12 February 2016, 18:00, Birkbeck Cinema

Film: Orlando Ferito, Vincent Dieutre, France, 2013, digital, 115 minutes, French and Italian with English subtitles

Set in Palermo, and making extensive use of the traditional Sicilian puppets known as “Pupi”, Dieutre’s essay film draws its inspiration from texts by Pier Paolo Pasolini (Disappearance of the Fireflies, 1975) and Georges Didi-Huberman (Survival of the Fireflies, 2009), to paint a personal picture of contemporary Sicilian society and, more broadly, the state of politics in Italy and by extension Europe today.

Vincent Dieutre is known for his first-person essay films which explore the limits of documentary and autobiographical fiction (Desolate Rome, 1995). Orlando Ferito is the third film in Dieutre’s “Films d’Europe” series (Tenebrae Lessons, 2000, and My Winter Journey, 2003), which examines the European subconscious (cultural, sexual, political) from a radically subjective angle (see also Bologna Centrale, 2003).

After the screening Vincent Dieutre was in conversation with filmmaker and theorist Laura Mulvey.

A collaboration between Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Institut Français, London.