Il gattopardo: Sicily, Italy and the Supranational Cultural Imaginary, November 12-14, 2018 The University of Melbourne, Parkville (original) (raw)
Related papers
Visions of Italy Beyond the North/South Divide: Regional Documentaries, Global Identities.
Annali d’Italianistica , 2006
The “Southern Question,” “Padania,” and their Discontents Ever since its inception, the Italian nation has struggled to provide an integrated image of itself and its culture to its own citizens and to the rest of the world. This was the case after Unification as much as it was in the postwar period (Ascoli and Von Henneberg; Bouchard). In the present age of postmodern globalization, national unity continues to be subject to debate. Placed at the core of a variety of cultural practices, it also informs a recent set of documentary films about Emilia-Romagna and the Po Valley whose subject-matter and formal narrative structures intervene directly in the ongoing struggle to define the local, national and global nature of Italian identity. Indeed, documentaries, such as Gianni Celati’s Visioni di case che crollano (2003), Davide Ferrario’s Mondonuovo (2003), Giuseppe Bertolucci’s Segni particolari: appunti per un film sull’Emilia-Romagna (2003), and Nello Ferrieri and Raffaele Rago’s Mozambico dove va il cinema (2002), point to an unresolved crisis of postmodernity in Italian society and subvert a notion of identity based on territorial belonging. At the same time, these documentaries suggest a relational understanding of subject- and community-formation constructed through the encounter and negotiation with other cultures within and outside Italy. They do so by underscoring a number of elements that shed new light on the construction of Italy and Italians since the postwar period with respect to the country’s internal national divides (exemplified by the “Southern Question,” on the one hand, and by the separatist attacks of the Northern League, on the other hand) and in relation to the challenges put forth by the phenomenon of global migration which is forcing an expansion of cultural boundaries and a reflection on the foundations of local histories.
Land of Extremes: The Power of Sicilian Landscapes in Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo
Italica, 2021
Though Il Gattopardo has enjoyed resounding commercial and critical success since its publication in 1958, literary circles took issue with the novel’s treatment of history and lack of linear structure. In addition to studying the novel’s cyclical temporality, the present study will investigate the often underappreciated category of space, which has risen to prominence within Il Gattopardo scholarship in recent years. Lampedusa himself nods to the novel’s spatial character, insisting that: “La Sicilia è quella che è; del 1860, di prima e di sempre.” The present study argues that the extreme nature of Sicily’s landscape – where there is no mean between extreme pragmatism and pure abstraction – reveals the illusory nature of the Risorgimento’s promise of progress. Even as Garibaldi’s soldiers light the bonfires of history, Sicily’s timeless, fossilized quality reminds its inhabitants that nothing ever truly passes out of existence, and that revolution is cyclical not only in name.
TESTA C Italian political cinema: Surveying ...
The 2005 Cornell Entralogos Conference has provided me with the welcome opportunity to develop some theoretical reflections on the ways in which, on the one hand, literature, and more in general arts and the humanities, contribute to shaping the world -but, also on the other hand, on how different "worlds" (different historical and cultural realities, that is) bring about a correspondingly diverse gamut of artistic creations. This paper of mine, then, arises within the context of an overarching theoretical exploration inspired by the theme of the Conference: "Art Makes a Difference / Difference Makes Art." In my intention, the symmetry of this proposition aims not for a selfreferential form of witticism but for an almost mimetic reproduction of the endless circulation -in some sense, indeed, the circularity -of the exchanges that obtain between culture and society. Which of the two comes first? Neither, it goes without saying. Which of the two comes second? Both, of course.
During the 1990s, concern over the future of Italy, fuelled by the threat of separatist movements and increasingly evident social fragmentation, focused attention once more on the question of national identity.1 As cinema played its part in this debate, the question arises as to how it was represented on screen. In line with a trend often observed in contemporary European filmmaking, spatial representation proved to be an effective way of exploring the theme of identity.2 In this, a familiar element is to be found in the road movie tradition, in which the protagonists' self-awareness and the achievement of personal goals come about by means of a journey through many obstacles.3
Reflected Sicily. Images and Representations through the Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s
Humanities research, 2015
Images and Representations through the Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s Questo articolo ripropone in parte il titolo di un precedente pubblicato nel n. 6 di Humanities. N e modifica il contenuto, ma ne conferma l'approccio metodologico e teorico. Ripropone il testo di una conferenza svolta al Oxford Literary Festival 2015, nella versione inglese curata da Grey e Ceruolo, profondi conoscitori della cultura italiana. Il cinema italiano ed europeo degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta ha fortemente condizionato la percezione della Sicilia e ha riflesso su di essa lo sguardo orientalista del nord verso il sud dell'Europa. Gli stereotipi e i luoghi comuni sono stati costruiti in quel periodo storico che esigeva la modernizzazione e l'industrializzazione del Paese, a tutto scapito del mondo contadino del Mezzogiorno d'Italia. Si propone un'analisi critica e problematica del materiale più significativo e si fornisce un'interpretazione nuova e originale. Sicily is an extraordinary generative spark for the imagination of the cinema. Giuseppe Tornatore, Oscar-winning director of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, maintains that this is due to the fact that Sicily IS cinema; people from Sicily behave as if they were on a stage, within a cinematic representation. I do believe that the very same Sicilian way of life and of being, the landscape, and the strong folk traditions, have led to forging a privileged and special relationship between Sicily and the world of cinema. By means of example, if you Google "Sicily is ...", the word "cinema" will come up third in the search result pages.
Muiraquitã, 2017
The short film Làssami (“leave me”) was directed by Gianluca Sodaro in 2015, and functions as a music video to the eponymous song by Giuseppe Di Bella, who also acts in the film. In this article, I attempt to decipher Làssami’s encounter of lyrics, music, sound effects and images. In the first part of the article, I discuss the reproduction of stereotypical images of Sicilian masculinity perpetrated by the film, also drawing on recent media releases. I then work my way through the intricate web of trappings associated to the representation of the female characters in the film – as passive, innocent, celestial, and white. In the second part of the article, I attempt to reinterpret the film in light of the decolonial concept of “de-linking”. I argue that Làssami’s symbolical coding, regardless of the authors’ intentions, refers precisely to a silenced desire for sovereignty and independence.