The volume Un nuovo cinema politico italiano? Vol. 2 has now been published by Troubador Publishing, featuring eighteen essays on recent cinematic representations of Italy’s socio-political past, institutional power, and social marginalization.
http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=2831
As of February 2016, there have been over 11,100 views of this blog and visitors are thanked for their interest in this project.
Work is now complete on the second political cinema volume emerging from the AHRC project “A New Italian Political Cinema?” The second volume focuses on the following themes: cinematic representations of Italy’s socio-political past; the Italian State, institutional power, and counter-hegemonic reactions; social marginalization on screen. Below is a definitive list of contents for the volume (published in September 2014).
Introduzione: Cinema, società e impegno nel nuovo millennio
William Hope
L’Italia tra Storia e Memoria
Introduzione: Il passato sociopolitico italiano nel cinema del nuovo millennio
Silvana Serra
Il sangue pazzo dei vinti: la rappresentazione del fascismo nel
cinema italiano contemporaneo
Vito Zagarrio
Da locus a logos: Terre rosse e Oscar di Dennis Dellai
Ilaria Serra
Passione, potere egemonico e censura in Vincere! di Marco Bellocchio
Erminia Passannanti
Tra ricordo e oblio: memoria culturale e nostalgia ne La meglio gioventù di
Marco Tullio Giordana e Mio fratello è figlio unico di Daniele Luchetti
Elena Caoduro
Stato, potere istituzionale e contro-reazione
Introduzione: La polizia non ha le mani legate: Stato, oppressione istituzionale e reazione nel cinema italiano contemporaneo
Luciana d’Arcangeli
Sud di Gabriele Salvatores: elementi profetici su Stato, reazione contro-egemonica e media
William Hope
Documentare il G8 a Genova dieci anni dopo: lo sguardo “fuori campo” in Black Block e in Solo limoni
Monica Jansen
Politica e sfera pubblica nel documentario italiano contemporaneo:
il caso di Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo
Mauro Sassi
Dalla Sindone al Caimano. Il polimorfismo somatico di Berlusconi nel cinema italiano contemporaneo
Federico Giordano
Dissenso, potere e Chiesa cattolica nell’Italia contemporanea: un impegno anti-cattolico?
Clodagh Brook
Uccidete la democrazia! e Girlfriend in a Coma: Il nuovo documentario politico sull’Italia
Amanda Minervini
Esplorare i margini e le periferie del cinema e della società
Introduzione: Marginalizzazione, esclusione sociale e disagio ambientale
nel cinema italiano del Ventunesimo Secolo
William Hope
Cinema invisibile italiano: filmare il reale dai margini
Filippo Ticozzi
Osservazioni sulla retorica di Gomorra
Dom Holdaway
La disabilità fuori dal mito: la rappresentazione della disabilità
nel cinema italiano indipendente
Sarah Patricia Hill
Subalternità, alterità e genere in Respiro di Emanuele Crialese e
Sul mare di Alessandro D’Alatri
Patrizia Alessandra Muscogiuri
The first volume of essays originating from the project A New Italian Political Cinema? was published in April 2013 by Troubador.
http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=2137
Below are details of the volume’s contents. Work has already begun on the second volume, in which the following themes will be examined: Cinematic representations of Italy’s socio-political past; social marginalization on screen; filmic representations of the State, institutional repression, and counter-reaction.
UN NUOVO CINEMA POLITICO ITALIANO?
VOLUME I: LAVORO, MIGRAZIONE, RELAZIONI DI GENERE
a cura di
William Hope
Luciana d’Arcangeli
Silvana Serra
Introduzione: Un nuovo cinema politico italiano?
