Abstract

The Cambridge Screen Media Group at CRASSH starts the new term with a truly unmissable, interdisciplinary and interactive roundtable on film and literature focusing on Pier Paulo Pasolini’s 1968 film, Teorema. We are delighted to welcome:

Ali Smith, novelist and Weidenfeld Visiting Professor in European Comparative Literature, University of Oxford (2012), who will be reading from her 2005 novel, The Accidental, offering a modern-day reworking of Theorem’s theme of angelic intrusion;

Robert Gordon, Professor of Modern Italian Culture, University of Cambridge, presenting on ‘Teorema: Book and Film, Words and Silences’;

followed by Lucia Yandoli, graduate student in the Department of Italian, University of Cambridge, with a paper on ‘The ecstasy in Teorema’

The seminar will take place at 5pm (for 5.15pm) on the CRASSH premises. As always, the floor will be opened up afterwards for a lively Q&A.

All welcome, no registration required.

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About the speakers:

Ali Smith is a writer and 2012 Weidenfeld Visiting Professor in European Comparative Literature, University of Oxford. Her 2005 novel – and Whitbread Prize-winner – The Accidental, was lauded by The Guardian for its ‘infectious sense of fun and invention’. She has been shortlisted for both the Orange and Man Booker Prizes (2001, 2005), and is a prolific short story writer who strongly believes that ‘[s]tories can change lives if we’re not careful. They will come in and take the shirts off our backs. Tell the right stories and we live better lives’.

Robert Gordon is Head of the Department of Italian and Reader in Modern Italian Culture at the University of Cambridge.

Lucia Yandoli is a filmmaker and PhD student in the Department of Italian at the University of Cambridge.