L’Amore, il Cinema e i Viaggi in Italia (Love, Cinema and Italian Travels)

In-person event, Book Presentation

Inspired by his new book Le Immagini dell’Amore (The Images of Love) published for Marsilio, Roberto De Gaetano leads a dialogue with Prof. Armando Maggi, on representations of love in traditional literature and cinema, with a focus on Italy. 

Love does not exist without stories, and stories become modern myths, literature and art. Cinema, more than any other art form, was able to make love storytelling real while also filled with imagination. And what about Italy? Not only classic Italian literature (starting from Dante and Petrarca) has told exemplary love stories, but Italy itself has been the backdrop of real love that became myth, like the one of Romeo and Giulietta in Verona. Similar is the role of Napels in Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy) by Roberto Rossellini (1954), an extraordinary movie that tells the story of a couple from the bourgeoisie of London, traveling to Italy to sell an inherited house, who lose themselves in the city of Naples only to rediscover each other again. 

The conversation will include the analysis and screening of Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy) by Roberto Rossellini (1954, 97’).

A limited number of seats are available. Registration is required. Please note that all guests attending the event in-person are required to wear facial masks, properly covering the nose and mouth, and to provide both a photo ID and proof of full vaccination against Covid-19. People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after the completion of a CDC or WHO recommended vaccine regimen. Bring a printed copy of this completed self-declaration form with you to the event.

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Roberto De Gaetano was born and resides in Rome. He is professor of Filmology at the University of Calabria, where he is Rector’s Delegate for the Performing Arts. He has conceived and organized numerous international conferences in Italy and abroad. Among his numerous publications: L’immagine contemporanea (2010), La potenza delle immagini (2012), Nanni Moretti. Lo smarrimento del presente (2015), Il cinema e i film. Le vie della teoria in Italia (2017), Cinema Italiano. Forme, identità, stili di vita (2018, Premio “Limina”). Ha edited the three volume work Lessico del cinema italiano. Forme di rappresentazione e forme di vita (2014-2016). He founded and is editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal “Fata Morgana” and of the journal of criticism “Fata Morgana Web.”

Armando Maggi is the Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor in Western Civilization in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. He is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Studi pasoliniani. He is the author of multiple volumes, among others Satan’s Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology (2001), In the Company of Demons, (2006), and The Resurrection of the Body: Pasolini From Saint Paul to Sade (2009). His latest book, Preserving the Spell: Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-tale tradition (2015) on the tradition of magic tales in Western culture, was awarded the Flaiano Prize.  He works on early-modern and modern culture.