Valerio
Carando

Valerio Carando (Casale Monferrato, 1982). After graduating in Cinema, Television and Multimedia Production from the University of Roma Tre, he completed a PhD in History of the Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Pisa (with a thesis focusing on formal trajectories and directing styles in Spanish cinema during the Franco era). Since 2022, he has been lecturing in Fundamentals of Journalistic Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and in Directing at LABA in Rimini. He has written about cinema for various Italian publications (‘Segnocinema’, ‘il manifesto’, ‘La Furia Umana’, ‘Cineforum’, ‘Filmcritica’) and Spanish publications (‘Dirigido por…’). He is the author of the books Il clan dei cineasti. L’estetica del noir secondo Jean-Pierre Melville, José Giovanni, Henri Verneuil (Prospettiva, 2011), Antoni Padrós, pertorbador de consciències / Antoni Padrós, disturber of consciences (Ajuntament de Terrassa / Filmoteca de Catalunya, 2015), Gli indesiderati. I sentieri di Walter Benjamin in un film di Fabrizio Ferraro (DeriveApprodi, 2018) and De Escipión a Berlusconi. Una historia de Italia en 50 películas (Editorial UOC–Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 2019; with Rosa Gutiérrez and Ludovico Longhi), as well as various essays published in anthologies and academic journals. For the Lucca Film Festival, in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya (Barcelona) and the Cineteca Nazionale (Rome), he curated retrospectives on Antoni Padrós (2013) and Ninetto Davoli / Enrique Irazoqui (2014). For the 60th Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema, in collaboration with Eddie Saeta (Barcelona) and the Cinémathèque Suisse (Lausanne), he curated the tributes to Luis Miñarro and Myriam Mézières (2024). He has collaborated in various capacities with festivals and institutions, including the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Loop Festival Barcelona, L’Alternativa [Barcelona Independent Film Festival], I Milleocchi in Trieste, the Tétouan Mediterranean Film Festival, the Ateneu Barcelonès and the Filmoteca de Catalunya. He has collaborated with the Àrea de Formació Complementària of the University of Barcelona. He is a member of the Asociación Española de Historiadores del Cine (AEHC) and, since 2023, of the international jury coordinated by the Arab Cinema Center (ACC), which annually presents the Critics’ Awards for Arab Films as part of the Cannes Film Festival. Together with Mario Corrado, he made a documentary film about the Catalan painter Pere Lluís Via (Platges, 2010). He is an associate producer of the film Gli indesiderati d’Europa (Fabrizio Ferraro, Italy/Spain, 2018), about the final days of Walter Benjamin, which was recognised as a ‘film of cultural interest’ by MiBACT and premiered in the ‘A History of Shadows’ section of the 47th Rotterdam Film Festival. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film Wanted (Fabrizio Ferraro, Italy, 2023), produced by Vivo Film (Marta Donzelli and Gregorio Paonessa) in collaboration with Rai Cinema and starring Chiara Caselli, Fabrizio Rongione, Denise Tantucci and Giovanni Ludeno, which premiered in the ‘Freestyle’ section of the 18th Rome Film Fest. For the publisher Gremese, he has edited a critical biography of Jacques Demy, the first in Italian (to be published shortly, also in France).

The course aims to follow a twofold and complementary path. The first part of the module, of a historical and theoretical nature, will provide a bird’s-eye view of some key moments in the history of film criticism, particularly in France and Italy: the work of the pioneers (Ricciotto Canudo, Louis Delluc, etc.); the critical debate in Italy in the early 1940s (‘Cinema’) and after the Second World War (‘Cinema Nuovo’ and ‘Filmcritica’); André Bazin and the concept of ‘cinéma de la réalité’; the ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’ in the evolving context that preceded and surrounded the Nouvelle Vague; Italian activist journals before, during and after 1968 (‘Filmcritica’, ‘Cinema&Film’, ‘Ombre rosse’); the 1970s and the utopias of an entire generation; the maverick voices of the mainstream press; the 1990s in the pages of ‘Segnocinema’; the playful and provocative practice of reappraisal; the current post-ideological landscape and the era of online criticism. In the second and more extensive series of lectures, which takes the form of a workshop, students will be provided with the tools to reflect on the audiovisual phenomenon and to develop their own voice, their own distinctive discursive style. Through the analysis of reviews and sample articles representing various trends, we will focus on the differences between tabloid criticism and specialist criticism, exploring the wide range of possibilities offered by the study of writing as thought in motion. Criticism, not only film criticism, as a way of looking at the world and an act of resistance to the drift towards homogenisation, an artistic gesture and a literary genre endowed with its own fruitful autonomy.
The workshop-focused lectures may involve highly respected critics and filmmakers in a productive dialogue with the students (for example, during the 2022/2023 academic year, Roberto Silvestri, Fabrizio Ferraro and Antoni Padrós gave talks).

To be eligible to sit the examination, students must submit three short essays no later than the final two lectures of the course:

• A review of a film chosen by the student (4,000 characters, including spaces). Students are free to choose the structure of their text, whether they follow the most established format (introduction/plot/critical evaluation) or propose a more personal approach (for example, the plot may be omitted in favour of a broader and more detailed critical analysis). What counts is the originality of the insights, combined with the charisma of the writing: conventional structures can always be stretched.
• An editorial, also on a film-related topic, focusing on a highly topical issue chosen by the student (8,000 characters, including spaces). Some examples: the cinema theatre crisis, the anomalies of the Italian film production market, a particular anniversary, etc. The key is that the piece expresses a personal voice.
• An article for a hypothetical column in a film magazine (8,000 characters, including spaces). The possibilities are numerous: the relationship between cinema and the visual arts, cinema and music, adaptations and remakes, documentary cinema, a critical focus on figures and movements from the past, etc. Once again, the key is that the piece conveys a personal voice.

In conjunction with the final two lectures, review sessions will be held to discuss the papers.

Students not attending lectures will agree a programme with the lecturer to supplement the texts and assignments listed above.

Exam texts (compulsory):

• Claudio Bisoni, La critica cinematografica. Un’introduzione, ArchetipoLibri, Bologna, 2013.
  Claudio Bisoni, La critica cinematografica. Metodo, storia, scrittura, ArchetipoLibri, Bologna, 2006. N.B.: With regard to the latter volume, each student shall select three articles from the anthology section and discuss them in the examination (ideally, each selected article should be accompanied by viewing the relevant film(s)).