Rachel Johnson | University of Leeds (original) (raw)

Videos by Rachel Johnson

Alessio Baldini and I discuss the 'receptive vulnerability' of the migration activist documentary... more Alessio Baldini and I discuss the 'receptive vulnerability' of the migration activist documentary, Iuventa, from its filming to its 'activist distribution strategy'. The paper provides insights into modes of documentary filmmaking and distribution that not only instantiate but facilitate activist engagement. A co-authored presentation for the Besides the Screen conference, 2021.

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Books by Rachel Johnson

Free preview of the full length monograph, available to purchase from Amsterdam University Press.... more Free preview of the full length monograph, available to purchase from Amsterdam University Press. Use code AUTH20 for a 20% discount.

Abstract:
Film Festivals, Ideology and Italian Art Cinema is the first systematic study of the role ideology plays in film festivals’ construction of dominant ideas about art cinema.

Film festivals are considered the driving force of the film industry outside Hollywood, disseminating ideals of cinematic art and humanist politics. However, the question of what drives them remains highly contentious.

In a rare consideration of the European competitive film festival circuit as a whole, this book analyses the shared economic, geopolitical and cultural histories that characterise ‘European A festivals’. It offers, too, the first extensive analysis of such festivals’ role in the canonisation of select Italian films, from Rome, Open City to The Great Beauty and Gomorrah.

The book proposes a new approach to ideology critique, one that enables detailed examination of how film festivals construct ideas about not only contemporary art cinema, but assumptions about gender, race, colonialism and capitalism.

Articles and Book Chapters by Rachel Johnson

Cinergie, 2022

Film festivals play an important role in the construction and circulation of not only individual ... more Film festivals play an important role in the construction and circulation of not only individual films but entire taxonomies of cinema, from their "discovery of new waves" (Elsaesser 2005: 99) to their production of "hegemonic …canons" (Vallejo, 2020: 158). The effects of this taxonomical power are felt across filmmaking, criticism, and scholarship, foregrounded in renewed calls to decolonize film festivals and film culture more broadly (Dovey and Sendra 2022[forthcoming], Shambu 2019). This article mobilizes and adapts "New Lacanian" theories of ideology critique to propose a methodology for studying the ways in which film festivals construct meaning for films and, cumulatively, entire canons. Outlining concepts such as the festival apparatus, the festival paratext, and the cinematic Real, I trace the coordinates of a three-tier critical procedure that brings into dialogue festivals' operational and material contexts, their representation of themselves and their films, and the unruly, aesthetic qualities of the films that festivals exhibit. I demonstrate the application of this approach to a recent cause célèbre of Italian migration cinema, Fire at Sea, its awarding and representation at the 2016 edition of the Berlin International Film Festival instantiating the enduring legacy of Neorealism and a "brutal humanist" stance directed towards refugees in the new millennium (Schoonover 2012). Moving between theoretical discussions and the application of this method of ideology critique, I demonstrate how we might interrogate structures of meaning implicit within film festivals' rhetorical operation, offering a ground from which to better understand film festivals and, if desired, advocate for change.

The Italianist, 2022

Academic filmmaking has become a rich area of practice and inquiry, driving debates about academi... more Academic filmmaking has become a rich area of practice and inquiry, driving debates about academic rigour, affect, social impact, and knowledge production. While scholars have increasingly sought to expand their practice beyond strict, ‘academic' modes of filmmaking, little attention has been paid to the ways diverse approaches to film production may also offer opportunities for creative practice that extends beyond the academy. This article explores the production model underpinning Maka, a documentary biopic of Geneviéve Makaping and product of intensive collaboration between academic and industry-based filmmakers. Drawing on interviews with the film's producers, Graziano Chiscuzzu and Ermanno Guida, I explore Maka's status as a hybrid film, a dialogic project in which multiple positions and voices intersect. I trace the filmmakers’ negotiation of funding and prestige – from university grants to legitimation at film festivals – as well as their use of techniques such as retroscripting to cultivate a dialogic filmmaking process. I also discuss the ethos of social commitment that appears to unite both academic and documentary filmmaking, and explore avenues for expanding and measuring social impact through film distribution. I conclude that Maka offers an important case study of academic-industry hybridization, permitting further interrogation of the boundaries between the two spheres.

Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook, ed. by Jennifer Burns and Derek Duncan (Liverpool University Press), 2022

This chapter concerns the agency of the image and metaphor of ‘flow’ in critical, artistic and po... more This chapter concerns the agency of the image and metaphor of ‘flow’ in critical, artistic and political discourse. It analyses its use in works of cultural, political and social theory by Raymond Williams, Marshall Berman and Zygmunt Bauman. Flow emerges as a powerful but ambivalent trope, something confirmed in xenophobic political discourse which deploys the possibility of an ‘influx’ (from the Latin, ‘to flow in’) of non-white foreigners as a threat to the integrity of the nation. This is further confirmed in the anti-colonial film The Battle of Algiers (1966), where the menacing flow of popular resistance shows a colonial trope being deployed against itself. Anti-racist texts like the engagé phenomenology of Sarah Ahmed and the film Human Flow (2017) treat flow, instead, as essential to physical and social existence. The chapter finishes by asking if the trope of flow would retain its power were our political discourse effectively decolonized.

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2020

This article proposes that the institutional construction of Italian cinema of migration in the n... more This article proposes that the institutional construction of Italian cinema of migration in the new millennium may be conditioned by an enduring, implicit aspect of Neorealism’s legacy: a ‘brutal humanism’ which posits the witnessing of bodies in crisis as an ethical act. Supplementing Karl Schoonover’s (2012) theory of brutal humanism with Lacanian gaze theory, I argue that the Berlin International Film Festival’s synopsis of a recent cause célèbre of Italian cinema, Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) (Rosi, 2016), instantiates a ‘brutal vision’ directed towards the figure of the refugee, while the film text’s depiction of the ‘objective gaze’ of these characters challenges such relations of power and looking. The article underlines the importance of competitive European film festivals and paratexts in the international circulation and ideological construction of Italian cinema, while arguing that the film text itself can offer a site of resistance to the meanings that institutions ascribe to it.

Reports by Rachel Johnson

Culture Hive, The Centre for Cultural Value, University of Leeds, 2021

This policy review compares social security mechanisms for cultural practitioners in the Austria,... more This policy review compares social security mechanisms for cultural practitioners in the Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom, and considers the role these played in supporting practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also considers Universal Basic Income as a potential social security mechanism that could benefit cultural practitioners and the creative industries.
The UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist calls on member states to ensure that no-one is disadvantaged by their choice to work in the cultural sector. Today, cultural practitioners remain subject to low and unstable incomes and are therefore at risk of poverty. Nation states typically mitigate against this risk though generic social security measures for the self-employed, targeted social security measures for artists, or a mixture of the two. Targeted measures appeared to result in greater and more equitable coverage. Countries with established social security schemes targeting artists were able to deploy these during the COVID-19 pandemic, appearing to rely less on extraordinary relief funding.
We recommend detailed investigation into the effectiveness of different social security measures for all self-employed and freelance cultural practitioners. We also recommend that policymakers implement compulsory schemes, fix contributions and offer minimum guaranteed welfare payments wherever possible. We recommend further research into the implications of Universal Basic Income on social protections for artists.

Curating and exhibiting visual culture in times of coronavirus, 2021

This post is based on a rapid review of emerging film circulation practices in July-September 202... more This post is based on a rapid review of emerging film circulation practices in July-September 2020, with significant updates being added were possible. I am grateful to my academic and film programmer colleagues for their support and conversations, and to Patrick Vons for his prolific information sharing and advocacy for cinemas during the pandemic.

This one-day conference, held on Zoom, provided a forum for both established and emerging practic... more This one-day conference, held on Zoom, provided a forum for both established and emerging practice researchers to showcase their work and discuss new developments in academic filmmaking. In this event, we sought to extend the stimulating, often challenging, discussions about research practice through the BAFTSS's Practice Research SIG as well as the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at the University of Leeds, where academic filmmaking is becoming a common, even preferred, mode of research. As the title of the conference suggests, our discussions centred on three topics, the fils rouge that guided the day's presentations and discussions. First, modalities: the exigencies of being an academic (and?or?) filmmaker, the evolution of academic filmmaking in the last decade, and future developments in the practice. The theme of experiment and, more broadly, form, was also paramount; the films showcased ranged from documentaries to deformative video-essays to animations. Decolonisation as an imperative mode of practice was also a key thread running through the conference, picked up explicitly through presentations on indigenous performance, pedagogy and women filmmakers, but also as an idea that guided many of the papers, the Q&A discussions and the closing roundtable.

