Ridisegnare paesaggi. Ridefinizione dello sguardo etnografico e "aesthetic of slow" nel cinema di Michelangelo Frammartino

The cinematic image itself could serve as a medium that can represent a conceptualization of time thanks to its formal elements, which temporalize space and spatialize time, rendering duration and the experience of passing time. Taking into account Frammartino’s cinema “Il dono” (2003), “Le quattro volte” (2010) and “Alberi” (2013), this essay aims to highlight how particular strategies to frame the passing of time, in line with the durational tendency in structural experimental cinema and its acute manifestation in “slow” contemporary films, encourage a contemplative spectatorial practice. This invites the viewer to wander within the frame and to focus on details which would otherwise remain veiled in a conventional form of narration

A Counter Migrant Image: Between Self-Representation and Witnessing in Les Sauteurs (2016)

The journey that refugees have to undertake to escape war and persecution has become a necessary topic to tackle in recent years, especially for documentary as a genre and a form. In order to reflect upon the media witnessing and the migrant self-representation in the digital age, my aim in this paper is to take into account Les Sauteurs (2016), a film made by Moritz Sibert, Estephan Wagner and the African migrant Abou Bakar Sidibe. The man narrates his personal experience hoping to make it into Europe by climbing over the barrier between Morocco and the outlying Spanish city of Melilla. More than conveying denunciation and social critique, lending a voice to those who don’t usually get one and offering a platform for migrants to become actors and principal protagonists, Les Sauteurs sheds a light upon what has been invisible or discarded, providing a counterpoint narration from migrant subject position. The film reflects upon the very notion of self-representation, from representing to constituting himself, because Sidibe becomes more aware of being both the subject matter and the subject making the film. He becomes more conscious of the importance of exposing the harsh realities which surround him, in order to make the viewer bear witness, opening up to new forms of visualization concerning the migrant experience

This should be the place. Re-mapping traumascape in the post-traumatic contemporary documentaries

Il concetto di trauma, nella sua declinazione storica o personale, ha assunto ormai un ruolo centrale nel cinema documentario contemporaneo, che non si presenta semplicemente come parte di un processo volto alla mera rappresentazione dell’evento ma diventa in sé uno strumento epistemologico, capace di orientare lo studio delle modalità attraverso le quali memoria e rielaborazione vengono costruite nell’atto stesso di filmare. Il cinema documentario post-traumatico si interroga sulla relazione che intercorre tra trauma storico e le modalità, così come le forme, per rappresentarlo. Il seguente contributo si pone l’obiettivo di esplorare un aspetto chiave per riflettere sulla ri-messa in scena del trauma nel cinema documentario contemporaneo ovvero il rapporto che si instaura tra spazio, evento e memoria. Nello specifico prenderò in esame Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia della luce, Guzmán 2010), Dubina dva (Depth Two, Glavonic 2016) e Le dernier des injustes (L’ultimo degli ingiusti, Lanzmann 2013), film che ri-disegnano e riconfigurano il paesaggio, riscoprendo le tracce traumatiche, seppur ad una prima vista invisibili, in spazi ancora infestati dai fantasmi del passato.The concept of trauma, in its historical or personal declination, has now assumed a central role in contemporary documentary cinema, which is not simply aimed at the mere representation of the event but it becomes an epistemological tool in order to orient memory and re-elaboration processes. Post-traumatic documentary cinema reflects on the relationship between historical trauma and the forms for representing it. The present contribution aims to explore a key aspect concerning re-enacting trauma in contemporary documentary cinema, namely the relationship between space, event and memory. Specifically, I will examine Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia for the Light, Guzmán 2010), Dubina dva (Depth Two, Glavonic 2016) and Le dernier des injustes (The Last of the Unjust, Lanzmann 2013), films that reconfigure the landscape, rediscovering the traumatic traces, even if they are invisible apparently, in spaces haunted by the ghosts of the past

Il documentario italiano: modelli, poetiche, esiti

This issue investigates the Italian documentary film with particular attention to the contemporary production. In particular, it maps some of the main influences that have characterized and that characterize today the Italian documentary, analysing the films of Michelangelo Frammartino, Alina Marazzi, Sabina Guzzanti and Silvio Soldini, among others

Voglie matte, merli maschi, peccati veniali. La questione sessuale nel cinema popolare italiano dal miracolo italiano all'avvento del porno

Special issue on Italian popular cinema and sexuality

Visualizing the Virus. The Use of Data Visualizations in COVID-19 Documentaries

This contribution will examine different communicative and narrative strategies adopted by some documentary productions in order to visualize something invisible, like the virus and its effects. Through the case studies I will take into account, my intent is to reflect upon the pandemic narration, which replaces or alternates the photographic realism of the images of pain and suffering, intended as scientific and incontrovertible proof of the virus manifestation, with a modernist narrative, mixing interviews with infographic material, maps, dashboards, photomicrographs, and computer graphics animations. Despite their profound mediation by software that makes pictures out of numbers, these informatic images, reported daily in news channels and broadcasts as well, besides shaping the relationships between scientific research, documentary, and its explanatory and pedagogical power to narrate, reconfigure the collective imagination of the pandemic in a bioinformation era

Ri-configurare l’immagine della paura. Cloverfield e il virtual trauma

Nel seguente articolo si prende in esame Cloverfield (2008), diretto da Matt Reeves e prodotto da J. J. Abrams, sicuramente tra i più significativi e paradigmatici casi di studio relativi al cinema post 9/11. Partendo dal testo filmico, il mio obiettivo consiste nel riflettere sull’elaborazione memoriale degli eventi nella nostra cultura massmediale ( trauma culture ), riferendomi alla concettualizzazione del virtual trauma

Be Now Here: verso un’archeologia della visione

L’analisi seguente è in linea con i numerosi studi e ricognizioni atti a rintracciare e sottolineare le relazioni tra i dispostivi ottici e della visione artificiale (tecniche e metodi sviluppatisi lungo l’arco di più secoli fino alla fine dell’Ottocento) con il medium cinematografico, così  come con i nuovi media e la modernità , sia dal punto di vista tecnologico sia socioculturale. Adottando l’approccio metodologico dell’archeologia dei media, il mio intento consiste nel sottolineare l’indissolubile connessione tra le eye machines  e la nostra  cultura immersiva della simulazione, prendendo in esame una video installazione di Michael Naimark, Be Now Here (Welcome to the Neighborhood) prodotta per il Center for the Arts a San Francisco nel Dicembre del 199

Verso una memoria culturale autoassolutoria. Ruoli di genere e mascolinità nel combat film italiano degli anni Cinquanta

In the present essay, I will take into account some Italian war films made in the 1950s, such as “Carica eroica” (“Heroic Charge”, 1952, Francesco De Robertis), “I sette dell’Orsa maggiore” (“Hell Raiders of the Deep”, 1953, Duilio Coletti), “Mizar - Sabotaggio in mare” (Mizar, 1954, Francesco De Robertis), “Divisione Folgore” (“Folgore Division“, 1954, Duilio Coletti), “La grande speranza” (“Submarine Attack”, 1954, Duilio Coletti) in order to reflect upon their role in building Italy’s memory of its past as well as the perception of Italian war crimes in public opinion. These productions extend a unifying narrative of the war, consolidating the myth of the “good Italian” (“italiani brava gente”). Through the inclusion of the soldier in collective memory by silencing his role as aggressor, Italian combat films participated and consolidated the process of collective amnesia about the fascist regime and how they influenced the way in which Italian viewers constructed a shared sense of the past