Giacomo Manzoli, “The Eternal Temptation of Populism in Italian Cinema”

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126 Memorial Library
@ 4:00 pm

Co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies and the Department of French & Italian.

Professor Giacomo Manzoli will offer lectures on the history of Italian film and visit Italian/ Communication Arts 460 on the history of Italian film.

Is there a commonality among the major factors that shaped the history of Italian cinema? What connects Fascist propaganda, Neorealism, the Hollywood on the Tiber River built by the great leaders of Italian cinema of the 1950s, the Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, the blossoming of great auteurs
(i.e. Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, Wertmuller), and the advent of Silvio Berlusconi as Italy entered the new millennium? Paraphrasing the philosopher Benedetto Croce: from a cinematic point of view, are there any Italian directors who can not call themselves populists?

Giacomo Manzoli is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Bologna, where he has served as the Director of the DAMS Program (Drama, Arts, Film and Music Studies) from 2007 to 2010, and the MA Program in Film, Television and Multimedia Production from 2012 to 2014. He is currently the Chair of the Department of the Arts at the University of Bologna. He was recently elected President of the Consulta Universitaria del Cinema (the University Council on Cinema). He also serves on the Advisory Board for the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy’s national film school in Rome, and he is a member of the Board for Public Funding of Audiovisual Production of the Region of Emilia-Romagna, as well as the Board of Trustees of the Gramsci Institute and Archives. He serves on the editorial boards for several scholarly journals, including Studi Culturali, The Italianist, L’Avventura, and Sociologia della Comunicazione. His current research is focused on the relationship between the film industry and symbolic forms in contemporary Italian cinema, with a special focus on the role of public funding in promoting specific aesthetics and politics. His record of publications on Italian and international cinema is impressive, and his books include Voce e silenzio nel cinema di Pier Paolo Pasolini (Pendragon, 2001), Cinema e letteratura (Carocci, 2003), Da Ercole a Fantozzi. Cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958-1976) (Carocci, 2012, Limina Book Award 2014 for the best Italian book on film history), and Il cinema di stato. Finanziamento pubblico ed economia simbolica nel cinema italiano contemporaneo (with Marco Cucco, il Mulino, 2017).

For more information contact Professor Patrick Rumble at parumble@wisc.edu

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