Schermi. Storie e culture del cinema e dei media in Italia

Di legno e di carne, Pinocchio fra cultura materiale e performance

2024-05-09T09:49:17+00:00

La storia dell’esercizio cinematografico di provincia in tre momenti storici. Il caso di Gardone Val Trompia

2024-02-22T10:52:48+00:00

The article uses a microhistorical approach to Gardone Val Trompia’s movie theatres. Using archives, local newspapers and other sources, it retraces historical change in management’s forms of out-of-the-city exhibitors. The aim is to highlight their radical difference: never cinema-only venues and always entangled with the local administration and civil society. Three particular moments are discussed: the origins of rural cinema among politicized mutualistic societies; the dominance of non-profit venues during the fascist era, especially those managed by Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro; the renewal and ‘professionalization’ in the mid-1950s. It is also discussed how the government license impacted locally on the cinemas’ existence.

Gli accordi Anica-Mpea e l’impiego dei capitali americani nel nostro cinema / Parte 2 – Dal finanziamento dei film al finanziamento dell’Anica

2024-01-19T17:27:50+00:00

The agreements between the industrial and trade organizations ANICA and MPAA/MPEA regulated Italian-American film relations between 1951 and 1962, promoting the growth of “Runaway productions” and joint productions in Italy, but also supporting the distribution of Italian films abroad by US companies. The article, based on extensive archival research, reconstructs for the first time the development and implementation of these agreements, also following the paths of American money in Italian cinema.

Introduzione

2024-05-09T09:43:54+00:00

Mille canzoni per un burattino che canzonava

2024-01-09T16:02:38+00:00

The article examines some of the many songs inspired by Collodi’s book, in particular those that are part of film soundtracks. The author distinguishes between the songs about Pinocchio and those song by Pinocchio. Pinocchio does not sing much in the novel, he mainly likes mocking and is easy-go- ing, interested in plays and loves partying. He furthermore pollutes the soundscape with his wooden feet and is altogether a noisy and naughty child. Italian films generally respect Pinocchio’s sponta- neous childish musicality, whereas foreign musical films, such as those produced by Disney and Del Toro have used the episode of Mangiafuoco’s theater to underline Pinocchio’s identity as a showman, who is actually a puppet. Moreover, also the authors of the songs about Pinocchio interpreted and celebrated him in many ways (e.g.the inauguration of the park in Collodi) highlighting the ambiguity and richness of the character and his adventures. Even the music (melodies, arrangements, sounds) are influenced by the bittersweet complexity of the elusive puppet.

Puer digitalis. Il corpo tecnologico di Pixnocchio.

2024-01-09T16:03:16+00:00

“Pixnocchio” has known as the first computer and digital animation in Italy. Created by Guido Vanzetti and Giuseppe Laganà, this short film shows Pinocchio as a digital body in evolution, formed by geometric volumes and colors. Digital animation allows to create a peculiar style combining traditional technique and computer technology: in this way “Pixnocchio” is nothing more than a hybrid animated film, that fits into the Italian videoartistic context of early ’80. The digital body of “Pixnocchio” seems like the new artistic representation of the contempo- rary italianity.

Quando Pinocchio incontra Renzo & Lucia. Parodia della Bambina dai capelli turchini nella Fata di Anna Marchesini (in guisa di Gina Lollobrigida)

2024-01-09T15:57:49+00:00

The papers aims to analyze the performance given by the actress Anna Marchesini (1953-2016) in the television drama “I promessi sposi” (1990), which sees her disguised as the iconic Blue Fairy played by Gina Lollobrigida (1927-2023) within the cult movie “Le avventure di Pinocchio” (1972), directed by Luigi Comencini and based on the homonym novel by Carlo Collodi. The imitation of the well-known star was in fact one of the most important “workhorses” in Marchesini’s comic repertoire. The essay makes use of the contribution offered by the audiovisual document (available in full version on RaiPlay platform) and Tullio Solenghi’s oral testimony, collegue and sidekick in that parodic sketch.

