Journal Articles by Giuseppe Fidotta
Cinema & Storia, special issue on Italian Postcolonial Cinema, edited by Luca Caminati, Valeria ... more Cinema & Storia, special issue on Italian Postcolonial Cinema, edited by Luca Caminati, Valeria Deplano, Damiano Garofalo, Luca Peretti, 2024, 37-52.
The Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, 2024
The article focuses on Corrado D'Errico's The Path of Our Heroes (Il cammino degli eroi), a 1936 ... more The article focuses on Corrado D'Errico's The Path of Our Heroes (Il cammino degli eroi), a 1936 compilation documentary comprising footage shot by the Istituto Luce's East Africa Film Unit operators. By reconstructing the production history of the film, it draws attention to the integration of cinema into the Second Italian-Ethiopian war (and later the empire) and the influence of cinematic and artistic avant-gardes in the making of the imperial documentary. Through a formal analysis, the essay proposes the notion of "empire symphony film" to examine how the film strives to render visible, while being fully integrated to, the infrastructure of the empire. In doing so, it invites a reconsideration of 1930s Italian documentary cinema in light of the reconfiguration of militancy, film culture, and aesthetics prompted by the Ethiopian war. In August 1936, three months after the end of the Second Italo-Ethiopian war and the proclamation of the Italian Empire, the fourth edition of the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia ended with a predictable outcome. The highest prizes, the Mussolini Cups for best national and best international film, were awarded to Augusto Genina's The White Squadron (Lo squadrone bianco, 1936) and Luis Trenker's The Emperor of California (Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, 1936), with Joseph Goebbels and the top echelons of the Italian film administration in attendance. Technical awards were carefully distributed among all participating countries except India and Egypt, while the government awards ensured that almost no Italian film producer would have left Venice empty-handed.
In La Valle dell'Eden, no. 37, 2021
Screen, 2021
This essay draws on a three-month participant observation of the preproduction and production of ... more This essay draws on a three-month participant observation of the preproduction and production of the second season of Il Cacciatore/The Hunter (Cross Productions-Rai Fiction, 2018-). From March to May 2019, and in follow-up sessions in February 2020, I also conducted interviews with several actors involved in the making of the show. I want to express my gratitude to Sicilia Film Commission's Ignazio Plaia for putting me in touch with the production; to Cross Productions' Luca Bitterlin and Rosario Rinaldo for granting me access to the set; and to Ugo Polizzi for letting me follow his work. I am thankful to who discussed their lives, ideas and work habits with me. All translations from Italian are mine, unless otherwise specified. 2 I use the orthographically unconventional anti-mafia practice of spelling the word 'mafia' with a lowercase 'm'. With this term, used interchangeably with Cosa Nostra, I refer to the Sicilian crime syndicate only. Lorenzo Tondo, 'The resurrection of Palermo: from mafia battlefield to cultural capital', The Guardian,
«Necsus – European Journal of Media Studies» 7 (2), 2018
This paper introduces the journal’s special issue on media and mapping by presenting an overview ... more This paper introduces the journal’s special issue on media and mapping by presenting an overview of the core debates addressing their mutual intertwining. By foregrounding the centrality of world-making, as well as its cognate mapping impulse, the essay advocates the need to go beyond an understanding of the relation between media and mapping based on indexicality, objectivity, and manipulation. Instead, it argues that conceiving media as both object and subject of geography (hence, of mapping) opens up research perspectives that, as the following essays demonstrate, further enrich the ongoing dialogue between media studies, geography, and critical theory.
