THE FILM-PHIL LISBON SEMINARS: Federico Rossin

Marco Grosoli

April’s Film-Phil Lisbon Seminar will be led by Federico Rossin who will talk about “How experimental cinema deals with death”. The session is hybrid and will be held on April 16, 2025, at 11:00 AM (WET) at NOVA FCSH (room B201) and online, via Zoom. To receive information about joining the meeting online, it’s mandatory to register in advance here.

Abstract

We too often think that cinema should question presence. Instead, this talk will show how experimental cinema can show absence and, above all, depict death – that is, how experimental cinema can show a space haunted by death, by gaps, by emptiness. Ultimately, experimental cinema shows a hole: either a hole in memory or a hole in the visible. What lies behind all this is the question of the invisible in cinema itself. This talk will thus focus on disappearance instead of appearance, absence instead of presence, the ghost instead of the real, the void instead of the encounter. Through its esthetical and technical research, experimental cinema is the field par excellence of disappearance and death, both for representing ghosts and fantasies. In German, a single word (Fantasie) stands for both ghost and reverie: this is what the talk will be about.

Bio

Federico Rossin is a film historian and curator in the fields of experimental, documentary, and animation cinema, and an independent programmer for worldwide festivals (among others: États généraux du film documentaire de Lussas, Cinéma du Réel, DocLisboa) and cinematheques (among others: Film Museum Vienna, Cinémathèque Française, Cineteca Italiana). He published seven books and regularly collaborates with various magazines (among others: Il Manifesto, Cahiers du Cinéma).

Funding Funded by the European Union (ERC, FILM AND DEATH, 101088956). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.