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2017

It was the fifth workshop held as part of the Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories project, an initi... more It was the fifth workshop held as part of the Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories project, an initiative led by Alan O'Leary (Leeds) with co-investigators Austin Fisher (Bournemouth), Robert Gordon (Cambridge) and Catherine O'Rawe (Bristol). The project is intended to 'provide a radically extended account of the modes, genres and registers in which dramatic Italian films have dealt with the history of Italy'. 1 The Leeds workshop brought together scholars and non-academic partners from across the world in order to clarify research priorities and methods around the theme of film and history in the Italian and other contexts, and to work towards a major funding bid, in this case to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). 2 The #ICIH workshop featured six panels in which brief position papers were presented, followed by comments from a respondent and discussion. Panels focused on the definition of historical film, on methodologies and approaches, and on public engagement, or 'impact'.

Reviews by Rachel Johnson

gender/sexuality/italy, 2021

La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead (2020) is Edoardo Ponti’s third feature length film. Like sev... more La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead (2020) is Edoardo Ponti’s third feature length film. Like several of Ponti’s other works, notably Cuori stranei/Between Strangers (2002) and Voce umana/The Human Voice (2014), the film draws on traditions of internationally acclaimed middlebrow drama (a staple of exportable European cinema) through literary adaptation, its casting of a world-renowned European star, and a palimpsestic approach to historical representation. The Life Ahead, one of few Italian-language films directed by Ponti, is an adaptation of the French novel, La vie devant soi/The Life Before
Us (Romain Gary, 1975). It is driven by its pairing of diva, Sophia Loren (mother and long-time professional collaborator of Ponti) with a relatively unknown young actor, Ibrahima Gueye, who makes his feature debut here, following his role in the Spanish short, Muñeca Negra (The Black Doll, Mateo Nicolau, 2019). Loren plays a retired sex worker and Holocaust survivor, Madame Rosa, who cares for other sex workers’ children. Meanwhile, Gueye plays Rosa’s antagonist-turned-adoptee, Momo (Mohamed). Momo, the leading migrant figure in the film, is an orphan of Senegalese descent who finds himself being unofficially adopted by well-meaning (and sometimes not so well-meaning) strangers hoping to keep him away from social services.

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2019

*Pre-peer reviewed version of forthcoming book review* This review offers a critical summary of e... more *Pre-peer reviewed version of forthcoming book review*
This review offers a critical summary of each contribution in the volume as well as reflections on: the mafia movie, Made in Italy, the ambivalence of popular culture in late capitalism, and anarchism.

Book: Italian Pop Culture: Media, Products, Imageries, Fabio Corsini (ED.) (2018) Rome: Viella Libreria editrice, 192 pp, ISBN: 9788867289394, p/bk, €25,00

Contents:
Fabio Corsini, Introduction: Working Out the Puzzle of Italian Popular Culture

Paolo Biondi, Understanding Italian Comics Culture: Hugo Pratt, the 9th Art and Politics

Marco Bracci And Edoardo Tabasso, Stil Novo. The Legendarily Adventurous Route of Italian Music in Search of Popular Maturity

Milly Buonanno, Fallen Heroes and Anti-Heroines: The Mafia
Story in Italian TV Drama

Fabio Corsini, Italian Webseries: The New (yet Old) Way of
Storytelling

Flavia Monceri, Porn as a Cultural Product

Anna Lucia Natale, In the Beginning There Was the Radio... Con-
texts and Genres of Radio Entertainment

Nicoletta Peluffo, The Adventures of Pinocchio: An Outcome of
Popular Culture

Kristin Stasiowski, A Divine Comedy for All Time: Dante’s Endu-
ring Relevance for the Contemporary Reader

Bernardo Valli, Italy and the Search for Modernity: At the Origins
of Made in Italy

Annali d'italianistica, 2017

*Pre-peer reviewed book review.* Contains critical summaries on all the contributions in the vol... more *Pre-peer reviewed book review.*

Contains critical summaries on all the contributions in the volume, as well as reflections on the ethics of new realism and the Lacanian real in the context of literature and cinema as cultural industries.

