Film & Media Studies

This course discusses the means of journalistic reporting on various violent subject matter including: terrorism; war; ethnic and racial conflicts; domestic and gender violence; youth violence. It examines the ethics and obligations journalists have to provide information to the public. The course explores the difference between explaining, interpreting, and opining as well as the importance of providing context to the news events being reported and how these choices influence public perceptions.

This course studies the methodology of film analysis. It develops analysis skills by analyzing shots and sequences.

This course focuses on critical approaches to digital subjectivity to think about how human and non-human subjects have been articulated in the digital imaginary of everyday life since the first digital computers were built in the 1940s. How do we understand ourselves as digital subjects? How does the digital understand "us"? In this class we will turn to Histories of Computing, Software Studies, Cyber-Feminist and Marxist critique, Ethnographic and Anthropological studies of online culture and computer use, and Media studies and New Media Studies, to help us answer these questions. This course offers an opportunity to work with this material, as well as literary, visual, and popular culture, to trace connections between the first computers (not the machines, but rather the name given to the women who operated the first electronic digital computing machines) and our own "user" subjectivity today.

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced students only. Enrolment is based on consent of the instructor. The course focuses on particular phases of Italian film history, following movements, themes, trends, and genres that have characterized the transnational paths of Italian films, from the silent era to contemporary cinema. Through the analysis of Italian films that have been internationally distributed, the course detects the elements that may have contributed to their international success or failure. The course focuses on the following films: GERMANIA ANNO ZERO (GERMANY YEAR ZERO, Roberto Rossellini, 1948); CRONACA DI UN AMORE (STORY OF A LOVE AFFAIR, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1950); LA CIOCIARA (TWO WOMEN, Vittorio De Sica, 1960); DJANGO (Sergio Corbucci, 1966); MIMÌ METALLURGICO FERITO NELL'ONORE (THE SEDUCTION OF MIMÌ, Lina Wertmüller, 1972); and NICO, 1988 (Susanna Nicchiarelli, 2017). The course uses methods from reception theory, production and distribution studies, and textual analysis. The course considers the evolving characteristics of the film distribution system, the differences and nuances between distribution and circulation, and between local, national, and transnational scale. The course investigates the evolution of film scholarship on Italian popular cinema, as well as Italian films' most exportable traits and what have defined them throughout the history of Italian cinema.

This course examines the documentary mode in a range of historical contexts from its early history and its relationship with the avant-garde to the current prevalence of documentary in multiple forms and contexts.