Race on Film. Italian Colonial and Empire Cinema

This course examines a selection of ethnographic and documentary films seeking to comprehend the significance of the visual during the Italian colonial period. We will analyze the images, the message and the political dimension underlying the films. It is crucial the question of how we interpret the significance and the political ramification of what the images denote, and how the films ad their portrayal of the “colonized other” mirror the variations of the different phases of Italian colonial history. We will pay attention to the ways forms of power and privilege constructed racial and identity formations in the Italian African territories. To this aim, we will compare films from the earlier phase of colonialism to those released after the Italian-Ethiopic conflict. Conducted in English with the possibility for students interested in practicing Italian to do so in groups and sessions.