A Grammar of Cinepoiesis: Poetic Cameras of Italian Cinema

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Description

Cinepoiesis, or cinema of poetry, strikes us as a strange combination, a phrase we initially read as an oxymoron. Poetry is often associated with the abstract and the evocative, while cinema suggests the concrete and the visible. Yet, various visual media use strong and often contradictory images, whose symbolic force and visual impact stimulate the publics attention. Abstract and emblematic images surround us, and the poetic nature of these images lies in the way they speak beyond their apparent limits and stimulate connections on a subjective level. A prosaic world like the contemporary one, though, no longer seems to hold a place for poetry. We are inundated by the need to tell and to be told, the need to build our lives through narratives. But it is precisely here, in this contemporary landscape, that the cinema of poetry attempts to establish a space for itself, exchanging the productive and industrial apparatus for the poetic stimulus of a sensory experience. A Grammar of Cinepoiesis is a theoretical and practical guide to the cinema of poetry, to its tools and forms. It examines how the language of a cinema of poetry works both in its theoretical foundations and in its modes of representation, and how it takes shape in the exemplary practice of Italian authors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and the more recent Franco Piavoli and Matteo Garrone.

Reviews

In this accomplished and altogether brilliant study, Carlorosi offers persuasive and detailed readings of a group of key films from Italian cinema historyFederico Fellinis La voce della luna, Pier Paolo Pasolinis Accatone and Mamma Roma, Michelangelo Antonionis Red Desert and Blow-Up, and more recently Franco Piavolis Il pianeta azzurro and Nostos, and Matteo Garrones Primo amore and Gomorra. The author explores the philosophy of each of these gifted filmmakers as revealed in their films, and she does so in a manner that elides traditional taxonomic theory and pursues a much more humanist and aesthetic path. Carlorosis passionate and erudite analysis of these films and their creators opens up a new path for film interpretation, which is in keeping with one of the aims of the series in which the book appears, 'Cineesthetics: New Directions in Film and Philosophy.' With these generous, perceptive, and deeply informed readings, Carlorosi makes the films come alive for a new generation of viewers. The book closes with illuminating interviews with directors Piavoli and Garrone. This is an original and vibrant book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. * CHOICE *
Leopardi's Silvia leads us to find poetry in life and life in poetry. Silvia Carlorosi, adapting Leopardi's poetics, leads us to look for poetry in cinema and to engage in the process of poiesis or creation that poetic cinema requires of the viewer, not only to understand the reality represented on the screen, but to appreciate and enrich our own lives as well. -- Sante Matteo, Miami University
Presented in a clear and engaging style and supported by detailed analysis of selected films by both canonical auteurs and newer filmmakers, Carlorosis book offers important and original insights for the understanding of the cinema of poetry. The meanings of a poetic camera will be less obscure after reading this study. -- Roberta Tabanelli, University of Missouri-Columbia
In this rigorous and impassioned study, Silvia Carlorosi develops a critical methodology based on Pier Paolo Pasolinis seminal Cinema of Poetry essay, amplified by extensive research in the field of image theory. The result is a series of case studies which investigate the irrational, disruptive, and multidimensional workings of the image in examples from the filmographies of Pasolini, Fellini, Antonioni, Garrone, and Piavoli. This is a powerful new tool for the analysis of films which defy the codified norms of cinematic convention and instead propose a liberated, open-ended, and visionary approach to the world of lived experience. -- Millicent Marcus, Yale

Author Bio

Silvia Carlorosi is adjunct professor at the City College of New York.