Starting from a brief analysis of cinema as a cultural industry phenomenon, will devote the first part of the course to the transformations that over more than a century have affected not only the language of film, but also the cinematographic device and its form of consumption, the support and the condition of vision. In effect, today vision’s spaces can present aspects more articulated than a classic dark room, as a place strongly oriented to movie fruitions.  Therefore, the cinematographic practice can find its expression through new devices and new spaces of communication, creating process of re-mediation and re-location that are located in the trespassing areas of cinema and other medias.

In addressing then a brief formal analysis of cinematic language and its main stylistic currents, this course aims at deepening reflection on the complex relationship between cinema and psychoanalysis, considering both the relationship between art and psychoanalytical theory as well as the relationship between cinema and spectator.

By applying the tools of Freudian psychoanalytical enquiry to the study of fictional scenes and characters, it will be shown how the cinema, as a laboratory of images, affects and emotions, shares a wide field of research with psychoanalysis, even though the former is conceived and realised for reasons unrelated to psychoanalytical enquiry. Particularly, in examining the cinematic device and its mechanisms of fascination, mental processes, needs and tensions are brought into focus, together with all those forms of identification and projection that compel a spectator to the cinema.

This will be followed by a brief theoretical survey of the semiotic processes related to the cinematic experience, with a view of outlining an hermeneutic approach centred on the meaning of what is seen. Such an exercise goes beyond a reductive application of conceptual models, favouring instead a more respectful interpretative approach to the artwork as an “open sign”, aimed at capturing what this can teach about psychoanalysis and the very nature of its object of enquiry.

- Cinema and cultural industries.

- Transormation of cinema and forms of consumption.

- The visual culture as shared practice.

- Spaces communication cinema.

- The linguistic nature of the filmic text.

- Analysis of film.

- The cinematographic work: technique and style.

- Cinema, from origins to contemporary: historical outline.

- The “semiopragmatism” of audiovisual media.

- The cinematographic device as a phenomenon of fascination.

- The psychic mechanisms of audience involvement.

- Analogy between film and dream.

- The relationship between psychoanalysis and cinema: historical-theoretical perspective.

- Psychoanalytic Film Theory.

- From the Freudian Uncanny to the Lacanian Real.

- Christian Metz and the imaginary signifier.

- Slavoj ?i?ek: investigation “into” the language of cinema.

- The usage of psychoanalysis as an interpretive tool: values and limitations.

- Psychoanalysis and art: towards a psychoanalytical aesthetics.

- Cinema semiotics: reflections on film as a mutant object.

Cineforum laboratory

Structured into two brief thematic cycles, the workshop includes the filmological and narrative analysis of the following movies.

1. From the "logic" of dreams to the thematics of the Uncanny and the Real:

- Spellbound (USA 1945), director Alfred Hitchcock.

- Mulholland Drive (USA-France 2001), director David Lynch

- In the House (Dans la maison, France 2012), director François Ozon.

- The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (UK, Austria, Holland 2006), director Sophie Fiennes.

2. Asian cinema between realism and “truth”:

- The Story of Qui Ju (Qiu Ju da guan si, China 1992), director Zhāng Yìmóu.

- A Separation (Jodáeiye Náder az Simin, Iran 2011), director Asghar Farhadi.

Expected learning outcomes and acquired competencies

Basic knowledge of the history of cinema and its main stylistic currents.

Ability to analyze the communicative composition of a film, its technical aspects, syntactic and stylistic.

Understanding of the psychological and social (forms of suggestion individual and collective catharsis, identification and projection) solicited by the cinematographic device.

Ability to deepening the relationship between the cinematographic work and its author, and more generally between works of art and artist, through the lens of psychoanalytic theory.

Acquisition of a greater critical look towards the film language and the cinematographic medium; expansion of prospects of interpretations of them.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Course books

• Giaime Alonge. Il cinema. Tecnica e linguaggio. Edizioni Kaplan, Torino, 2011.

• Francesco Casetti. The Lumière Galaxy. Seven Key Words for the Cinema to Come. Columbia University Press, New York, 2015.

• Massimo G. Eusebio. Lo sguardo dello schermo. Psicoanalisi e teorie del cinema. Franco Angeli, Milano, 2015 (Due to be published soon).

Course books

• Giaime Alonge. Il cinema. Tecnica e linguaggio. Edizioni Kaplan, Torino, 2011.

• Francesco Casetti. The Lumière Galaxy. Seven Key Words for the Cinema to Come. Columbia University Press, New York, 2015.

• Massimo G. Eusebio. Lo sguardo dello schermo. Psicoanalisi e teorie del cinema. Franco Angeli, Milano, 2015 (Due to be published soon).

• Lucilla Albano. Lo schermo dei sogni. Chiavi psicoanalitiche del cinema. Marsilio, Venezia 2004.