"Le détail révélateur" - public lecture with Jacques Aumont, Balzan Prize 2019 for Film studies
Institutional Communication Service
Date: 29 September 2021 / 18:00 - 20:00
PalaCinema Locarno
The annual Balzan Lecture, organised by the International Balzan Foundation and Università della Svizzera italiana, and in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival, is pleased to welcome Jacques Aumont, Professor Emeritus of the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris-3) and former Directeur d'études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (E.H.E.S.), for a public event to be held at the PalaCinema in Locarno on Wednesday, September 29, 2021.
Acknowledged worldwide as one of the founders of Film studies as a scientific and academic discipline, his research aimed at defining film aesthetics in relation to the figurative arts and could be summed up by a phrase that appears as a subtitle in one of his recent books: "how cinema became the most unique of the arts". After having searched in the history of painting for the sources of the power of the image proper to film, Aumont contributed to the definition of this force, giving meaning and credit to the metaphor of "a specifically cinematographic thought". How and what do films "think"? How does cinematic fiction function in relation to other forms of fiction? What is the relationship between pleasure and interpretive challenge generated by the cinematic performance? All these problems have been debated by Aumont in numerous seminal works and have been translated into many languages.
Through his lecture Le détail révélateur, Prof. Aumont's will investigate the ways in which cinema seems to want to control and manage the human body, which however - precisely in film - is capable of showing its own impenetrability. It will show how cinema, in all its eras, has always sought not only to touch what it films, but to show its interior, its meaning.
Opening remarks
Marco Solari, President of the Locarno Film Festival
Boas Erez, Rector of Università della Svizzera italiana
Alberto Quadrio Curzio, President of the International Balzan Prize Foundation
Lecture
Jacques Aumont, Le détail révélateur (in French, simultaneous translation available)
Discussion
Peter Kuon, professor of Romance philology at the University of Salzburg and General Prize Committee member
Victor Stoichita, USI lecturer and General Prize Committee member
with Jacques Aumont, Balzan Prize 2019 for Film studies
Refreshments
The event will be streamed live at www.balzan.org
Free admittance, by reservation by September 20 >> [email protected]
Participation is subject to presenting a valid Swiss Covid certificate (or EU Green pass), and to wearing a face mask throughout the event.
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The International Balzan Foundation promotes culture, science and the most outstanding humanitarian, peace and brotherhood initiatives worldwide. Prizes are awarded annually in the humanities and sciences. The nominations come from academic and cultural institutions from all over the world. The winner of the Balzan Prize allocates half of the prize to research projects, preferably performed by young scientists and humanists. The International Balzan Foundation operates through two institutional offices, one in Milan and one in Zurich. The Balzan "Prize", through its General Prize Committee chooses the subjects to be awarded and selects the applications. The Balzan "Fund" preserves the legacy left by Eugenio Balzan, the director of the "Corriere della Sera" from 1903 to 1933. www.balzan.org