Event Date and Time:
February 1, 2012
6:15pm
Location:
Dept of Cinema Studies, Michelson Theater
721 Broadway, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10003
This talk will look at a relatively unexplored aspect of neorealist cinema: its relationship with the still photograph. A number of Italian filmmakers after 1943 sought to 'denarrativize' their films at certain points, to open up moments in which the viewer could contemplate 'slowed' or 'stilled' images on the screen. One aspect of this process was captured in Gilles Deleuze's notion of the 'time-image'. However, it involved new uses of cinematic space too, such as frontal deep staging and the 180 and 360 degree pan, as well as new ways of lighting exterior shots. It also possessed a strong ethical dimension, which was drawn out in the contemporary critical writings of Andra Bazin and others. At the ethical level the revalidation of the photographic image involved a new attention both to landscape, in particular to places marked by wars or social conflicts, and to the visual expressiveness of the human face and physical gesture.
David Forgacs is the newly appointed Guido and Mariuccia Zerilli-Marima Professor of Contemporary Italian Studies at NYU. Formerly he taught at Sussex, Cambridge, Royal Holloway, Rome La Sapienza and University College London. His publications on Italian cinema include Rome Open City in the BFI Film Classics series, Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real (edited with Sarah Lutton and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith) and, most recently, an essay on Antonioni and actors in Laura Rascaroli and John David Rhodes (ed.) Antonioni: Centenary Essays, London: BFI, 2011. He has recorded full-length audio commentaries for the DVDs/Blu-rays of Ossessione (BFI), The Leopard (BFI), The Red Desert (BFI/Criterion Collection), and The Conformist (Arrow Films).
This event is free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
