Corso di laurea magistrale in CAM
Cinema, Arti della scena, Musica e Media

The course is meant to take on the forms of narration and its limits. The theme of Nazi-induced genocide has compelled writers among the survivors to work on the tenses of the narration (Primo Levi) or on the times of their life-experience (Jorge Semprun) in order to pass down the essence of the experience itself. The course aims to give students the awareness of this narrative work on times and tenses, as well as the controversy on the communicability of the genocide experience through images.

-          At the end of the course students are expected to have:

-          the ability to contextualize literary texts and critical interpretations.

-          The knowledge to discern the differences amongst the experiences in various concentration camps.

-          The capability to understand how the camp experience has been organized inside narration.

-          An awareness of the limits of narration in literature as well as in cinema.

The course consists of 36 hours (6 CFU). During the lessons we will work on the texts and watch some movies on the Shoah.

The students’ knowledge and skills will be tested through an oral exam. 

(Un)speakable, (Un)imaginable: literature and cinema facing the Shoah.

The course is focused on how the experience of the Nazi killing camps has produced a deep reflection on the limits of representation in written narrations as well as in the cinema. To highlight how this experience has been extraordinary, some survivors have resorted to mystical terminology, namely Unspeakable or Unimaginable, to define their experience. Some others, by contrast, have insisted on literature as the only functional means to pass down these experiences and they have postulated that the Shoah-experience is communicable since it was an entirely human product.  

The course investigates the problem of recounting an extreme experience such as the Shoah. Both Primo Levi and Jorge Semprun initially wrote narrations challenging the narrative structures and the use of tenses; at a later point in time, they both felt compelled to reexamine their past perspectives, focusing instead on the essence and causes of the Shoah itself. In similar ways film directors face the same problem with the representation of the demolished man, who is best exemplified by the “Muselmann” found in the Nazi-camps.The course will be focused on the techniques of narration and on the limits that the Shoah has imposed to narrations and cinema.

-          Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo, Torino, Einaudi

-          Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati, Torino, Einaudi

-          Jorge Semprún, La scrittura o la vita, Parma, Guanda, 2005

-          Jorge Semprún, Vivrò col suo nome, morirà con il mio (Le mort qu’il faut), Torino, Einaudi, 2005.

-          G. Didi-Huberman, Immagini malgrado tutto, Milano, Cortina, 2005

-          A. Minuz, Il cinema e la cultura visuale. Cinema, memoria, spazio pubblico, Roma, Bulzoni, 2010.

-          Students are required to watch these films: Shoah, by Claude Lanzmann; Son of Saul, by László Nemes.

Students who don’t attend lessons are required to read  the following texts:

-          E. Mattioda, Levi, Roma, Salerno edizioni, 2011

-          A PDF on Semprun to download from the course page.