Problematizing Film and Urban Space w/ David Forgacs

//Thursday Oct. 30th

//5:30 PM

//GEM Lab

//FB 630.15

Abstract: Taking my lead from Henri Lefebvre’s contention (1974) that film, like other visual media such as photography and painting, cannot truthfully represent “social space”, I will consider first the weight of that argument and then explore possible counter-arguments. Focusing in particular on “city films”, the seminar will be constructed around texts, images and clips to be discussed together with participants.

Reading suggestions: Section II.4 in La Production de l'espace, Paris: Anthropos 1974, 110-119 (key passage 116) and in the Eng translation The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell 1991, Chapter 2.IV, 92-99 (key passage 97).

David Forgacs holds the Guido and Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò Chair of Contemporary Italian Studies at New York University. His publications include Messaggi di sangue. La violenza nella storia d’Italia (Laterza, 2021), Italy’s Margins: Social Exclusion and Nation Formation since 1861 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (with Stephen Gundle, Indiana University Press, 2007), Italian Culture in the Industrial Era (Manchester University Press, 1990) and The Antonio Gramsci Reader (ed., 2nd ed., New York University Press, 2000). His work on cinema includes a book on Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta and a co-edited book on Rossellini (both BFI Publishing, 2000), essays on Michelangelo Antonioni (2000, 2009, 2011) and Gillo Pontecorvo (2007) and full-length audio commentaries for the DVD and Blu-ray discs of Ossessione, Il Gattopardo, Il deserto rosso and Il conformista.