Description of the Topic: This panel investigates the early works of Michelangelo Antonioni, particularly focusing on his collaborations and the failed projects. The three papers delve into different aspects of Antonioni’s early projects, including his documentary Gente del Po (1947), to understand how that documentary is not simply a description of a place, but a clear and rigorous definition of a specific landscape as the bearer of a constant tension that pervades all aspects of human existence and strictly belongs to that specific place and to its people, aside from any preceding or contemporary narrative of belonging. Andrea Malaguti’s paper also examines how, through technical and visual procedures, the film establishes a foundational dialectic between the camera’s subjectivity and the represented reality, in which each term determines (and / or undermines) the other. This examination proves the need of considering also Antonioni’s earliest work as far as possible from neorealism’s naive pretence of the camera’s neutrality. Émilie Jacob builds on Malaguti’s scholarship and focuses on expanding the meaning of collaboration by considering the agency of the environment in Antonioni’s “temps mort” which she reframes as “temps vivant.” Jacob employs environmental humanities to reframe the question of landscape in Antonioni’s early documentaries. Alberto Zambenedetti focuses on the screenplays Antonioni co-wrote with Francesco Pasinetti, centered around Venice, and examines the missed opportunities, failures, and the emergence of Antonioni’s modernist form in these projects. Together, these papers reveal a fascinating interplay between Antonioni’s experimental approach to narrative and form and his interactions with other filmmakers and writers, but also with the environment (both natural and human-made). By emphasizing Antonioni’s early projects, the panel will shed light on how collaboration and failure played essential roles in his artistic evolution. These early works, marked by attempts to capture the complexities of modernity, time, and space, provide invaluable insight into the development of Antonioni’s distinctive filmmaking style. This panel, therefore, offers an opportunity to reconsider Antonioni’s early career as foundational to his later cinematic innovations.

Rationale for Organizing the Session: Michelangelo Antonioni's early works remain understudied in comparison to his later films. However, his experiments with documentary filmmaking, as well as his unmade screenplays, reveal much about his artistic evolution. By analyzing Antonioni’s early experiments, the session allows for a fresh examination of how failure (the inability to get projects made) becomes thematized in the larger cinematic discourse around modernism and the limitations of narrative structures. The papers illuminate how Antonioni's early works—whether completed or not—demonstrate a deep engagement with the possibilities and limitations of form, paving the way for his later successes.

Relation to Existing Scholarship: Antonioni’s early works, particularly his documentary work, remain understudied. Malaguti’s paper engages directly with Noa Steimatsky’s chapter in “Italian Locations: Reinhabiting the Past in Italian Cinema” (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), the most in-depth examination of Gente del Po, reading the film through Georg Simmel’s “The Philosophy of Landscape” (Theory, Culture, & Society, vol. 24, n. 7-8, 2007, pp. 20-29), but also referring to Antonioni’s own film writings (“Fare un film è per me vivere: scritti sul cinema”, Marsilio, 2002) and essays (“Sul cinema”, Marsilio, 2004.). Part of this bibliography also serves Jacob’s and Zambenedetti’s papers; the latter also also introduces the figure of Francesco Pasinetti (Antonioni’s teacher and early collaborator) and his own essays and criticism (“L’arte del cinematografo”, Marsilio, 1980).

Session Format and Timing: The session will consist of three individual presentations, each lasting 18 minutes, followed by an unstructured discussion. The structure of the session will facilitate both in-depth exploration of the papers and an open forum for dialogue among presenters and audience members.

Incorporating a Diversity of Voices: This panel brings together a range of perspectives on Antonioni’s work, emphasizing different approaches to film analysis and theoretical frameworks. The selection of papers offers diversity in terms of methodology and focus: one paper tackles documentary film analysis, another explores landscape and temporality, and the third delves into unrealized projects. Different ranks in the profession are represented: Andrea Malaguti and Alberto Zambenedetti are Associate Professors, Émilie Jacob is a PhD Candidate. Also, different backgrounds and regions are included: Malaguti is an Italophone scholar working in the United States; Zambenedetti is also an Italophone scholar, but affiliated with a Canadian Institution. Jacob is a Francophone Canadian.