SPECIALE 10 CINERGIE il cinema e le altre arti Cinergie, il cinema e le altre arti Cinergie uscit... more SPECIALE 10 CINERGIE il cinema e le altre arti Cinergie, il cinema e le altre arti Cinergie uscita n°10 novembre 2016 | ISSN 2280-9481 10
![Research paper thumbnail of Ruling the Colonies with Sound. Documentary, Noise and Technology in Cronache dell'Impero [Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 2016]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/61778681/thumbnails/1.jpg)
In 1937, the state-funded Istituto LUCE realized Cronache dell'Impero/Chronicles of the Empire, a... more In 1937, the state-funded Istituto LUCE realized Cronache dell'Impero/Chronicles of the Empire, a short-lived series of documentaries aimed at attesting the activities the Regime was carrying out in the recently conquered East-Italian African territories. Attempting to go beyond the exoticism and clichéd representations usually employed in colonial documentaries, the series resorts to modernist strategies in order to highlight the value of the so-called civilizing mission. By tracing how these strategies were configured, this article looks specifically at the rhetorical use of sound and technology as a means for contributing to the propaganda purposes of the series, primarily the formation of a colonial consciousness. In this respect, technology and sound operate within a symbolic domain in which modernization and other colonial outcomes hinge on the allegedly transformative power of the Regime. Their visual and aural representations belong to the tradition of the political, avant-garde and documentary film practice.
volto di malitioso serpe suase alla prima madre l'horrido eccesso, onde nè sono discese poi tante... more volto di malitioso serpe suase alla prima madre l'horrido eccesso, onde nè sono discese poi tante rovine al misero, e sfortunato genere humano.
![Research paper thumbnail of Animated Maps and the Power of the Trace [NECSUS - European Journal of Media Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, Spring 2014]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/37349764/thumbnails/1.jpg)
the animated map, a generally overlooked rhetorical device, is questioned throughout this essay a... more the animated map, a generally overlooked rhetorical device, is questioned throughout this essay as a meaningful and useful case for rethinking the notion of the trace in the analysis of documentary films. drawing on the debate led by critical cartography since the 1980s the essay discusses the relation between maps, ideology, and propaganda specifically with regard to fascist documentaries made between 1939 and 1942 that are entirely composed with animated maps. through the notion of the 'power of the trace' -the construct warranting the perfect correspondence of image and world -the essay interrogates the misleading use of animated maps in documentary as evidence, informational images, and faithful reproductions of the territory. By looking at the roles played by space, time, materiality, and narrative in animated maps i instead propose an examination of the trace, taking into account the possibilities offered to visual-oriented analysis. Giuseppe Fidotta is a PhD candidate at the University of Udine (Italy) and a visiting PhD student at the University of Warwick (UK). His research explores the interplay between ideology, landscape, and technology in fascist colonial documentary through the disciplinary framework of social history, critical theory,
Per il miglioramento della stirpe" Note sulla propaganda igienico-sanitaria durante il fascismo O... more Per il miglioramento della stirpe" Note sulla propaganda igienico-sanitaria durante il fascismo Ormai è sufficiente valutare le possibilità [del cinema] dal punto di vista delle ricerche scientifiche (progressi tecnici e materiali) -poiché dal punto di vista pedagogico e dimostrativo, riteniamo la causa vinta e ogni discussione superflua.
Book Chapters by Giuseppe Fidotta
“Gillo Pontecorvo” , with Giuseppe Fidotta. Gieri, Manuela, and Donato Santeramo (eds.), Twentieth Century Italian Filmmakers, Rome: UniversItalia, 2020, pp. 433-436.