Book: Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema. Eds Loredana Di Martino and Pasquale Verdicchio. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2017. Pp. 255.

Presentations by Rachel Johnson

European Network of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conferece, University of Oslo, 2023

This paper reflects on findings from the New Voices in Cinephilia project, a series of conversati... more This paper reflects on findings from the New Voices in Cinephilia project, a series of conversations between film practitioners and researchers hosted by the University of Leeds in 2022-2023. New Voices in Cinephilia takes its spur from Girish Shambu’s (2019) manifesto, ‘For a New Cinephilia,’ asking which new modes of cine-love are emerging in film production, criticism and curation. The project explores how such modes respond to calls for film cultures that provide “representational justice” (Mayer, 2015), “reparative pedagogies” (Iyer, 2022) and communities of care for practitioners and audiences (Care Collective, 2020). Drawing on the project’s first event, a conversation with Girish Shambu, I examine new cinephilia’s affinity with decolonial approaches to film, arguing for its potential to make explicit, and challenge, the “colonial matrix of power” (Quijano, 2000) on which traditional forms of cinephilia have been founded. I suggest that new cinephilia, in its expansive definition of film, rejection of a typically white heteropatriarchal auteurism, and attentiveness to marginalised communities, is driven by precisely the “epistemic disobedience” and “pluricentrism” that scholars such as Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh (Mignolo 2011; Mignolo and Walsh, 2018) emphasise in their definitions of decoloniality. The paper expands on this framework by outlining the new cinephile practices we encountered through the project, such as: affect-led approaches to African cinema at Leeds International Film Festival; “tender loving care for trans-led cinema” in So Mayer’s film curation; and the creation of cinephile “borderlands” at the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia. I conclude that, while diverse, these emerging modes of film practice culminate in a decolonial cinephilia that not only looks elsewhere, but looks otherwise, offering a radical re-evaluation of cinematic value and accepted forms of love for film, one that invites us to reconsider the aspiration of film culture as such.

Reframing Film Festivals (conference), 2020

During one of the first international workshops for film festival studies (University of St Andre... more During one of the first international workshops for film festival studies (University of St Andrews, 2009), scholars highlighted the importance of researching film festivals’ ideological aspect. Dina Iordanova suggested that programming may reflect a particular ideological standpoint, while Maty Ba and David Slocum highlighted the relationship between this ideological standpoint and film festivals’ service of economic and political interests. Since then, a number of studies have engaged with facets of these institutions’ reproduction of such interests through their programming, promotion and prize-giving. Meanwhile, the question of how to analyse the ideology of film festivals – be they individual festivals or ‘parallel circuits’ (Iordanova, 2009) – remains an open one. This paper presents outcomes from a recently completed project which sought to address such a question. I propose a methodology for the systematic analysis of film festivals’ ideological functioning, and give an overview of the findings that this methodology has generated thus far.
Adapting Slavoj Žižek’s theory of ideology critique and applying it to the analysis of institutions, I argue that film festivals are sustained, in part, by an ‘institutional unconscious’ – a series of unwritten rules and hierarchies that underpin their public activities and proclamations. I outline a tripartite approach to delineating this unconscious and identifying its effects on programming and representation. This approach takes into account: (1) the festival ‘apparatus’, made up of its history, organizational and economic structures, pronouncements and practices; (2) festivals’ paratextual representation of the films they exhibit; (3) the ‘texts’ of the films themselves. Putting these three elements of film festivals into dialogue, I trace the reproduction of dominant power structures through both the festival apparatus and, in particular, its paratexts. Meanwhile, I position the film text as a site of resistance – a text that can assist us in both highlighting and critiquing film festivals’ ideological functioning. Finally, the paper demonstrates the application of this method to a specific case: European A festivals’ awarding and representation of Italian cinema in the years 2000-2017. In doing so, I am to show that the findings produced by analyzing such a case has implications not only for the study of film festivals as such, but of their place in relation to power structures such as patriarchy, neo-colonialism and capitalist globalization.

