UCHI, Feb 28, 4PM – Amorous Visions: The Gaze of Love for Love, or Erotophilia, in Cavani and Bertolucci

Dear Earthlings,

The presentation of the year is coming up for me soon. You’re invited. I can’t wait to see you!

The Night Porter

What guides a director’s gaze into the web of memories shared by lovers whose circumstances were extreme? Does the fear of love dissipate when an auteur looks whose sense of sexuality is fluid and style of love inclusive? This presentation will discuss cinematic techniques of memory retrieval in two Holocaust-themed art films of the 1970s produced in Italy: Bernardo Bertolucci, in The Conformist (1970), and Liliana Cavani, in The Night Porter(1974). Each presents a gendered perspective on what happens when a species acts against its own best interest–when it becomes self-destructive. How can this behavior be exorcised? Can love for love prevail over the pall of fear? These are, I claim, the main questions the films posit for 21^st century viewers.

Amorous Visions: The Gaze of Love for Love of Erotophilia.

The Conformist

Presented by Serena Anderlini, PhD, and Research Fellow at U Conn’s Humanities Institute.

Where: UCHI, CLAS/Austin Building # 301. 215 Glenbrook Road, Unit 4234. Storrs, CT 06269.

When: Thursday, February 28h, at 4:00-5:30 PM.

Free of charge and open to the public.

For more information call: 860 486 9057

Note: The presentation will be enhanced by numerous selected clips from the movies under discussion.

Bernardo Berolucci, director of The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, and many other films, including, recently, The Dreamers.

Liliana Cavani, director of The Night Porter, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Berlin Affair, known collectively as The European Trilogy, and many other films.

Note: The presentation will be followed by an open questions and answers period.

About the Presenter:

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Ph.D, is a Professor of Humanities, Italian, and Cinema at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. She is a current Research Fellow at UCHI. A UCR graduate, she is the author and editor of numerous award-winning books, including Gaia (2009), Eros (2006), BiTopia(2011), Bisexuality and Queer Theory(2011), Plural Loves (2005), Women and Bisexuality (2003), and The ‘Weak’ Subject (1998). She has charted new fields, including ecosexuality and the arts of loving sustainably and inclusively. Her new work includes a study of sustainable practices of love and a collection of writings on ecosexuality.

Find out more about UCHI’s presentations, programs, and activities: UCHI

As a comment: I feel an immense gratitude for this Fellowship research year. My spirit feels rejuvenated and revitalized by the inspiration and creativity that it’s been immersed in. It has been a wonderful gift to be in the company of fellow Fellows and their projects, and to have access to the abundant research resources of U Conn, Storrs. Also, it’s lovely to be immersed in discourses across disciplines and a campus abundant with Centers and Institutes where these conversations flourish.

This is the most important presentation in my Fellowship year. It’s a public presentation designed to offer the pulse of where my project is at and where it’s headed to. It’s been a pleasure to prepare it, with abundant technical assistance at the Institute. And I hope it will be well received and inspire a generous amount of questions and genuine debate.

Thank you, U Conn. Thank you, UCHI.