freudian philosopher

With a hat and a red scarf: The construction of Federico Fellini’s public image

There are restaurants called ‘La Dolce Vita’ all over the world. Words like paparazzi have made it into dictionaries. Airports, streets, piazzas and schools are named after Federico Fellini. And yet, as cinema scholars understand, Fellini’s films are not nearly as well-known as one might expect – even if university students will call him ‘Maestro’ without hesitation, when quizzed about the great directors in the history of cinema. There is almost no trace of Fellini on Amazon Prime or Netflix. In the best-case scenario, to most ‘millennials’ and ‘post-millennials’ La Dolce Vita (1960) is not a film, but an image seen on Instagram or YouTube: Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg taking a dip in the Trevi Fountain, two unrivalled ‘influencers’ promoting the Italian brand and economic boom. In other words, far from being part of a ‘shared culture’, Fellini’s films have been reduced, over the course of time, to the clichés and stereotypes that feed the constellation of meanings surrounding the term ‘Felliniesque’, and this often discourages new (and updated) readings of his work...

The real and beyond in Alain Resnais and Federico Fellini : from origins to the years of the dream

Ce projet propose une étude comparée de deux cinéastes essentiels, dont l'œuvre montre un fort rapport à l'onirisme et à l'imaginaire : Alain Resnais et Federico Fellini. Ayant commencé à la même époque (après la Seconde Guerre mondiale), ils ont traversé plusieurs périodes en parallèle. Nombre d'aspects les rapprochent, malgré leurs différences de styles et de cultures. Alain Resnais porte un regard sur l'histoire contemporaine, mais travaille également sur la vision subjective, la mémoire individuelle, et divers états de conscience. Fellini porte un regard acerbe sur la bourgeoise italienne, et propose simultanément un vagabondage dans les consciences et l'inconscient marqué par le merveilleux et l'onirique. Les deux cinéastes refusent de limiter la réalité « au constat purement objectif d'un monde scientifiquement analysable » pour montrer une « autre réalité », qu'il s'agit ici de questionner à l'aide de différentes théories (psychanalytiques, littéraires, philosophiques…).This project proposes a comparative study between two essential film directors: Alain Resnais and Federico Fellini. Their work shows a strong relation with the oneiric and the imaginary. They began in the same period (after the Second World War) and they shared the same historical experiences in two different countries. Despite a difference of style and culture, a lot of aspects approach them. Alain Resnais focuses on contemporary history, but he works also on the subjective vision, individual memory, and different states of consciousness. Fellini focuses on the Italian bourgeoisie and he proposes simultaneously a kind of vagrancy in the conscious and in the unconscious, always marked by the oneiric. The two film directors refuse to limit the reality «to an objective analysis of a world scientifically analyzable». They want to show an «other reality». We want to interrogate this reality with the help of different theories (psychoanalytic, literary, philosophical…)

Classical Period (2018): studying Dante with Ted Fendt

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Festivals and dispositifs of analog counter-culture

his essay aims to provide an overview of the festivals dedicated to the analog films and performance practices of filmmakers and artist-run laboratories that posit themselves as media counter-culture and analog ‘resistance’. Such events offer the films’ material quality as a contrast to the planned obsolescence common in the IT industry. Currently, many filmmakers, artists and collectives create spaces, cooperatives, and independent labs to construct a media archaeology approach that is based on the experimental, hands-on re-enactment of traditional and obsolete practices. These film performance events thus exhibit the counter-cultural research performatively pursued by filmmakers, artists and collectives in an attempt to attract a perceptive audience capable of fully understanding this complex fruitive experience

Federico Fellini (1920-2020)

There are restaurants called ‘La Dolce Vita’ all over the world. Words like paparazzi have made it into dictionaries. Airports, streets, piazzas and schools are named after Federico Fellini. And yet, as cinema scholars understand, Fellini’s films are not nearly as well-known as one might expect – even if university students will call him ‘Maestro’ without hesitation, when quizzed about the great directors in the history of cinema. There is almost no trace of Fellini on Amazon Prime or Netflix. In the best-case scenario, to most ‘millen- nials’ and ‘post-millennials’ La Dolce Vita (1960) is not a film, but an image seen on Instagram or YouTube: Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg taking a dip in the Trevi Fountain, two unrivalled ‘influencers’ promoting the Italian brand and economic boom. In other words, far from being part of a ‘shared culture’, Fellini’s films have been reduced, over the course of time, to the clichés and stereotypes that feed the constellation of meanings surrounding the term ‘Felliniesque’, and this often discourages new (and updated) readings of his work.With hat and red scarf. The building of Federico Fellini’s public image. The centenary of the birth of director Federico Fellini in 2020 invites a unique opportunity to reassess his contribution to the history of Italian culture from new perspectives. With his monumental film production, which has been extensively studied—at least from La dolce vita forward—the Riminese director gradually seeped into Italy’s daily life. While his films have sparked lively debates since he first became popular in the 1950s, less attention has been devoted to the process that has led many scholars to consider him the emblematic figure of the film artist, both as a major character in the cultural history of Italy and as the symbol of what is quintessentially ‘Italian’. Unlike other Italian directors, Fellini became a newsworthy and publicized figure beginning in the 1960s. He contributed to the creation of an ‘elusive’ image of himself (Hodsdon 2017) both through the construction of several cinematic alter-egos and through unmistakable appearances with his hat and red scarf in documentaries, feature films, illustrated news magazines, press and TV reports, and other forms of media. Equally, he emerged as a staunch defender of certain political and cultural struggles, such as those against television commercials or against Berlusconi (who was still an editor at that time). Additionally, he became an object of scrutiny and discussion for journalists, critics, cinephiles, colleagues, and biographers searching for an openly hagiographical definition of the threshold of the Italian artistic tradition

Étudier Dante à l’ombre de Donald Trump. Conversations avec et sans Ted Fendt

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