Paesaggi del Sud

The investigation of the layering of symbolic places in southern Italy and the way art has interpreted their history calls for studies on the relationship between discursive regimes and visual grammar of the cinema of Italy, also beyond the borders of Italy’s national production.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, audiovisual commodities as well as practices of production and distribution have contributed to either disrupt or consolidate spatial notions of Southern Italy, thus affecting the internal negotiation processes within the Italian society. This line of research intends to focus on the role of cinematic imagery within the figurative palimpsest and the discursive infrastructure that define the porous notion of the “Meridione” by asking what kind of image the depiction of its landscape conveys.