"In one of the most famous sequence of the film A Clockwork Orange of Stanley Kubrick we see the main actor Alex, undergoing an experiment of audiovisual re-education sitting in front of a big screen where they are projected images of violence. His wide eyes are kept open by some pincers which obliges him to see continuously those images till the complete conditioning, until his psychology and his behaviour are newly shaped and until he will not have any more the desire of violence. This very famous sequence from Kubrick, with a high visual effect and an amazing metaphorical value, suggests the scope of a course on education to reading of the images and on cinematographic language. Everyday in our society we are bombarded with images giving different and various messages. And, as we don’t have often enough visual education, we are not able, as the main character in Kubrick’s film, to decode and receive in an uncritical way a great part of all that flooding messages which seems to drown ourselves. We have never watched so many films as today (although most of them trough the TV which distort them) and never they have been received so passively. Every film which is structured as a series of images linked together, expresses meanings and drives messages and ideas which are made clear only with an attentive reading of the work and of its way of meanings. The knowledge of the postulates of styles, of the shapes and of the language forms which are at the basis of the cinema and its development during its long life, is fundamental to decode and evaluate every film with the right approach and understanding. From these general assumptions, it is coming out the project of this course which aims to offer to the participants, the instruments to read and receive with a more active and critic attitude, the messages beard by the image and to help them having a more active and conscious approach with a communication mean which is often rather seen than understood."

Franco Vigni

Franco Vigni

Journalist and film critic (SNCCI - National Italian Film Critics Union). He was born and studied in Siena and he took a PhD at the University of Roma Tre. He was awarded with the Filippo Sacchi prize promoted by the National Association of Cinema Journalists. He published the monographic book Andrej Končalovskij for the series «Il Castoro Cinema» (Il Castoro, Milan 1995), and the books: “Come onde del mare”, ”Siena e la sua terra nello specchio del cinema” (Aska Editions, Florence, 2005) and “Oltre la porta. San Gimignano e il cinema” (Aska Editions, Florence, 2008). He collaborated to the writing of three volumes (VIII, IX, X) of the book about the History of the Italian cinema (Marsilio/Di Bianco e Nero Editions).