30 Mar 2022

A Double-bill Screening on April 5 and April 6, 2022. Film and Screen Media Auditorium, Kane building Basement, Room B10.b

About this event

L’eclisse (The Eclipse, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) - April 5, 2022, 3.30-6.30 pm

Estate, a Reverie (Andrea Luka Zimmerman, 2015) - April 6, 2022, 3.30-6.30 pm + Q&A (by remote) with director Andrea Luka Zimmerman

The aim of the event is to raise participants’ awareness of the home as a liminal space where existential, social and environmental issues constantly intersect.

The event will consist of two connected screenings in two consecutive days (5 and 6 April 2022). The films selected for this double bill are L’eclisse (The Eclipse, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962, 126 minutes) and Estate, a Reverie (Andrea Luka Zimmerman, 2015, 83 minutes). Each will include a brief introduction of the film from the organisers, the screening, and a Q&A with the audience at the end of a session. The screening of Estate will include a remote Q&A with the filmmaker, Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

The event is targeted to those who are interested in learning more about the interconnection of film, architecture and the environmental consequences of modern urban ecologies. Specifically, the content of the films will help participants familiarise with how projects of urban development in Rome and London led to existential, social and environmental issues such as alienation, stigmatisation, uneven urban development and displacement. The two films also present forms of resistance to these problems and, embracing original approaches to narrative and documentary filmmaking, point out the role filmic discourse plays in envisioning and enacting alternative ways of seeing and sharing urban spaces. For instance, while Antonioni opposes alienating experiences of the environment by contaminating traditional character-focused representations of urban spaces with pro-active and documentary-like explorations of the city, Zimmerman’s film portrays community-led initiatives of care for and enhancement of urban areas (i.e. performances, renovation, community gardening).

Moreover, by focusing on the representation of the space of the home as a way to approach modern urban ecologies, the event will give participants the opportunity to reflect on how dynamics internal to this private space are continuously intertwined with issues of public and global concern. The event will therefore increase participants’ awareness of housing issues, while also showing how film and media can contribute to public debates on the existential, social and environmental challenges emerging from these issues.

Organizers: Dr Anna Viola Sborgi (MEDIAHOMES*) and Dr Paolo Saporito (POSITIVELY MODERN**), Research Fellows, Department of Film & Screen Media, UCC.

Those wishing to attend can register HERE.

Banner Image Credits:

Estate. A Reverie © Fugitive Images 2015

The Eclipse © Michelangelo Antonioni 1962

*The MEDIAHOMES Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska -Curie grant agreement No 101033615.

**The Positively Modern Project has received funding from the Government of Ireland-Irish Research Council 2020 Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme (Project ID: GOIPD/2021/239).