Università Roma Tre

The program will consist of theoretical lessons and practical tests.

The first meeting will be dedicated to a brief history of the transformations that Italian journalism (and therefore film criticism) has experienced from the 70s onwards, also referring to the personal experiences of the teacher who began working in the editorial staff of a newspaper (" l’Unità”) starting from 1978. How pieces were written (and sent) before the arrival of digital, and how they are written today.

Other meetings (a couple, generally) will be dedicated to the example of in-depth analysis of a sequence (the incipit of Howard Hawks' film Rio Bravo a classic of western cinema) and to the analysis of a style common to cinema and to other arts (alternating editing, comparing the incipit of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway and Georges Simenon's writing). The two lessons are aimed at providing examples of how a film is analyzed, both in terms of "immediate" journalistic criticism and non-fiction writing.

We will then analyze the various forms of journalistic writing that a critic, and in general a journalist who deals with cinema, can find himself facing.
1) Writing a short news story based on a press agency
2) Writing a film synopsis – plot summary – in various lengths
3) Writing an interview with a simulation of a press conference, with a guest - possibly a filmmaker - yet to be identified
4) Writing a review, double exercise on two different inputs: a short essay on a classic film, a strictly journalistic review on a film currently in theaters (with the possibility, for students, to practice on a film they have recently seen at Cinema)

We will also analyze examples of reviews, both "historical" and recent; a meeting will be dedicated to the discussion with a young critic - yet to be identified - and to the work of online criticism, which is particularly widespread today.

A meeting will be dedicated to the editorial "passage" of other people's texts: correcting, cutting, integrating, rewriting if necessary. An extremely delicate type of work, which can happen when working in the editorial office of a newspaper or magazine, both in print and online. Also in this case we will involve a professional editor.

The names of the three guests - filmmaker, critic, editor - will be communicated as soon as possible.

Bibliografia d'esame:
Alberto Pezzotta, La critica cinematografica, Carocci, 2007
Bianco e nero, rivista del Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, numero 593, 2019 dedicato a Bernardo Bertolucci
Bianco e nero, rivista del Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, numero 606, 2023 dedicato a Nanni Moretti
Gianni Amelio, Il vizio del cinema, Einaudi, 2004
Daniele Vicari, Il cinema l’immortale, Einaudi, 2022
Altri elementi di bibliografia (vecchie recensioni, sia del docente sia di altri critici, in particolare tratte dai libri antologici di Giovanni Grazzini e Tullio Kezich) saranno forniti durante il corso in forma di fotocopie.