The Eye of Neo-Realism : The Blasetti Camera Project

International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media, vol. 2, no. 1, 2019

In the mid-twentieth-century, it was widely believed that innovations in photographing movement, color, and depth would one day afford complete mastery of the simulation of visual perception. This collective representation of purpose and of progress in photography was eloquently expressed as the “myth of total cinema” by André Bazin (1946), who argued that the longing for “integral realism” had always marked mechanical reproduction, inspiring inventors since the nineteenth century. The present article historicizes this integral-image utopia, mapping the expression of its intellectual mechanisms in the first accounts of photography then in photography’s emerging historiography. This research reveals the absence of a shared project around “complete” perceptual realism for most of the nineteenth century. The idea of progress toward a total image reproducing vision emerged and came to prevail in the popular imagination at a very particular moment—in 1896, following the invention of cinema—, transforming how people thought about the future of photography and told the story of its past. Keywords: historiography of photography, historiography of cinema, color photography, stereoscopy, cinema, perceptual realism, technological progress https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/stereo/article/view/6628

A History of Cinema Without Names, 2016

The intriguing title of this paper is meant to fuel the imagination of its reader: if animism is commonly accepted as a system of belief that imputes life to inanimate objects, what does it mean to conceive of an animistic history of the camera? Does that imply admitting the apparently nonsensical idea that the camera is alive? Surely, the “camera” - whatever we understand that to be, from the singular, technical object used to make shots, to the more abstract, idealized entity that disconcertingly pervades film theory – is not a living being. Drawing on a number of contemporary references from anthropology, image theory and science, and technology studies, I would like to suggest that we can think about the camera - undeniably a non-human entity - as an animated, autonomous agent capable of acting upon others, similar to a subject and even manifesting what I will call, after Jean Epstein, a “machinic subjectivity”. An “animistic history of the camera” is, therefore, more than (just) an intellectual history of cinema and of the different theoretical approaches that have, among others, chosen to anthropomorphize the camera and to endow it with such “evidently” human capacities like “seeing”, “gazing”, “peeping”, “feeling” and even “thinking”. In addition to this valuable theoretical account, an animistic history of the camera is a history of how certain filmic forms, engaging with concepts and representing ideas, came to shape the camera as an autonomous subject, materializing, in addition and in strictly filmic terms, the manifold expressions of cinema’s animistic powers.

This paper is part of a relation delivered at the 2nd Gradisca International Film Studies Spring School, 2004

Is it really feasible to write a history of film technique without taking into account experimental, craft-oriented and not-industrial practices as the ones of Italian cinema? In other words, the horizons of the story of technique, of the cinema machine understood as a collection of the modes of production, representation and reception and the film apparatus itself, cannot be looked at in isolation without taking into consideration he actual making of the film and how that is linked to the style of the filmaker. The story of technique cannot ignore the link between the making and the style. This places fundamental importance on the weight represented by the process of transformation from making to expression or rather to the moment in which the technique becomes a plastic art form. Therefore, the technique should be seen not merely as an aid to production but as an integral part of the semantic operation of expressing the language of the film itself.

In 1895 when the Lumière brothers unveiled their cinematographic camera, many scientists 6 were elated. Scientists hoped that the machine would fulfill a desire that had driven research 7 for nearly half a century: that of capturing the world in its own image. But their elation 8 was surprisingly short-lived, and many researchers quickly distanced themselves from the new 9 medium. The cinematographic camera was soon split into two machines, one for recording and 10 one for projecting, enabling it to further escape from the laboratory. The philosopher Henri 11 Bergson joined scientists, such as Etienne-Jules Marey, who found problems with the new 12 cinematographic order. Those who had worked to make the dream come true found that their 13 efforts had been subverted. This essay focuses on the desire to build a cinematographic camera, 14 with the purpose of elucidating how dreams and reality mix in the development of science and 15 technology. It is about desired machines, their often unexpected results, and about how the 16 interplay between what "is" (the technical), what "ought" (the ethical), and what "could" be 17 (the fantastical) drives scientific research.

Film Style / Lo stile cinematografico, edited by Enrico Biasin, Giulio Bursi, Leonardo Quaresima, Forum, 2007

This work focuses on the unusual relationship between style and technique starting in the early years of Italian Neorealism. It might appear uncommon to talk about style when looking at that all too brief period of Italian cinema marked by an extraordinary historical moment. Bazin himself describes the context as an exceptional one: " the films of Rossellini or De Sica owed the fact that they were major works, masterpieces, simply to a fortuitous combination of form and subject matter ". On the other hand, we cannot forget as has recently been written, that Neorealism can be understood as a true and proper stylistic system. The framework of this system, which can be said to constitute almost a kind of rhetoric, is aimed at the building of effects of reality.

L’Auteur de cinéma: histoire, généalogie, archéologie, sous la direction de C. Gauthier, D. Vezyroglou, AFRHC, 2013

The collaboration between the director and the cameraman, and the relationship between style and film technology at the origin of modern photography in cinema. The case of Alfo Graziati and Luchino Visconti.

viXra, 2020

This paper was written in order to examine the order of discovery of significant developments in the history of motion pictures. It is part of my efforts to put the study of social and cultural history and social change on a scientific basis capable of rational analysis and understanding. This has resulted in a hard copy book How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution and a website How Change Happens Rochelle Forrester's Social Change, Cultural Evolution and Philosophy of History website. There are also philosophy of history papers such as The Course of History , The Scientific Study of History , Guttman Scale Analysis and its use to explain Cultural Evolution and Social Change and Philosophy of History and papers on Academia.

The invention of motion pictures was only possible due to the prior discovery of the phenomenon of persistence of vision, the prior invention of photography and the ability to produce photographs with very brief exposure times. These discoveries were necessary before motion pictures could be invented, and given how human beings like to be entertained, it was also inevitable, that sooner or later in some society open to new ideas and technology, that motion pictures would be made to meet the human need for entertainment. Once motion pictures had been invented, sound and then color were added to create the motion pictures we are familiar with today. The order of discovery was inevitable and is an example of how social and cultural history has to follow a particular course determined by the structure of the world around us.