Flânerie and Female Authorship in Contemporary Italian Cinema
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This course examines the prolific production of Italian women filmmakers inscribing their work into a national cinematic tradition. The most prominent visual leitmotif in films by directors such as Marina Spada, Francesca Comencini, Alice Rohrwacher and others, is that of the wandering woman contemplating the cityscape. What does the act of walking signify in these works? How do these filmmakers embrace and transform Italy’s cinematic tradition? After highlighting the figure of the city-walker in post-war classics by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, we shall discuss from a gender perspective films such as Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, Pasolini’s Mamma Roma, and Antonioni’s La Notte, which feature female city-walkers who stroll throughout urban peripheries created during the country’s rush toward modernity. Then, we shall analyze the work of women directors who recurrently employ the narrative strategy of flânerie to construct female narratives of displacement and liminality. We shall question how and to what extent this contemporary cinematic production is indebted to the masters of neorealism and the auteurs from the sixties. Critical and theoretical readings will include essays by Michel de Certeau, Siegfried Kracauer, Janet Wolff, Elizabeth Wilson, Anne Friedberg, Giuliana Bruno, and others.
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