OcchioPinocchio. Il Pinocchio apocrifo – e maledetto – di Francesco Nuti

2024-01-09T15:39:08+00:00

Severely criticized almost unanimously at the time of its release, Francesco Nuti’s “OcchioPinocchio” (1994) represents a rare case of a “cursed” Italian film from the 1990s. It became notorious for its extremely costly and troubled production, whose release was delayed by a year, as well as for the massive flop that followed, so severe that it marked the decline of Nuti’s career and personal life, despite his previous success as a comedian and director. Twenty years after its release, perhaps it is time to reevaluate its worth, if not critically, then at least by scientifically identifying the prominent place it occupies within the myriad of cinematic adaptations of Collodi’s Pinocchio. Nuti’s film is indeed, not only in Italy but also in the international Pinocchio galaxy, the creator of an apocryphal Pinocchio: an adult yet somehow a child due to life’s circumstances, the son of a Geppetto who wants to make him a puppet, forced to flee through a land of toys that is the wildest and most inhospitable America, in love with a dark version of the fairy whom he ultimately helps. A disoriented Pinocchio made of flesh that must learn to discover itself, even timidly encountering sexuality, unable to lie and thus unsuitable for a world of deceitful adults (starting with his father); a Pinocchio thrown brutally into a world of violence, where he must fend for himself without help (no critique has dwelled on the fleeting yet essential moment when he crushes an insect with his shoe while uttering “Fuck you, cricket”, thereby affirming his solitude). Thus, “OcchioPinocchio” juggles various aspects of the Collodian discourse, both diegetically (up to the bad ending), and in terms of the physical and psychological construction of the character, who is hurled from Tuscany to the United States, embodying a specific form of Italian identity.

Un burattino elastico fra illustrazione e animazione. Il corpo di Pinocchio nelle pratiche artistiche di Gianluigi Toccafondo

2024-01-09T16:04:10+00:00

The essay investigates the representation of Pinocchio in Gianluigi Toccafondo’s artistic practices, mainly analyzing the figurative motifs. Collodi’s puppet is, indeed, explicitly at the center of several works by Toccafondo, which are interested in painting, illustration and animated cinema. Using his distinctive visual style, Toccafondo contaminates drawings and animations with cinematographic references. This is how the puppet takes the form of Totò while the Cat and the Fox take those of Laurel and Hardy. Through the analysis of the representation of Pinocchio’s body, the essay wants to capture and interpret a significant update of the symbolic elements inherent in the imaginary of Pinocchio in contemporary age.

Figura-azioni canzonettistiche del corpo di Pinocchio: ricostruzioni del personaggio replicante nell’immaginario nazionale dalla forma-canzone al musical

2024-01-09T15:27:49+00:00

In this essay we analyze the figurations of the character of Pinocchio within the Italian song-writing imaginary, studying them from a morphological, transmedia and sociosemiotic point of view, and considering as an epistemological horizon his status as popular and replicating character. From the analysis of this models, it emerges how its nature as a hybrid puppet in transformation represents the narrative shred that guarantees the cohesion of a transmedia ecosystem that evolves into song along a plural path, which manifests itself through relational tensions, visual expansions, and bodily and figurative overlaps, which solicit visual and performative elements. In this way Italian song contributes to the portrait of the transmedia Pinocchio, feeding its ecosystem through new and unprecedented access points and views.

Fughe ed epifanie di Pinocchio nell’opera di Virgilio Sieni

2024-01-09T16:01:33+00:00

The figure of Pinocchio recurs in Virgilio Sieni’s choreographic production, for the imagery the character evokes and for the questions that its dual puppetry and human nature raises. Its variations are analyzed in respect to Sieni’s choreographic cycle on the fairy tale, where Pinocchio appears in multiple performances, and to the piece ‘Pinocchio. Leggermente diverso’ (2012), interpreted by the blind dancer Giuseppe Comuniello. Based on first-hand research, this essay shows the deconstructive variations Pinocchio undergoes in these works and the meta-discursive level traversing these choreographies, which lead to a renewed cultural reading of Pinocchio that shifts its core identifiers from loneliness and diversity to relationality and otherness.

Quando a calcare le scene è il Pinocchio noir di Zaches Teatro

2023-10-28T17:21:56+00:00

Zaches Teatro’s work on “Pinocchio” places at the center of its reflection (and creation) the puppet as an “idea”, an object of research by the company that from its origins, investigating the union between different artistic languages (contemporary dance, use of the mask, vocal experimenta- tion, the relationship between plastic movements, live-electronics, up to biomechanics), has found a key element in the artificial figure and fertile ground in what we define as “figure theatre”. “Pinocchio” becomes the engine of a quest that brings to the stage, in a dark and eventful journey, the sense of death, violence and the unknown that Collodi synthesized in images within a completely expressionist epic.