William Hope
Relazioni industriali e luoghi di lavoro nel cinema del nuovo millennio
Introduzione: Lavoro e alienazione nel cinema del XXI secolo
William Hope
Crisi, lavoro e sindacato nell’Italia di oggi
Fabiana Stefanoni
Donne al lavoro: il precariato e la femminilizzazione del lavoro nei film Signorina Effe di Wilma Labate, Mi piace lavorare – Mobbing di Francesca Comencini e Riprendimi di Anna Negri
Bernadette Luciano e Susanna Scarparo
La commedia del precariato in Tutta la vita davanti di Paolo Virzì
Maria Elena D’Amelio
Una politica dal volto umano: le Parole sante di Ascanio Celestini
Paolo Chirumbolo
‘Lasciate ogni speranza, o voi ch’entrate’ nella ThyssenKrupp. La messa in scena della realtà
Flavia Laviosa
Modernità liquida, lavoro e identità in Baci e abbracci di Paolo Virzì
Marco Paoli
Genere, sessualità e identità sociale
Introduzione: Un’altra metà del cielo: genere, sessualità e identità sociale nel cinema italiano
Luciana d’Arcangeli
La sconosciuta di Giuseppe Tornatore: la rivendicazione della soggettività materna
Piera Carroli
L’inetto e il melodramma maschile: L’uomo che ama di Maria Sole Tognazzi
Rebecca Bauman
Polis polisemica: Saturno contro di Ferzan Ozpetek con la sua polisemia micropolitica
Mattia Marino
Nuove donne di mafia sugli schermi
Luciana d’Arcangeli
Migrazione, multiculturalismo e relazioni interetniche
Introduzione: Migrazione, Mercificazione e Integrazione nel Ventunesimo Secolo
William Hope
Nessuna ‘giusta distanza’ fra immigrati e nativi. La lotta degli immigrati che ‘non vogliono nascondersi’
Patrizia Cammarata
Nuove Narrative sull’Altro: Arabi e Musulmani nel Cinema Italiano Contemporaneo
Michela Ardizzoni
Nostalgia e migrazione in Il vento fa il suo giro di Giorgio Diritti
Sabine Schrader
Bianco e Nero di Cristina Comencini: i nuovi italiani – questioni di identità e di marginalizzazione
William Hope e Mafunda Lucia Ndongala
La diaspora africana in Italia: immigrazione e identità nazionale in Waalo Fendo di Mohammed Soudani ed in Western Union: Small Boats di Isaac Julien
Shelleen Greene
Appendice
Intervista a Giuseppe Tornatore: Cinema, Società, Politica, a cura di William Hope
Below is the first set of findings to emerge from the events that have formed part of the project to date:
• Unlike political cinema in Italy forty years ago, Italian cinema today is an orphan of the political ideologies that animated the protest movements of the 60s/70s, and while a cinema predicated on socio-political themes can still be said to exist, it functions primarily at an intimate, personal micro level (this is the case for feature-length fiction) and often fails to connect the individual realities of people to broader macro-level political, social and economic phenomena.
• Political films and documentaries, particularly during the Berlusconi era, have often proved to be more effective in terms of political denunciation and what would traditionally be termed “investigative journalism” than the Italian press and news outlets (e.g. Sabina Guzzanti’s ‘Draquila’, concerning state corruption in the aftermath of the Abruzzo earthquake).
• There is an evolving body of internationally recognized prize-winning Italian cinematic work – notably shorts and medium-length work – which is predicated on ‘unfashionable’ socio-economic issues; the socially marginalized in Italian society, the ‘reception’ (detention) centres for migrants, etc. Such projects never receive the finance to become full-length, commercial projects but play a role in raising public awareness of certain issues.
• We have identified several cases of films being made by certain individuals who are themselves directly affected by socio-economic problems and political events. One example is the short film ‘A zupp è fasul’ made by the Ferrari car workers in Modena to highlight their battle against their management’s attempts to impose less favourable working conditions. Should this evolve into a discernible tendency, it represents a fascinating development within film-making – with real-life individuals, in the middle of their own ongoing ‘narratives’, recording their experiences in a cinematic form.
• Within mainstream, commercial film projects, there is a tendency to focus on the more ‘spectacular’, visible aspects of socio-economic problems and to neglect issues which, paradoxically, affect far greater numbers of people. A key example is the issue of migration to Italy. Films tend to focus on the traumatic arrival of the migrant (e.g. Crialese’s ‘Nuovomondo’) or the marginalization/exploitation of the migrant once s/he has entered the country. By contrast, issues such as the plight of tens of thousands of people of African origin who are born in Italy, individuals who are highly educated but who are denied Italian citizenship, are rarely publicized.
• The limited access and, indeed, exclusion of groups of film-makers from access to funds and resources is a more profound problem than is commonly imagined. Several workshop presentations and personal testimonies highlighted the ongoing difficulties faced by film-makers of non-Italian ethnic origins and by film-makers with political projects in gaining access to the Italian film industry’s funds, resources and collaborative opportunities.
Many thanks to all the speakers and participants who took part in the recent conference to conclude the first phase of the project “A New Italian Political Cinema?”. A range of photographs can be found on the Manchester Conference Photos page.
The concluding event in the first phase of “A New Italian Political Cinema?” will be a conference that will take place at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester, M1 5BY: http://www.anthonyburgess.org/ The venue is in Manchester city centre and is five minutes’ walk from Manchester Oxford Road train station.
The event will begin on the evening of Friday, January 27th and will continue all day on the 28th. The conference programme is published below: Sessions 1, 2 and 4 will be in Italian. Session 3 will be in English. Conference papers will be of approximately 15 minutes’ duration.
