ABOUT

A variety of recent scholarly work has turned toward a consideration of the inhuman, the non-human and the post- human, including how those categories are reflected in cinema (and, as I will argue, cinema has not only anticipated the non-human gaze, but is itself a way of seeing that is potentially non- anthropomorphic). And Italian cinema, from the inhuman brutality of the giallo or horror film to the strangely alien gaze of Antonioni, has long concealed an other way of looking.

This class is divided into four sections: “Persons & Things,” looking at films that dramatize the division of human from inhuman; “Brutal Humanism,” based on Schoonover’s recent re- evaluation of neorealism; “The Non-human Gaze,” which looks at Antonioni’s remarkable anticipation of post- anthropomorphic cinema; and “Post | Apocalypse,” where we will look at Italy’s particular penchant for cinema after the end of the world. We will read theorists including Esposito, Agamben, Harbord, Morton,

Braidotti, Chen, Grusin, Iovino, Wu Ming, Szendy, Berger and Edelman; films range from the classics of neorealism to cheap Italian sci-fi, from Pasolini’s modernist art films to the only Italian superhero film.

No knowledge of English is required. Films include Open City, Red Desert, Salò, Porcile, Suspiria, L’eclisse, Umberto D, Germany: Year Zero, Jeeg Robot, The Seed of Man, The Last Earthling, and The Passenger.

Inhuman(e) Cinema