Born in Pisa in 1919 to a wealthy family of assimilated Jews, Gillo Pontecorvo discovered cinema ... more Born in Pisa in 1919 to a wealthy family of assimilated Jews, Gillo Pontecorvo discovered cinema late in life, having spent most of his youth as professional tennis player, partisan guerrilla fighter in Milan (under the name of Barnaba), and then as a journalist for Italian newspapers L'Unità and Pattuglia, and French press agency Agence Havas. Exiled to Paris in 1938 because of the fascist Racial Laws, Pontecorvo encountered two distinct groups that had an enormous impact on his formation-the Italian anti-fascist community and the French cultural elite. In more than one way, these encounters had a lasting influence over the director-to-be, as did his experience in the Resistance, which sowed in him the seeds of an uncompromised militancy, as well as allowing him to gain a stable position within the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Despite being a relatively unprolific filmmaker-five feature films over two decades, which triggered all sorts of speculations on his creativity-Pontecorvo is recognized as one of the most militant, cosmopolitan, and accomplished filmmakers in the history of Italian cinema. He managed to enrich his own work beyond a political intervention in line with the PCI agenda through the thoughtful reflection on issues such as neo-imperialism, decolonization, and political violence, which at the time were barely addressed-if not purposefully avoided-by Italian leftist organizations. As a result, he enjoyed an uncommon status within the film community; on the one hand, a vocal leading figure of political cinema (or cinema d'impegno) along with Giuliano Montaldo, Francesco Rosi, and Elio Petri; on the other, as that of an outsider who never directed a feature film set in Italy and always enjoyed a very solid reputation abroad more than in his own country. This contradiction, among the many others inhabiting his career, makes Pontecorvo an exceptional figure in the complex 1960s Italian cinema scene, often dominated by provincial vivacity, mild experimentation, and post-neorealist euphoria. It makes sense then that his directorial debut, apart from few shorts of the early 1950s, occurred under the supervision of leftist cinema legendary figure Joris Ivens, and with an international omnibus film, The Windrose (La rosa dei venti), documenting the conditions of female workers around the world. Giovanna, the Italian episode depicting a female workers' strike at a Tuscan textile factory (coincidentally, Pontecorvo's family business sector), set the ground for, and somehow envisaged, the following steps of the director in relation to three crucial aspects. Firstly, it marks the beginning of the collaboration with screenwriter Franco Solinas, whose blunt analytical style and penchant for character study will complement Pontecorvo's detached lyricism and formal experimentalism. Secondly, it tackles a series of topics (i.e. collective struggle vs. individual interest, self-sacrifice, organized resistance, political tactics, etc.) that will constitute a field of tension upon which this
“Bernardo Bertolucci”, with Giuseppe Fidotta. Gieri, Manuela, and Donato Santeramo (eds.), Twentieth Century Italian Filmmakers, Rome: UniversItalia, 2020, pp. 103-108.
in Brenda Hollweg, Igor Krstić (eds), "World Cinema and the Essay Film: Transnational Perspectives on a Global Practice", Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2019
Genèse d’un repas (L. Moullet, 1979), Ananas (A. Gitai, 1984) and The Forgotten Space (N. Burch &... more Genèse d’un repas (L. Moullet, 1979), Ananas (A. Gitai, 1984) and The Forgotten Space (N. Burch & A. Sekula, 2010) constitute three attempts of cinematically representing the supply chain, i.e. the global production and distribution networks of commodities, or, in other words, of offering "the world as object lesson". Their common aim of depicting world-system economy through effective representational strategies belongs to a broader reflexive tendency that connects many documentaries dealing with late capitalism and globalisation as a whole, which can be grouped under the category “World Essay Film”. Confirming the epistemological and somehow theoretical need to connect World Cinema and Essay Film, the category provides the opportunity to question the multi-layered dynamics of global economy and cinema from the standpoint of Cultural Geography and Visual Studies. In fact, the World Essay Film's major question pertains to the ways in which the interconnectedness of the world can be made visible, material, spatial – in a word, geographical. At the same time, the category thematises the anxieties related to the invisibility of the late capitalist world, whose flows and networks seem to escape every form of plain representation. The case of the aforementioned films is even more interesting inasmuch as they run into the contradiction of traceability, i.e. the contrast between the will of mapping the flows and the conscience of their utter unrepresentability on a global(ised) scale. The responses chosen by filmmakers balance a reaffirmation of realist aesthetics, on one hand, and a recourse to subjective involvements, on the other. Do the two solutions answer the dilemma of contemporary world's traceability? Is there an ideology of visibility both in the World Essay film and in the World Cinema "approach", a sort of updating of the “monarch-of-all-I-survey” trope in postmodern times?
Introduzione a testi canonici sulla archeologia dei media, per la prima volta tradotti in italian... more Introduzione a testi canonici sulla archeologia dei media, per la prima volta tradotti in italiano; quadro storico sugli studi contemporanei sul cinema in Italia e il contributo italiano agli studi sull'archeologia dei media.
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Journal Articles by Giuseppe Fidotta
Book Chapters by Giuseppe Fidotta
Deadline for abstracts: 31 January 2020.