Cineteca di Bologna: Giornata di Studi

For my first trip outside Australia, post-Covid, I was able to participate in the AIRSC (basically, the Italian Cinema Scholars) day of study at the Cineteca di Bologna. This is a Cineteca I first visited in 1992, when I attended my first Cinema Ritrovato festival. So it is a place and city I know extremely well: the streets and people, food and language. I have lived here, worked here, sat happily in the Piazza for innumerable films, jogged winter and summer in the Giardine Margherita, marched in numerous pride events, eaten in the osterie in the undulating hills that circle the town. But I have actually never participated in a December day of conversation around the cinema. I presented on the Media Ecology Project- ("Learning to See on the Screen:"), where I explored Mark Williams and John Bell's compendium archive or early film. What does that mean? Basically that the digital humanities is meeting early film through initiatives like this one at Dartmouth University. And that this allows us to look again/afresh/anew at the elided achievements of women (actresses) on screen. Not that I am only celebrating the actress: like the producer of films today, the actress was a manager and promoter, organiser and fiesty facilitator. Checkout the MEP: