The lecture, which is curated annually by the Dante Alighieri Society in Brisbane, was initially intended to take place in 2020.
The presentation on Fellini was designed to honour what would have been the Italian director’s 100th birthday.
Unfortunately, the scheduled lecture had to be moved to 2021 due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place.
The event finally took place last Friday, at St Anne’s Hall in Kalinga.
Dr Gabriella Blasi, adjunct lecturer at Griffith University, presented a lecture titled Images and experiences: The aesthetics and ethics of the beach in Federico Fellini’s “cinema of closeness”.
Dr Blasi examined natural backdrops in Fellini’s filmography – specifically analysing the coastlines and beaches.
She then discussed Italo Calvino’s reflection on Fellini’s Baroque aesthetics in his 1974 essay, A Spectator’s Autobiography.
In his essay, Calvino outlined how reality and artifice collide and transform each other, creating new possibilities for recognition and consciousness in the viewer.
Dr Blasi continued her lecture by evaluating Fellini’s films drawing on eco-cinema theory: a branch of film analysis which draws on ecology and climate change studies.
Dr Blasi’s research and academic publications consistently focus on the complexities of nature-culture relations in contemporary culture and cinema.
