We celebrate the life and work of Italian poet Andrea Zanzotto on the centenary of his birth, with a screening of Denis Brotto’s documentary Logos Zanzotto (2021, 74′), preceeded by a roundtable discussion with the film’s director Denis Brotto (Università di Padova); Nicola Gardini (University of Oxford) and Sara Massafra (Royal Holloway University of London).
Logos Zanzotto retraces the poetic work of one of the most important voices of Italian poetry: the images in this film visually reconstruct the profound meaning of his poetry, recomposing the suggestions coming from his voice and logos, capable of defining the importance of the landscape like no other. In the poetry of Zanzotto, the landscape evolves from being a locus amoenus to a visual space increasingly threatened by the dangers of modernity and the incoming environmental crisis. Throughout the entire Zanzotto’s production, the landscape represents a central point in his poetry, making him one of the most prominent voices when it comes to the environmental sensibility in literature. Brotto’s movie follows Zanzotto’s approach to poetry, offering a crossing of his works, his experience and his home territory. The aim of the documentary is recreating the relationship between reality and the alteration of the real encompassing Zanzotto’s poetry. The screening of the documentary will be preceded by a roundtable to celebrate Andrea Zanzotto.
Andrea Zanzotto, born in Pieve di Soligo (Treviso) in 1921, was one of the most significant Italian poets of the second half of the twentieth century. Immersed in the era of the ecological crisis, Zanzotto’s work demonstrates its relevance in reporting environmental disasters. Among his poetic collections: Dietro il paesaggio (1951), Vocativo (1957), IX Ecloghe (1962), La beltà (1968), Gli sguardi i fatti e senhal (1969), Pasque (1973), Filò (1976), Il Galateo in Bosco (1978), Fosfeni (1983), Idioma (1987), Meteo (1999), Sovrimpressioni (2001) and Conglomerati (2009). Part of the work in prose and verse is included in the Meridiano Mondadori Le poesie e prose scelte (1999), while the entire poetic production merged into the edition Tutte le poesie (2011) and has been translated into several languages, including English with the title The selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto. A bilingual edition (University of Chicago Press, 2007), translated by Patrick Barron.
The event will be in Italian with a simultaneous translation.
Denis Brotto is an associate professor at the University of Padova. His research has resulted in several publications such as Osservare l’incanto. Il cinema e l’arte di Aleksandr Sokurov (2010, Ente dello spettacolo), the first Italian monograph dedicated to Sokurov; Trame digitali. Cinema e nuove tecnologie (2012, Marsilio); and the volume Jean Vigo (2018, Mimesis), dedicated to the relationship between Vigo and the French cultural sphere in the 1920s and 1930s. His areas of interest are linked to the aesthetics of cinema, to the relationship between cinema and new technologies, to cinematographic language and visual culture. Among his latest documentaries are In Bloom | Tito Livio (2020, 54’), Una Infinita distanza. Gemma Verzegnassi (2019, 65’), Sciarrino, séances (2017, 48’).
Nicola Gardini is a prize-winning novelist, essayist, poet, painter, and translator of poetry from English, Latin, and ancient Greek. His book Long Live Latin was an international bestseller (published in the UK by Profile Books). He is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Keble College.
Sara Massafra is a doctoral student and teaching assistant at Istituto di studi italiani (ISI), Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). She is currently Visiting Researcher at Royal Holloway University of London. Sara Massafra’s research interests include Italian contemporary literature, poetry, ecocriticism and philology. She is currently working on a PhD dissertation focusing on Andrea Zanzotto’s poetry in light of Environmental Humanities. Moreover, she has published about Italo Calvino and Carlo Emilio Gadda in relationship to G. W. Leibniz’ philosophy, Luciano Berio, the Oulipo movement, Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec.
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In collaboration with Royal Holloway University of London and University of Padova
