October agenda: The AGE-C project presented in Sassari and Bologna

October has been a busy month for the Italian unit of the AGE-C project. Researchers from the University of Udine presented two papers in separate conferences held respectively at the University of Sassari and the University of Bologna.

On October 10th, Dr Gloria Dagnino participated in the annual conference organized by the Network of women scholars of film and audiovisual media in Italy (Forum Fascina). Her paper, titled The leisure seekers? Donne e invecchiamento nel road-movie italiano contemporaneo focused on the representation of ageing women in contemporary Italian road movies. Through the close reading of 2022 drama Acqua e Anice (international title Olympia’s Way) directed by Corrado Ceron and starring 70+ Italian film star Stefania Sandrelli, the paper examined how the tropes and narrative motifs typical of the road movie genre are differently incorporated in films starring ageing actresses, as opposed to actors. Whilst the genre has always carried masculinist traits, road movies starring older female protagonists also display clichés that can more specifically be ascribed to gendered ageist narratives. These include an overrepresentation of the narrative of decline (Gullette 2004), especially through storylines related to degenerative illnesses and assisted suicide.

On October 17th, Prof. Francesco Pitassio and Dr Gloria Dagnino were at the University of Bologna to present a joint paper titled A close look at the “double standard”. The “screen age” concept and production studies. Their presentation was part of a conference titled CELEBR-ETÀ. Ageing Celebrity in Contemporary Media and Sport Contexts: A Model of Social and Cultural Well-being which launched a research project of the same name, led by the host university. Pitassio and Dagnino’s contribution focused on the concept of screen age, which is regularly employed in audiovisual production practice, and yet under-studied in academic research on modes and cultures of production. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Italian casting directors, Pitassio and Dagnino explore theoretical and practical facets of the screen age concept. Particularly, they highlighted three main properties of screen age, which they summarized with the following phrases: screen age is in the eye of the beholder – meaning that its determination lies with the casting director, as opposed to actors themselves; screen age is gendered – as female roles tend to be cast in ways that benefit younger actresses; screen age is medium and genre-specific – casting directors operationalize screen age in different ways across different media, such as theatre and screen based media, and genres, such as commercial and non-commercial contents.

Written by: Dr. Gloria Dagnino

Image credit: Still from Acqua e anice (2022), starring Stefania Sandrelli and Paolo Rossi

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