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Museum of Dream Worlds ran two workshops at the Cinema Ritrovato film festival in June 2024 on the topic of Ancient Rome as Cinescape, inspired by the film festival’s long-standing interest in screening silent films associated with ancient Greece or Rome.
The first workshop - Reconstructing Ancient Rome - took its lead from the presence in the Cinema Ritrovato programme of Quo vadis (1924), the spectacular epic about Nero’s Rome as a home to vice. Aylin Atacan (University College London) explored the lavish Romanness of the pavilions the architect Armando Brasini had created for a Fascist exhibition, and which were then hired for the film. She considered the influences on Brasini of ancient Roman and Italian Baroque architecture, and the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and the influence in turn of this monumental style on cinema. She reflected on the nationalist and imperialist underpinnings of this film aesthetic, and the unfortunate consequence that its extraordinary realism enabled spectators to enter ancient Rome only to find that its Romans and Christians were still acting according to the highly stylised requirements of the nineteenth-century stage. Stella Dagna (Università degli Studi di Milano) raised the question of the relationship between monumental space and the human figure in the ancient Rome of silent cinema. Stark narrative contrasts between Christianity and Paganism, Romanness and the Orient, Republic and Empire are regularly established through symbolic spaces. She focussed on the recently restored film Messalina (1924) and argued that it merges two contrasting film genres – the peplum whose chief attraction is the mise-en-scene and the diva film whose chief attraction is women’s bodies. In Messalina, three different divas (a Christian girl, an Egyptian priestess, and the Roman empress) occupy space in contrasting ways and perform very different types of femininity in it.
The second workshop - Situating Ancient Rome in the Modern City - took its lead from the presence in the Cinema Ritrovato programme of the French travelogues Rome moderne et antique (1904) and Rome antique (1911). Maria Assunta Pimpinelli (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Rome) explored their strategies for representing the ancient sites of Rome. She framed both films aesthetically within the tradition of the picturesque and considered how that tradition is brought into relation with the modern Italian city for French audiences. She also contrasted two Italian comedies in which ancient Romans come to life in the present and offer a very different way of engaging with the city both ancient and modern. Maria Wyke (University College London) considered how different nations - French, Italian, British – documented the sites of ancient Rome still visible in the modern city. Travelogues, she argued, claim to be representations of the real but they turn the city of Rome and its distant past into myths suitable for different national audiences. Considering the picturesque Italian travelogue, Città eterna (1911), she argued that unlike the French travelogues, it represents the city as powerfully eternal, a place of continual pilgrimage for all. In contrast, the light-hearted amateur production Road to Rome (1926), made by British students of architecture, clearly presents a visit to the city as a journey into time past.
Ivo Blom chaired both sessions with his usual perceptiveness and linguistic flair in Italian and English (among other languages). The project team are very grateful to Professor Paolo Noto and the University of Bologna Dipartimento delle Arti for hosting these two workshops in the university’s DAMSLab.
Past Workshop
Workshop: Ancient Rome as Cinescape
DAMSlab (Aula Seminari), Piazzetta P. P. Pasolini 5/b, 40122 Bologna
Chairs: Prof. Paolo Noto (Università di Bologna) & Dr. Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam)
One hundred years on, the 1924 Italian-German coproduction Quo vadis offers viewers fanciful scenes of Roman history that are both magnificent and disturbing. The emperor Nero is played as a satanic grotesque by the German star Emil Jannings. At the opening of the film, we see him lie resplendent on a couch in the grounds of his monumental, richly decorated palace. Through a monocle, he peers with sadistic amusement at a series of victims being thrown into the fountain to fatten his fish for dinner. The pornographic associations of semi-dressed women under attack by eels is brought out by striking shots underwater.
This Quo vadis was designed less as an adaptation to screen of the famous novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz and more as a remake of Enrico Guazzoni’s internationally successful epic of 1913 – a nostalgic return to pre-war filmmaking in the hope of reconquering a now lost global market. Through its long takes, distant framing, deep staging, and cast of thousands, the 1924 film also puts emphasis on mise en scène and spectacle but takes the familiar story to decadent extremes : extravagant banquets; beatings and murder; attempted rapes thwarted by a strongman; the spectacular fire; gladiatorial fighting, chariot racing , and lurid martyrdoms. Throughout all this, Quo vadis emphasises the gaze of the emperor – Nero’s pleasure and horror at looking.
The sunlight imperial palace is a character in itself that triumphs over the city until the Christians emerge from their underground catacombs. The set is the Palazzo dei festeggiamenti (‘Palace of festivities’), a pavilion designed by the architect Armando Brasini as part of a temporary Roman city built in the Villa Borghese to house the Mostra del Lazio (‘The Roman Exhibition of Agriculture, Industry and the Applied Arts’) from 1922 to 1923. The pavilion’s reuse connects the fascist present to Rome’s classical past. Yet its spatial symbolism on screen does not square with the emerging fascist rhetoric of romanità (that is, modern Italy’s ties to ancient Rome). Civis Romanus sum, Mussolini had infamously declared on 21st April 1924. The imperial city this Quo vadis invites viewers to enter is not yet shaped to suit fascism (as it is in 1937’s Scipione l’Africano). According to the opening intertitles, it is simultaneously mistress of the world and crucible of corruption. One hundred years on, we revisit this cinescape with a mixture of repulsion and fascination.
In connection with the screening of Quo vadis, two workshops will be held on fictional and factual manifestations of ancient Rome as a cinescape of silent films - on June 25 and 26 at 17:00 to 19:00 in the DAMSlab (Aula Seminari). Further details are available in the daily schedule of Ritrovato events.
Workshop Programme
Workshop 1 Tuesday June 25 17:00-19:00
Reconstructing Ancient Rome
Workshop 2 Wednesday 26 June 17:00-19:00
Situating Ancient Rome in the Modern City
We are very grateful to Professor Paolo Noto and the University of Bologna Dipartimento delle Arti for hosting these two workshops in the university’s DAMSLab.
Past Workshop
18 APRIL BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE
Session 1: Travelogues, Maria Wyke (UCL)
Session 2: Fragmentary epics, Bryony Dixon (BFI) Session 3: Greek material, Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol)
Session 4: Database, website & proposed activities
19 APRIL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Session 1: Roman martyrdom, Maria Wyke to present (on behalf of Ivo Blom)
Session 2: Pompeii & architectural interest, Aylin Atacan (UCL)
Session 3: American films, Jon Solomon (University of Illinois)
Session 4: Planning resources & next steps
Past Workshop
The Classical Association WORKSHOP 11: Public Engagement, When teachers direct researchers: Optimising public engagement activities by partnering with classroom practitioners took place on Sunday 24th March.
This panel showcased examples of public engagement which have been improved by involving classroom teachers at an early stage in project design. Project leaders explained the background to collaboration, the methods of cooperative working, and results. Panelists reflected on the knowledge exchanged and suggested top tips for both researchers and teachers who might like to become involved in similar future projects.
Case Study 1: Thinking, playing, learning: using LEGO to develop collaborative learning and understanding of the Classical world, Matthew Fitzjohn (University of Liverpool)
Case Study 2: How teachers and school children shaped the Sex & History project, Rebecca Langlands (University of Exeter)
Case Study 3: Advocating Classics Education: curry, conferences and curriculum! Arlene Holmes-Henderson (Durham University)
Case Study 4 and interactive workshop Museum of Dreams: Silent Antiquity Films in the Classroom, Maria Wyke& Aylin Atacan (University College London)