This paper is concerned with the way in which the form of the film synopsis reifies both the film... more This paper is concerned with the way in which the form of the film synopsis reifies both the film itself and the processes at work in its production, distribution and recognition. In line with recent Lacanian film theory (inter alia, Žižek, McGowan, Vighi), I treat film as a site of excess meaning, or antagonism, and therefore argue that we need to look to extra-filmic material if we are to understand the ideological process of resolving antagonism. I examine synopses of films given by international, competitive (“A list”) film festivals, and consider how they condense the meaning of an award-winning film in order to present a sellable product: the “festival film”. In doing so, I aim to show three things. First, the process of reification – “taming the excess” – at work in the film synopsis form. This can be understood by the ideological process of inclusion and exclusion at work in film synopses – their attempt to fix, or quilt, the meaning of a film. Second, the way in which this process is conditioned by a particular set of values, in this case the values associated with and reproduced by the film festival brand. This is a necessary aspect of the circulation of symbolic capital on which film festivals and award-winning films depend (Elsaesser, 2005, De Valck, 2014). Finally, I aim to indicate the possibility of considering the international film festival network as part of the cultural state apparatus, which has taken on a transnational dimension.

Call for papers for the University of Leeds Sadler Seminar, '"Digital Borders " : The Politics of... more Call for papers for the University of Leeds Sadler Seminar, '"Digital Borders " : The Politics of Film Distribution in and Beyond Europe'

This paper will focus on discourses of Italian film history and how they affect the marketing of ... more This paper will focus on discourses of Italian film history and how they affect the marketing of contemporary Italian film transnationally. In the wake of The Great Beauty’s success at the Oscars, and the increase in Italian films being selected for competition at international film festivals, some have asked if we are facing a new golden age in Italian cinema. The success of recent Italian films may be predicated on a specific vision of Italy and its cinematic history. The paper will propose that contemporary Italian films that win awards at international film festivals are marketed in line with a discursively produced vision of Italian film history – one which begins with neorealism, develops with Italian political cinema and is still very much present in the promotional materials for contemporary Italian cinema. Using a method of discourse analysis influenced by Jacques Lacan, it will trace the history of Italian cinema implicit in the marketing of Italian films. The paper aims to introduce listeners to the idea that there are many Italian film histories, with only some gaining hegemony over the field. Furthermore, it will hypothesize which Italian film history currently has hegemony and identify the features which evidence this.

This paper will focus on discourses of Italian film history and how they affect the marketing of ... more This paper will focus on discourses of Italian film history and how they affect the marketing of contemporary Italian film transnationally. In the wake of The Great Beauty’s success at the Oscars, and the increase in Italian films being selected for competition at international film festivals, some have asked if we are facing a new golden age in Italian cinema. The success of recent Italian films may be predicated on a specific vision of Italy and its cinematic history. The hypothesis that will be presented in the paper is that contemporary Italian films are produced and marketed in line with a particular discourse of Italian cinema, in which neorealism (Italian political film produced in the 1940s and 50s) is a key watershed. It will highlight some of the main features of this discourse and give examples of how they appear in Italian films themselves. The paper aims to introduce listeners to the idea that there are many Italian film histories, with only some gaining hegemony over the field. Building on this, it will hypothesize which Italian film history has achieved this hegemony and identify the features in Italian films (and film studies) which evidence this.

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Abstract:
Film Festivals, Ideology and Italian Art Cinema is the first systematic study of the role ideology plays in film festivals’ construction of dominant ideas about art cinema.

