Talks

La morte del convivio
Massimo Recalcati

In the classical tradition, Convivio is the place where words and food alternate. This alternation qualifies its highly symbolic dimension. In hypermodern times, we are witnessing a decline of the Convivio, if not its actual death. The consumption of food tends to dissociate itself from the activity of speech. Dramatic indicators of this are eating disorders. But the breakdown of commensality is not the last word on the relationship between human beings and food. The act of eating can not be crushed on the mere instinctual need to feed, nor can it always be recoded to the pathologies of nutrition. Sitting at the table remains one of the most significant community experiences of collective life. We never eat alone, Lacan declared to evoke the fact that as humans we are always at the table of the Other.

Cinematography

MEMORYSCAPES – IL NOSTRO PANE QUOTIDIANO
Video projection with live soundtrack

Introduced by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli
Music by Enrico Gabrielli and Corrado Nuccini
A project by Home Movies in collaboration with Kinè for Fondazione MAST

In the representations of food that emerge from private film archives, we find the most authentic image and the most intimate memory of 20th century Italy. In fact, many activities revolve around food, from work to social rituals, which end up under the eye of the camera, almost always an accomplice of these representations, but even more a witness. Memoryscapes – Il nostro Pane quotidiano is a montage of archival sequences from families and the world of production on the many aspects that are linked to food, from production to distribution, from sale to preparation and consumption. Food thus offers the occasion for an unprecedented voyage into the Italy of work and free time, the evolution of customs and the role of gender. A visual itinerary that crosses the spaces and places that have made our history and built our daily lives: the fields, the factories, the markets, the stores, the restaurants, the houses with their kitchens and their festive lunches.
Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli teaches Medieval History, History of Cities and History and Cultural Heritage of Fashion at the University of Bologna, dealing with history of society and mentality, history of women and history of costume.
The National Archives of Family Film, founded and managed in Bologna by the Home Movies Association, was born in 2002 with the aim of saving and transmitting a hidden and inaccessible audiovisual heritage.