̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Department of Italian

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker comes to Cambridge

sjr81 — Tue, 09 May 2017 14:51:48 +0000

Rosi’s most recent documentary, 2016’s Fire at Sea, was an uncompromising look at the everyday life of six locals on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the first port of call for the hundreds of thousands of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe.

Fire at Sea won the Golden Bear award for best film at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy awards in February.

During Rosi’s two-week residency (May 14-28), the Arts Picturehouse will screen the entirety of his work to date, with each screening followed by a Q&A with the director. Rosi will also connect directly with staff and students in the Centre for Film and Screen by delivering masterclasses and participating in a public symposium, Lands, Seas, Bodies: On the cinema of Gianfranco Rosi, on Wednesday, May 24.

International recognition of Rosi soared after Meryl Streep, the jury chair of the Berlin film festival, publically endorsed Fire at Sea as “a daring hybrid of captured footage and deliberate storytelling that allows us to consider what documentary can do. It is urgent, imaginative and necessary filmmaking.”

Dr John David Rhodes, Director of the Centre for Film and Screen and a specialist in Italian cinema, calls Rosi’s work “indisputably among the most important in the world.”

Audience numbers for documentaries have grown considerably in the last ten years, largely driven by audiences going in search of authenticity in the lived experience.

“It’s a rich moment for documentaries because they provide the ability to respond powerfully and flexibly to geo-political crises,” said Rhodes. “People are starved for contact with the real and with reality. People are trying to find ways to make contact with the world – documentary filmmaking is one way of doing that. It can produce knowledge and experiences that are otherwise closed to us.

“Rosi’s residency offers our students and the wider ̽��ֱ�� the opportunity to engage at close range a working filmmaker of the highest calibre. As was the case last year when we hosted Joanna Hogg (our first filmmaker-in-residence), Rosi’s residency brings to our community of film scholars and students of cinema the opportunity to think about film from the point of view of the film artist. It offers a vital opportunity to test practice and theory against each other, while getting to hang out with one of the most interesting people working in world cinema.”

More information about the screenings and public symposium is available on the Centre for Film and Screen’s website.

Tickets for the screenings including a post-film Q&A can be purchased from the Arts Picturehouse website.

Hailed as “one of the most important artists in any medium”, the award-winning and Oscar-nominated Italian documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi is coming to Cambridge this month as filmmaker-in-residence at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Film and Screen.

Rosi's work is indisputably among the most important in the world.

John David Rhodes

Still from Fire at Sea, the Oscar-nominated documentary by Gianfranco Rosi

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Grand designs: the role of the house in American film

amb206 — Fri, 27 May 2016 13:51:41 +0000

̽��ֱ��Lonely Villa tells the story of four women subjected to a terrifying break-in by intruders. A woman barricades herself and her daughters into the house as her absent husband, alerted by a phone call, hastens to their rescue. In the opening shot, the villains are seen lurking in the shrubbery of the handsome all-American home that stands in splendid isolation, an icon of the property-owning dream.

Rhodes’ exploration of the house in American cinema has taken him deep into the history and theory of both film and architecture, and will result in a book due for publication in 2017. He is Director of the newly launched Centre for Film and Screen, which brings together researchers from subjects as diverse as English, philosophy, history of art, architecture and languages, and continues a tradition of teaching and research on the subject of film since the 1960s.

“Houses are built to be lived in but also to be looked at – and you only have to switch on your television to see how much they fascinate us,” he says. “In watching cinema, too, we are forever looking at and into people’s houses. Cinema’s preoccupation with the house stems from cinema’s strong relation to realism and to the representation of human lives, a large portion of which plays out in domestic interiors.”

Central to Rhodes’ research into films that range from Meet Me in St Louis and Gone with the Wind to Psycho and Citizen Kane is the idea of property and possession as well as their opposites – alienation and dispossession. It’s a theme that flows through the cinematic experience right to the temporary possession of the seat in which the viewer watches a film and enters the intimate spaces of other people’s lives. “Property reigns in many aspects of the cinema experience,” he says. “Not just in the drama unfolding on the screen itself but also in the process of film-making, practices of production, distribution and exhibition.”

Rhodes suggests that the pleasure we take in immersing ourselves in the visual and sensual experiences of entering other people’s worlds has an antecedent in country house tours and, most specifically, the collections known as ‘cabinets of curiosities’. Objects acquired to display and impress, these museum-like collections are examples of belonging and, by the same token, of not belonging. “At the heart of visual pleasure is a constant negotiation of property boundaries,” says Rhodes. “It’s a question of mine but not yours – of inviting in yet keeping out.”

Revealed to a chosen few guests, cabinets of curiosities and their modern equivalents speak powerfully of their owner’s taste. A short film titled House: After Five Years of Living (1955) perfectly encapsulates the house as an object of desire and as a container for carefully curated possessions. Directed by designers Charles and Ray Eames, it shows their modernist house – one they designed themselves – in a series of stills that venerate this landmark building and its collection of modern and folk art, textiles and design objects. Neither of its owners appears yet their presence is palpable through the framing, shot by shot, of the house they created to work so beautifully in its Californian context.

