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Graduate Topics in Film: Film and Visual Culture – Italy 1960-1975
240 - 002 | CCN: 31843
Noa Steimatsky
Date and Time: W 2-5P, 6331 DWINELLE
4 Units
Conducted in English with readings in English.
The seminar will explore the intensely productive, adventurous, at once anxious and delirious period in Italian cinema of the 1960s through the mid-70s. In this era the material and social transformations bound up with the economic boom, the proliferation of commodity and advertising culture in tandem with the international marketing of Italy’s luxury image, the rise of television and the “disappearance of the fireflies,” the student movements and the surge of left and right wing terrorism stimulated some of the most innovative work in world cinema. This Italian “New Wave,” distinct from its French counterpart, responded to the host of political and cultural upheavals with new visions of urban space and industrial design, heightened dramas of social and sexual mores, critical recollections of the past, and dreams of revolution. Alongside exemplary works by Antonioni, Bellocchio, Bertolucci, Fellini, Leone, Pasolini, Rosi, and the Tavianis, we will consider experiments in the poetic documentary and the radical Cinegiornali initiatives, the phenomenon of anthology films, and the implications of international co-productions as part of our discussion of the altered environments and demographics, the shifting values of “high” and “low,” the ideological climate and visual culture of the period defined between the sensation of La dolce vita and the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Attendance in screenings required; all principal readings are in English.
Prerequisites: Graduate standing; consent of instructor.