Italian Experimental Cinema and Moving-Image Art

This volume presents one of the first systematic inquiries into Italian experimental and avant-garde cinema in English language, thanks to contributions by outstanding researchers who deepen the history of experimental audio-visual works in Italy. Frameworks of film production, distribution and circulation, as well as theoretical discourses and emblematic case studies are investigated by this edited collection, which tries to provide a broad overview of the complex phenomena that occurred in a century of cinema beyond its industry, its market, its conventions. The aim of this book is not to offer a comprehensive compendium, but to explore new paths in researching Italian experimental moving image, its history, and new theoretical insights into authors and their works. The volume is structured in thematic sections. Each of them includes different contributions according to two different types: plenary essays, which offer in-depth analyses on historical and theoretical features, and monographic essays, which focus on single authors, collectives, or works.

Pivotal English-Language Study on Italian Experimental Cinema Showcasing Italy's Role in the Global Avant-Garde Network Interdisciplinary Approach Bridging Cinema, Art, and Culture in Italy

Auteur

Rossella Catanese (PhD) is a research associate at the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, and adjunct professor of 'History of Italian Cinema' at NYU Florence. Previously, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Udine and IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. Her books include Lacune binarie. Il restauro dei film e le tecnologie digitali (2013), Bill Morrison, 'Decasia: the State of Decay' (2023), and the collections Futurist Cinema. Studies on Italian Avant-garde Film (2017) and From Sensation to Synaesthesia in Film and New Media, co-edited with Francesca Scotto Lavina and Valentina Valente (2019). She also received the Sixth Marcel Duchamp Research Grant from the Staatliches Museum Schwerin (Germany) (2023).

Jennifer Malvezzi (PhD) is a researcher at the University of Parma. She teaches New Media Aesthetics, Film History Principles, and History of Radio and Television. Her research focuses on the relationship between the moving image and other arts, experimental film and video. She has written essays for journals and volumes and co-curated several exhibitions. She is the author of the monograph Remedi-action. Dieci anni di videoteatro italiano (2015) and Taroni Cividin. Performance, Video, Expanded Cinema (1977-1984), edited with Flora Pitrolo. She collaborates with the Home Movies Archive for the Art & Experimental Film project, dedicated to films by Italian artists and filmmakers. Additionally, she is a member of the scientific board of the Umberto Bignardi Archive, and series editor of ExSeries, a multilingual book series devoted to experimental cinema.

Contenu

Part 1. Towards an Italian Experimental Cinema: Pioneers, Early Theory and the Science of the Experimental.- Chapter 1. Futurism and Cinema: A Real and Dreamlike World (Michael Syrimis).- Chapter 2. The Experimental in Early Scientific Film (Maria Ida Bernabei).- Chapter 3. Everything is Experimental. Cinema sperimentale as a Revolution (1934-1943) (Andrea Mariani ).- Part 2. Expanding Cinema Among Industrial, Artistic and Amateur Practices.- Chapter 4. Paths of Experimentation in Italian Industrial Cinema: Olivetti's Utility Films (Federico Pierotti).- Chapter 5. Spaghetti Expanded. A brief history of Italian Expanded Cinema (1967-1981) (Jennifer Malvezzi).- Chapter 6. Mapping Musical Practices in/for Underground Experimental Film (19601979) (Alessandro Cecchi).- Part 3. The Network is the Medium: Television, Video and Pioneers of the Digital Age.- Chapter 7. Art and Television in Italy: A Troubled History (Francesco Spampinato).- Chapter 8. Uncovering Italian Early Video Art: Pioneers, Exhibitions and Centres (Laura Leuzzi).- Chapter 9. Italian computer art in the 1980s (Paola Lagonigro).- Chapter 10. Fade out: Between Cinema and performing arts (Flavia Dalila D'Amico).- Part 4. Thinking Outside the Box: The Political Places of Media.- Chapter 11. Radical ecologies and experimental videos in the early 1990s (Diego Cavallotti).- Chapter 12. Working at the Margins: notes on the Cinematic in Italian 21st Century Artistic Practice (Vincenzo Estremo).- Chapter 13. Amateur/Experimental. The restoration of Italian experimental and artist cinema (Paolo Simoni).- Chapter 14. Italian Film Artisans Today. Contemporary Artist-run Labs and Analog Filmmakers (Rossella Catanese).- Part 5. Focus on Personalities.- Chapter 15. Rhythms of vision. Three experimental films by Corrado D'Errico (Denis Lotti).- Chapter 16. Experimental cinema is not an end in itself. Francesco Pasinetti's role at the beginning of experimentalism (Carlotta Guido).- Chapter 17. Ragghianti's Cinématisme. The Critofilms Between Painting and Architecture (Marie Rebecchi).- Chapter 18. A Cinema of Research: Bruno Munari and Monte Olimpino (Matilde Nardelli).- Chapter 19. What's Happening? Antonello Branca and the Documentary as a Happening Form (Milo Adami).- Chapter 20. Gianfranco Brebbia, the cineamatore territory (Dominique Willoughby).- Chapter 21. Carmelo Bene: The Agitator (Adrian Martin).- Chapter 22. Alberto Grifi and a new grammar of vision (Clizia Centorrino).- Chapter 23. Cine-TV Experiments: La magnifica ossessione, and Beyond (Leonardo Cabrini).- Chapter 24. Rethinking Filippo Panseca. Technological experimentation and esthetics of communication between the Sixties and the Seventies. (Valentino Catricalà).- Chapter 25. Politics of the experimental image. Angela Ricci Lucchi & Yervant Gianikian (Miriam De Rosa).- Chapter 26. Affective Encounters and Experimental Approaches in the Films of Alina Marazzi (Rosanna Maule).- Chapter 27. Sandro Del Rosario's Sguardo (Marco Bellano).- Chapter 28. Film and the Portal. The Experimental Animation of Leonardo Carrano. (Giacomo Ravesi).- Chapter 29. Printing Cinema? Printed Matter, Exhibition and Film in Rosa Barba's work (Adeena Mey).- Chapter 30. Visual Aesthetics of Hacktivism: Paolo Cirio (Carolina Fernández Castrillo).- Chapter 31. Timeless screens. The Video Pictorialism of Marcantonio Lunardi (Pasquale Fameli).- Chapter 32. Between culture and technologies: Karmachina (Laura Cesaro).