Italian Studies 397J - ST-FromNeorealistoRealityTV

This course will explore the development of the aesthetic of reality in audiovisual media from film to television and portable screens in the context of modern Italian history. The appeal and the power of the medium to capture and show reality is intricately related with modes of technical production, social and ethical discourse, and any current political order. We will analyze the deployment of 'reality' on screen from the post WWII neorealist redemptive project after Fascism, through the contaminated narrative explorations of artists like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Michelangelo Antonioni, to modern documentary forms and hybrids (docufictions, infotainment) and television's twisted tales of reality in the era of Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset. Taught in English.