Ownership is not confined to buildings but extends to those who live and work in them. Rhodes says that his thesis is implicitly feminist. His forthcoming book will draw attention to the ways in which, in film and in real life, women are forced into uncomfortably close relationships with the home, becoming part of the same parcel of ownership.

An even more tightly binding relationship is played out between servant and home, particularly in the representation of African American slavery in the American South following the Civil War. Two thirds of the way into Gone with the Wind, the servant girl Prissy looks up at her employers’ newly constructed mansion and exclaims: “We sure is rich now!” ̽��ֱ��viewer is apparently invited to laugh both at her delight and at her naivety, and in a manner that only repeats the film’s explicit racism. Yet the spectator is also the butt of this joke.

“This shot is a kind of ‘hall of mirrors’ of property relations,” says Rhodes. “ ̽��ֱ��cinema audience looks at the image which was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s property. Inside the image, the servants gaze up at the property of the house. But if we look carefully we see that there is no house there: what they are really looking at is either a painted background or else a matt painting inserted in the post-production process. Whether or not the image was there when the scene was shot, what they are looking at is a ‘prop’.”

̽��ֱ��word prop is, of course, an abbreviation for property. ̽��ֱ��house, as the ultimate prop, takes many forms, its physical form acting as a powerful pointer. ̽��ֱ��mansion and the bungalow, the rambling shingle and stick-style residence, the modernist home with its picture windows: all convey messages (about status, class, race, politics) and shape the action that takes place within them.

“In much of the US, the possession of land, even if it’s a tiny strip of grass separating one house from another, is fundamental to a feeling of ownership. ̽��ֱ��bungalow was initially seen as a space for easeful, convenient living – but this modest home quickly came to spell failure,” says Rhodes. “If you think about entrances and exits, a suburban home with a hallway allows for a gradual transition from outside to inside while a bungalow offers none of that dignity. ̽��ֱ��cramped space of the bungalow leads to too much intimacy and to uncomfortable confrontations.”

Dwelling places are objects of desire – especially so in the affluent Western world. Our homes absorb our money and eat into our time: perhaps, in the process of acquisition, they own us just as much as we own them. As backdrops to our lives, they tell stories about the kind of people we are and would like to be. In film, and on the screen, houses convey multiple meanings – not just about class and status but also about childhood and our relationship with history.

When a house is broken into, a dream is shattered. In Griffith’s ̽��ֱ��Lonely Villa, the ruffians are hampered by the solidity of the house’s doors and the weight of the furniture pushed up against them. All ends well when the mother and daughters are rescued, just in time, by the man of the house. But property is fragile and, in the final reckoning, all ownership is a question of controlling impermanent and shifting borders.

Inset image: Credit, ̽��ֱ��District.

It’s black and white, silent and just short of ten minutes in length. But D.W. Griffith’s 1909 classic ̽��ֱ��Lonely Villa inspired Dr John David Rhodes, Director of Cambridge’s new Centre for Film and Screen, to look at the role and meaning of the house in American cinema.

Houses are built to be lived in but also to be looked at – you only have to switch on your television to see how much they fascinate us.

John David Rhodes

Biograph Company Production

Screenshots from D.W. Griffith’s ̽��ֱ��Lonely Villa (1909)

Centre for Film and Screen

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has fostered teaching and research on the subject of film since the 1960s, with pioneering work undertaken in the 1970s-80s by influential figures such as Stephen Heath and Colin MacCabe. Over time, film studies rose in prominence across the ̽��ֱ��’s faculties. In 2008, Cambridge’s strengths in this subject were consolidated with the launch of the ̽��ֱ��’s first MPhil in Screen and Media Cultures.

From this heritage of Cambridge’s thoughtful consideration of the art of the moving image, the new Centre for Film and Screen has been developed. Although based mainly in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, the Centre is truly interdisciplinary, featuring researchers from across subjects as diverse as English, Philosophy, History of Art, Architecture and Languages.

This year, the Centre is launching the ̽��ֱ��’s first ever PhD programme in Film and Screen Studies, to complement the existing MPhil course and to enable doctoral students to join the active and varied film and screen studies research culture at Cambridge and participate in the Centre’s teaching, research and seminars.

Cambridge itself is a cinematic city. Its architectural beauty and history have, over the years, made it a very attractive location for film production. ̽��ֱ��city is home to a thriving art cinema and numerous film and arts festivals, including the annual Cambridge Film Festival. Many of the Colleges of the ̽��ֱ�� have film screening programmes and host visiting filmmakers.

̽��ֱ��broader culture of the ̽��ֱ�� has long been associated with creativity and dynamism in the arts and humanities, and continues to produce some of the most noteworthy names in the film and television industry, such as actors Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston and director Sam Mendes. Cambridge’s postgraduate degrees in Film and Screen Studies combine the wealth of the ̽��ֱ��’s humanistic traditions with innovative inquiry into the contemporary culture of the moving image.

