Fondazione Antonio Ratti

I Thought I Saw a Pussy-cat

LECTURE
3 December 2007
FAR – Lungo Lario Trento

I Thought I Saw a Pussy-cat

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"I thought I saw a pussy-cat" is the famous quote that Tweety says every time Sylvester The Cat tries to approach him, with a movement that is supposed to be swift, but rather evident and heavy. Enrico Ghezzi, invited by Mario Fortunato within the Ratti Lectures' series, uses this quote to address what he calls "the double imposture" of cinematographic image. Through a concatenation of ideas and references ranging from literature and history to television, Ghezzi narrates the illusion behind the only apparently mobile and limitless image of cinema. This double illusion, however, allows the world to watch itself happen: "XX century is considered the age of images, but it was in fact the age of recording". Thus, the history of cinema becomes the history of mankind that records and watches itself. This idea eventually reveals the paradoxical hypothesis that every moment, including the one to come, is only the repetition of something that has already happened.

Enrico Ghezzi (Lovere, 1952) is a film critic, writer, TV writer, TV presenter and director. In 1978 he joined RAI as a programmer and started editing the schedule of Angelo Guglielmi's Raitre. He is the creator of Fuori Orario. Cose (mai) viste (1988), an "anarchic container of images" and Blob (1989), a daily satirical strip composed by the editing of television fragments. The free and ironic use of images pursued by his programs consecrated him as one of the greatest authors of Italian television. Ghezzi also directed the Taormina Film Festival from 1991 to 1998 and Il Vento del Cinema Festival in Procida.

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