DAY ONE: Friday, January 27th, 19.30–21.30
19.30–19.45: Introduction (in English): William Hope (University of Salford, GB): Political Cinema: Cinematic Mainstreams and Peripheries
SESSIONE 1: 19.45–21.05. Girare nelle zone rosse: azione popolare e repressione di Stato (in italiano)
Silvana Serra (Società Dante Alighieri, Manchester e iscritta Cgil): Verità filmiche su violenza di Stato e mistificazione della realtà nella storia recente d’Italia: Draquila di Sabina Guzzanti.
Monica Jansen (Università di Utrecht / Università di Anversa): Trauma o utopia? Repressione e rivolta nelle visualizzazioni del G8 a Genova.
Filippo Ticozzi (regista): Video-appunti guatemaltechi.
Proiezione di una sequenza del film di Filippo Ticozzi, Lettere dal Guatemala.
Domande / dibattito
21.05: Rinfresco
_____________________________________________________
DAY TWO: Saturday, January 28th, 11.30–17.20
SESSIONE 2: 11.30–13.00. Sguardi diversi sul dramma della migrazione (in italiano)
11.30–11.50: Introduzione generale: William Hope (Università di Salford, GB): Una panoramica degli eventi realizzati nel progetto Un nuovo cinema politico italiano? Introduzione alla sessione: Federica Mazzara (University College, Londra): L’accento mancato: il cinema della migrazione in Italia.
Patrizia Muscogiuri (Università di Salford): Terraferma, tra plauso e contestazioni: Distorsioni mediatiche, deformazioni linguistiche e la clandestinità delle politiche italiane sull’immigrazione.
Vito Zagarrio (Università Roma Tre): Lo sguardo della migrazione: la messa in scena del cinema italiano che rappresenta l’immigrazione.
Carlo Michele Schirinzi (regista): Spostamenti tellurici: un calcio alla democrazia cinematografica.
Proiezione del cortometraggio di Carlo Michele Schirinzi, Notturno stenopeico.
Domande / dibattito
13.00–14.00: Pranzo
_____________________________________________________
SESSION 3: 14.00–15.20. Filming Modern Italian Society: Migration and Integration (in English)
Introduction: William Hope (University of Salford)
Pauline Small (Queen Mary, University of London): 21st Century Boat People
Guido Bonsaver (University of Oxford): Immigration and the Politics of the Italian Film Industry
Luciana d’Arcangeli (Flinders University, Adelaide): Making the Invisible Visible in Francesco Patierno’s Cose dell’altro mondo (2011)
Questions / discussion
15.20–16.00: Break
_____________________________________________________
SESSIONE 4: 16.00–17.15. Lavorare ai margini: il cinema e i lavoratori invisibili d’Italia (in italiano)
Introduzione: William Hope (Università di Salford, GB): L’importanza della visibilita’ per le problematiche del lavoro in Italia: i metalmeccanici della Ferrari come registi
Marco Paoli (Università di Liverpool): Modernità liquida e identità nelle tragicommedie di Paolo Virzì
Áine O’Healy (Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles): Destinata ad assistere: la badante nel cinema contemporaneo
Domande / dibattito
17.15–17.20: Concluding remarks
This event is free and open to the public, but there will be a guest list; anyone interested in attending as an observer is asked to contact the organizer, William Hope, who will register your name for the day(s) that you wish to attend (please specify the 27th and/or 28th): W.Hope@salford.ac.uk Unfortunately, it will not be possible to turn up on the day and attend the event without having registered in advance.
Many thanks to all the participants who contributed to what was an excellent event. Selected photographs from the workshop can be found below. The final event in the first phase of the project will take place in Manchester on January 27th/28th 2012. Information regarding this event will be circulated via this blog from October onwards.
The following programme can be considered to be definitive. The workshop will take place at the Hotel Impero, Cremona, on July 9th, 2011. Presentations will be in Italian and last 10 minutes; they will outline work in progress and pose questions for further discussion.
Although the workshop programme is full, with no further space for new speakers, places are still available to attend the workshop in an observational capacity. There will, however, be a formal guest list for the event and places are unlikely to be available on the day of the workshop. If you wish to attend the Cremona event as an observer, please contact William Hope (W.Hope@salford.ac.uk) and your name will be added to the guest list.
10.00-10.40: Registration
10.40-10.50: Introduction
William Hope (The University of Salford, GB. Co-ordinator of the project A New Italian Political Cinema?): Political Cinema: Screening the Effects of Capitalism
10.50-12.00: THE STATE, INSTITUTIONAL OPPRESSION AND COUNTER-REACTION
Amanda Minervini (Brown University, Providence, USA; activist in the Popolo Viola movement): Enrico Deaglio and Beppe Cremagnani’s Uccidete la democrazia: Mathematical Obscenities and Statistical Resistance in Post-Constitutional Italy
Clodagh Brook (The University of Birmingham, GB): Impegno, Protest, and the Catholic Church in Italy
Federico Giordano (The University of Udine): From the ‘Shroud’ to the ‘Caimano’. The Somatic Polymorphism of Silvio Berlusconi in Italian Cinema.
