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“The travelling Genius”, Paolo Saporito – Amnesty, amnesia and censorship: the demise of the fascist past in the movie “I vinti” by Michelangelo Antonioni

On the occasion of the “XVII Settimana della lingua Italiana nel mondo”, that will have as theme “L’italiano al cinema, l’italiano nel cinema“, under high patronage of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, the Institute is pleased to announce the inauguration of the academic year 2017-18 with a conference Amnestia, amnesia e censura: la scomparsa del passato fascista nel film “I vinti” di Michelangelo Antonioni by Paolo Saporito.
The conference is part of the series of encounters entitled “The travelling Genius : Italians Art, humanities, science … in the world“, is a space for discussion and cultural dialogue that the Italian Cultural Institute has developed especially for young Italians in world. Italians who, beyond any orientation, are the bearers of knowledge accumulated in Italy and diffuse the following, even without their knowledge, a provision or a vocation of ancient origin: the generous exchange of culture, comforted by a keen sense of human comprehension.

October 16, 2017, 6:30pm Free Admission
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montréal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
Conference in Italian

The second postwar period, starting in 1945, is one of the most debated moments in Italian history. Official accounts usually portray it as a new epoch for the newborn Italian Republic, a period of national pacification where the need of the economic, social and political development of the country prevailed on the political opposition of antifascist parties. However, these accounts do not represent clearly the political and institutional continuity between the twenty-years dictatorship and the new Republic. This presentation aims to show how Italian culture inherited some practices, like cinema censorship, from the regime. In this analysis, it will be paramount to remember some key-events, like the Togliatti amnesty (1946), who pardoned fascist crimes. In those years, as well as during the 1950s, films addressing the fascist past or the Resistenza movement were not allowed or deeply censored. Thus, if we define the Togliatti amnesty as an institutionalized form of amnesia, then cinema censorship can be interpreted as a transposition of the same political attitude in Italian cultural industry. In this regard, Michelangelo Antonioni’s film “I vinti” (1953) is a very interesting case study. The first project of this film was about a neo-fascist movement active in Rome at the end of the forties, but then, because of several modification operated by censors (both the producers of the film and the official commissioners), it became a banal story about a young bourgeois smuggler of cigarettes. These modifications show how the Italian cinema industry, here taken as an example, was still deeply influenced by its fascist background, a background that Italian historiography forgets or does not want to acknowledge.

Paolo Saporito is a PhD student in Italian Studies at McGill University. His studies are related to posthumanism and transmediality, especially in Literature, Cinema and Digital Media. He is also interested in the different forms of transmedia intellectual commitment in contemporary Italy, with a particular focus on the collective of writers Wu Ming and the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. His research is also focused on Italian contemporary history and its representation in novels and films.

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