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From the pit to the pinnacle: Dante reappraised “vertically”

rcc40 — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 10:33:50 +0000

Dante’s 14th century epic journey through the Christian afterlife, the Divine Comedy, has long been regarded as a literary and theological masterpiece. Over the past four years, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has brought together experts on Dante from across the UK and abroad to re-examine Dante’s work in a bold new way, looking at the “vertical” connections between the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso as Dante travels from Hell, through Purgatory and finally to Heaven.

̽��ֱ��project, which took the form of a series of workshops and public lectures hosted by Trinity College, marks the first time that a “vertical” reading has been systematically applied to Dante’s entire 14,233-line work as a whole. Scholars from around the world came to Cambridge to explore how the same-numbered cantos from all three canticles relate to each other, and what new light these connections can shed on Dante’s artistic and conceptual modes throughout the poem.

̽��ֱ��final lecture of the series was presented by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Professor Lord Rowan Williams, and examined the final cantos of each section and their themes of “Fire, Ice and Holy Water”.

Professor Williams’ lecture, along with all others in the series, is available to view online via the ̽��ֱ�� Streaming Media Service.

̽��ֱ��cycle of 33 major public lectures by literary scholars, philosophers, theologians and thinkers began in 2012. Over four years, it has offered a radical new approach to Dante’s great work and to the venerable Lectura Dantis tradition by generating innovative readings of the Comedy as well as broadly influential debate on Dante’s position in our culture today. ̽��ֱ��series, called Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, was organised by Dr George Corbett and Dr Heather Webb as an initiative of the Department of Italian at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, in collaboration with the Leeds ̽��ֱ�� Centre for Dante Studies and the ̽��ֱ�� of Notre Dame.

Dr Heather Webb, lecturer in Italian at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Looking at Dante through a vertical reading is a way of starting over and exploring the poem afresh. If we read, for example, Inferno III, Purgatorio III, and Paradiso III, throwing out all our usual ideas and just looking at those three cantos, something new always comes up. This series has examined how we read Dante, what we bring to each reading, and also how Dante himself might have wanted us to read his poem”.

Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy is also available in book form, published via Open Book Publishers, an Open Access publisher that makes books freely available to read online, as well as in inexpensive e-book and paper editions. Vertical Readings will be a three-volume collection. Volume one is currently available, with volumes two and three coming soon.

̽��ֱ��collection offers an unprecedented repertoire of vertical readings for the entire Divine Comedy, which not only articulates unexamined connections between the three canticles but also unlocks new ways to enter into the core themes of the poem. It is hoped that the three volumes together will provide an indispensable resource for students of Dante.

Dr Webb said: “Open Book Publishers have made it so that anyone can go online and read the whole collection, which is really exciting for everyone involved in the project. We want students and enthusiasts at every level to be able to access this new approach to looking at Dante and for us to share the results that everyone who has worked on these readings have brought together over the past four years.”

Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy is available to read free online and purchase via Open Book Publishers.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has rounded off a four-year project at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� which explored the “vertical” connections across Dante’s Comedy.

This series has examined how we read Dante, what we bring to each reading, and also how Dante himself might have wanted us to read his poem

Heather Webb, Department of Italian

Wikimedia Commons

Dante's Divine Comedy shown in a fresco by Michelino

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̽��ֱ��British Academy welcomes new Fellows for 2015

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 14:38:53 +0000

They are among 42 highly distinguished UK academics from 18 universities welcomed as Fellows by the Academy, taking the total number of living Fellows to over one thousand for the first time.

̽��ֱ��Fellows elected from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge are:

Professor Cyprian Broodbank – John Disney Professor of Archaeology, Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.

Professor Garth Fowden – Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse.

Professor Robert Gordon – Serena Professor of Italian and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.

Professor Sanjeev Goyal – Professor of Economics and Fellow of Christ’s College.

Professor Peter Mandler – Professor of Modern Cultural History and Bailey Lecturer in History at Gonville & Caius College.

Professor Joachim Whaley – Professor of German History and Thought and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.

Also receiving a fellowship is Professor Michael Mann, Honorary Professor at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the ̽��ֱ�� of California, Los Angeles.

Lord Stern, President of the British Academy, said: “This year we have the honour of once again welcoming the finest researchers and scholars into our Fellowship. Elected from across the UK and world for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences, they represent an unrivalled resource of expertise and knowledge.

“Our Fellows play a vital role in the work of the Academy; encouraging younger researchers, engaging in public discussion of the great issues and ideas of our time, and contributing to policy reports. Their collective work and expertise are testament to why research in the humanities and social sciences is vital for our understanding of the world and humanity.”

̽��ֱ��British Academy is the UK's expert body that supports and speaks for the humanities and social sciences. It funds research across the UK and in other parts of the world, in disciplines ranging from archaeology to economics, from psychology to history, and from literature to law.

View the full list of British Academy Fellows.

Seven Cambridge academics have been elected to the fellowship of the British Academy in recognition of their outstanding research.

Their collective work and expertise are testament to why research in the humanities and social sciences is vital for our understanding of the world and humanity

Lord Stern, President of the British Academy

̽��ֱ��British Academy

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