Cinergie, 2022

The Italianist, 2022

Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook, ed. by Jennifer Burns and Derek Duncan (Liverpool University Press), 2022

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2020

Culture Hive, The Centre for Cultural Value, University of Leeds, 2021

Curating and exhibiting visual culture in times of coronavirus, 2021

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2017

gender/sexuality/italy, 2021

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2019

Book: Italian Pop Culture: Media, Products, Imageries, Fabio Corsini (ED.) (2018) Rome: Viella Libreria editrice, 192 pp, ISBN: 9788867289394, p/bk, €25,00

Contents:
Fabio Corsini, Introduction: Working Out the Puzzle of Italian Popular Culture

Paolo Biondi, Understanding Italian Comics Culture: Hugo Pratt, the 9th Art and Politics

Marco Bracci And Edoardo Tabasso, Stil Novo. The Legendarily Adventurous Route of Italian Music in Search of Popular Maturity

Milly Buonanno, Fallen Heroes and Anti-Heroines: The Mafia
Story in Italian TV Drama

Fabio Corsini, Italian Webseries: The New (yet Old) Way of
Storytelling

Flavia Monceri, Porn as a Cultural Product

Anna Lucia Natale, In the Beginning There Was the Radio... Con-
texts and Genres of Radio Entertainment

Nicoletta Peluffo, The Adventures of Pinocchio: An Outcome of
Popular Culture

Kristin Stasiowski, A Divine Comedy for All Time: Dante’s Endu-
ring Relevance for the Contemporary Reader

Bernardo Valli, Italy and the Search for Modernity: At the Origins
of Made in Italy

Annali d'italianistica, 2017

*Pre-peer reviewed book review.* Contains critical summaries on all the contributions in the vol... more *Pre-peer reviewed book review.*

Book: Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema. Eds Loredana Di Martino and Pasquale Verdicchio. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2017. Pp. 255.

European Network of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conferece, University of Oslo, 2023

Reframing Film Festivals (conference), 2020

This paper will focus on discourses of Italian film history and how they affect the marketing of ... more This paper will focus on discourses of Italian film history and how they affect the marketing of contemporary Italian film transnationally. In the wake of The Great Beauty’s success at the Oscars, and the increase in Italian films being selected for competition at international film festivals, some have asked if we are facing a new golden age in Italian cinema. The success of recent Italian films may be predicated on a specific vision of Italy and its cinematic history. The hypothesis that will be presented in the paper is that contemporary Italian films are produced and marketed in line with a particular discourse of Italian cinema, in which neorealism (Italian political film produced in the 1940s and 50s) is a key watershed. It will highlight some of the main features of this discourse and give examples of how they appear in Italian films themselves. The paper aims to introduce listeners to the idea that there are many Italian film histories, with only some gaining hegemony over the field. Building on this, it will hypothesize which Italian film history has achieved this hegemony and identify the features in Italian films (and film studies) which evidence this.

This paper presents Lacan’s theory of the Real – a traumatic element which upsets the status quo ... more This paper presents Lacan’s theory of the Real – a traumatic element which upsets the status quo – in relation to contemporary Italian cinema. In particular, it will use Lacan’s seminars on the Greek tragedy, Antigone, to posit that a figure ‘between two deaths’, such as the undead, functions in Italian films to disturb the protagonists’ lives and drive the films’ narratives. Moreover, it will use this figure to interpret the politics of the films: just as the play Antigone provides a model of the undead undermining state power, we can consider the ways in which undead figures in film might do the same. The case studies this paper uses are: the figure(s) of the Black Bloc protesters in Diaz: Non pulire questo sangue (Vicari, 2012), and the figure of Simone in La finestra di fronte (Ozpetek, 2003).

PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2019

This thesis aims to answer the question: is there an ideology conditioning European A festivals’ ... more This thesis aims to answer the question: is there an ideology conditioning European A festivals’ awarding and representation of Italian cinema in the years 2000-2017 and, if so, how does it function? The project presents a systematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of such awarding and representation, examining a corpus of Italian films that have won Best Picture at a European A festival in the years 2000-2017. Its methodology is grounded in Slavoj Žižek’s theory of ideology, which it maps on to three aspects of European A festivals: the A circuit apparatus – its histories, organisational structures and practices; festival paratexts – film synopses in festivals’ official programmes; and film texts – aspects of films that confound their institutional representation. Comparing each level, the thesis identifies and critiques the explicit ways in which European A festivals represent Italian cinema, and the implicit laws that govern such representation. The Introduction discuss...

The project presents a systematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of European A festiva... more The project presents a systematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of European A festivals' awarding and representation of Italian films in the years 2000-2017. It provides insights into film festivals' organization and ideological functioning, psychoanalysis and ideology critique, and the circulation of Italian cinema.