Mauro Sassi (McGill University, Montreal, Canada): Francesca Comencini’s Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo – A Counterhegemonic Documentary
12.00-12.30: Refreshments
12.30-1.30: REPRESENTATIONS OF ITALY’S SOCIO-POLITICAL PAST
Introduction: Luciana d’Arcangeli (Flinders University, Adelaide): Why does Italian cinema still need to turn to the past?
Pauline Small (Queen Mary, London GB): Post-political Cinema: Amelio, Giordana, Garrone
Flavia Brizio-Skov (University of Tennessee): A New Italian Political Cinema: Is There One? Daniele Luchetti’s Mio fratello è figlio unico
Ilaria Serra (Florida Atlantic University, USA): Cinema and polis in the films of Dennis Dellai
1.30-2.30: Lunch
2.30-4.00: MIGRATION AND MARGINALIZATION ON SCREEN
Patrizia Cammarata (Partito di Alternativa Comunista): The Migrant Experience in Contemporary Italy
Michela Ardizzoni (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA): New Narratives of the Other: Arabs and Muslims in Italian Cinema
Sabine Schrader (University of Innsbruck, Austria): Migration and Nostalgia in Giorgio Diritti’s Il vento fa il suo giro
Yasmina Khamal (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium): Alex Infascelli’s Almost Blue : The noir metropolis, marginal identities and socially committed cinema
Sally Hill (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Representing Disability in 21st Century Italian Cinema
4.00-4.30: Refreshments
4.30-6.10: FILMIC REPRESENTATIONS OF LABOUR RELATIONS AND THE WORKPLACE
Fabiana Stefanoni (Partito di Alternativa Comunista): Workers, Trade Unions and Capital in 21st Century Italy
Paolo Chirumbolo (Louisiana State University, USA): Ascanio Celestini’s Parole sante – the Call Centre Workers of Atesia
Maria Elena D’Amelio (SUNY Stony Brook, USA): The comedy of ‘precarious’ lifestyles in Paolo Virzì’s Tutta la vita davanti
Marco Paoli (The University of Liverpool, UK): Paolo Virzì’s Baci e abbracci: Class Conflict and Illusionary Happiness
Flavia Laviosa (Wellesley College, USA) “‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate’ in ThyssenKrupp”: Pietro Balla and Monica Repetto’s ThyssenKrupp Blues
Andrea Righi (University of Puerto Rico, MAYAGUEZ): Filming Capitalist Accumulation in Italy. In fabbrica (2007) and I Like to Work (Mobbing) (2004) by Francesca Comencini
6.10-6.20: Closing Remarks
7.00: Aperitivo
Many thanks to all the presenters and participants for making the Adelaide workshop a great success.
10.00-10.30: Registration
10.30–10.50: Start of proceedings: Welcome by Prof. Graham Tulloch, Dean of School of Humanities, Flinders University Introduction: William Hope (University of Salford): A New Italian Political Cinema? Global Perspectives (in English)
10.50 – 11.30: Session One: Susanna Scarparo (Monash University) & Bernadette Luciano (University of Auckland): Reframing Italy: The New Wave of Italian Women Filmmakers (in English)
11.30-11.50: Refreshments 1
1.50–12.50: Session Two: Conversation with the writer/director Filippo Ticozzi • Filippo Ticozzi: Il mio lavoro (in Italian – interpreting available, if needed) • Screening of Dall’altra parte della strada (2010, 30 mins., Italian with English subtitles) • Q&As in Italian and/or English (interpreting provided)
12.50-1.50: Lunch
1.50–2.50: Session Three: • Piera Carroli (ANU): Roberta Torre’s Mare nero: 21st Century’s Politics of the Body – Back to Mannequins? (in Italian) • Luciana d’Arcangeli (Flinders University): Donne di Mafia cambiano (in Italian) • Stefano Bona (Flinders University): La stella che non c’e’ by Gianni Amelio – Italy, globalisation and the re-discovery of different cultures (in Italian)
2.50-3.10: Refreshments 3.10–4.10:
Session Four: • William Hope (The University of Salford): Sabina Guzzanti – Political Opposition Through Cinematic Expression (in English) • Lara Palombo (Macquarie University): Framing Diasporic and Transnational Women’s Lives: Entering in a dialogue with Fistful of Flies, Looking for Alibrandi and La Spagnola (in English) • Sally Hill (Victoria University of Wellington): Images of Disability in Contemporary Italian Cinema (in English)
4.10-4.20: Closing Remarks
A New Italian Political Cinema? 