Guglielmo Pescatore is full professor at the University of Bologna,
Faculty of Arts and Humanities. After his MA in Film Studies, in
1994 he got a Ph.D. in Performing Arts from University of Bologna
writing a final dissertation titled “Narration/Vision. A proposal
for a new reading of Jean Epstein's writings on cinema after the
new course of cinematographic theory”. While working on his Ph.D.
he run a research on new interpretation of some contributions to
film theory, read through the support of semiotics and mediology
and analysing avant-garde and new-vanguard cinema, together with
the theoretical elaborations on these movements. On these issues he
published several essays and book chapters. This line of research
finally found an ultimate settlement in the book “Il narrativo e il
sensibile. Semiotica e teoria del cinema”, published in 2001
Therefore, his work has been constantly characterised by a strong
attention toward the mutations phenomena, both for the textual
forms as well as for the social value of audiovisual media. From
this perspective, Guglielmo Pescatore investigated some of the
establishing concepts of the audiovisual communication, such as
author and genre. In the last few years, in fact, he carried on a
research aimed at a new reading of these concepts, with the purpose
of showing the cultural changeability of these notions and the
impact that the technological progress, as well as the
transnational circulation of media contents had on them. The
interest in this field originated several publications, conferences
and seminars and has been ordered in the book “L'ombra dell'autore.
Teoria e storia dell'autore cinematografico” (2006), in which a
relevant section is dedicated to digital media impact on
audiovisual communication and to a re-thinking of the idea of
Author in a more collaborative and inclusive sense.
With reference to the exchange and circulation dynamics that
characterise audiovisual products, Guglielmo Pescatore also worked
on the subject of Film Festivals, area of interest on which he
published some essays, especially on the Pesaro Film Festival, an
event that, since it was born, always had the purpose of being a
festival of “debut films” (meant as first films of a director, but
also as new directions in film production) able to start renewal
processes. Also, Pesaro Film Festival always aimed at promoting
“another” way of making movies, favouring the cinematographic
experiences coming from Third World countries, where the battle for
new cinema also contributed to the creation of a national awareness
and where cinema has been an essential tool for getting rid of old
and new colonialism.
The interest toward the circulation of media products and the
attention toward the contemporary creative industries, with a
special reference to TV serial products, led Guglielmo Pescatore to
study the Italian television system and the influence of the use of
non-native formats and programmes on the Italian TV programming
(see, for instance, the third part of the book, written with
Veronica Innocenti, “Le nuove forme della serialità televisiva”,
2008). Within this field of research, he worked on the relation of
the audiences with the media objects, cult programmes and
audiovisual narrations, considering them as agents for the social
change. He especially focused on the topic of fandom and on the
creation of communities and groups who promote participatory and
active fruition within the contemporary media production. This
field of research can also be connected to some investigations
Guglielmo Pescatore carried on popular cinema and on the process of
definition of the audience (published, for instance, in the volume
edited by M. Fanchi and E. Mosconi “Spettatori. Forme di consumo e
pubblici del cinema in Italia 1930-1960”, del 2002) and on the
study on low budget cinema in the 1960s in Italy, whose outcome is
the book, edited together with Giacomo Manzoli, “L'arte del
risparmio: stile e tecnologia. Il cinema a basso costo in Italia
negli anni Sessanta” (Carocci, 2005). This last book is the final
outcome of an important research project financed within the
framework of the Programma di Ricerca Cofinanziato (Cofin) and
aimed at analysing the technologies of film production in Italy,
with specific reference to silent films and to the 1960s. Within
this research project, Guglielmo Pescatore has been in charge for a
Work Package dedicated to low-budget technologies, especially used
to produce popular and genre films. This work introduced a new line
of research, committed to the investigation of the concepts of
plagiarism and recycling among aesthetics, technology and market.
To these subjects, Guglielmo Pescatore dedicated a Graduate Seminar
that took place in 2007-2008 and 2008-2009, as well as a
monographic issue of the academic journal “La Valle dell'Eden”
titled “False-illusion” he co-edited together with Paolo
Bertetto.
His interest for the serial narratives also generated a project of
which Prof. Pescatore has been the proponent and principal
investigator and submitted within the VII EU Framework Programme
(FP7), topic SSH-2009 – 5.2.3 Culture in the creation of a European
space of communication. The project, titled "TRACES – Transnational
media, transnational communities. The circulation of serialized
audiovisual formats in Europe” was aimed at investigating the role
of audiovisual serial contents in the creation of new transnational
citizens networks and of user generated practices, overcoming the
national and linguistic borders and stimulating the circulation of
media experiences around Europe. The project TRACES, which involved
12 partners from several countries (beside Italy, UK, Spain France,
Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Czech
Republic) has been selected but not awarded of a grant.
From the research within the field of TV serial narratives, sprang
a line of research devoted to the investigation of narrative
ecosystems and vast narratives (extended both in space and time) to
which Guglielmo Pescatore recently dedicated essays, articles and
papers. The study of narrative ecosystems allowed him to face the
challenges of a deeply interdisciplinary field, that goes from
media economics and marketing to ICTs, to an emergent theme such as
Information Architecture. This interdisciplinary attitude allowed
Guglielmo Pescatore to begin a process of rethinking of the film
and media studies under a new perspective, that is to say that of
considering media as tools that favour the interdisciplinary
dialogue and that can explain the complexity and the stratification
of the contemporary media industry. The analysis of narrative
ecosystem found its expression in the two editions dedicated to
this topic of the international conference Media Mutations.
Guglielmo Pescatore is the creator and sponsor of this conference,
as well as a member of the advisory board.
His interdisciplinary vocation is also well represented by the
classes he teaches at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the
University of Bologna: two classes have a more semiotic-analytic
approach (Semiotics of media and Semiotics of the Cinematographic
and the Audiovisual Text), while two classes have a more
interdisciplinary approach, being especially oriented toward the
audiovisual media besides cinema (Theory and Techniques of New
Media and Economics and Marketing of Audiovisual Media).
Guglielmo Pescatore is a professor at the Collegio Superiore, the
school of excellence of the University of Bologna, for the branch
“Intellectual property”. He also gave lectures and seminars for
several universities and institutions (Ph.D. and M.A. level).
The attention showed in the past years toward new technologies led
him to work on the forms of dissemination of audiovisual contents
within innovative communicational contexts, with reference to
fruition modes as well as to the technological frameworks. In this
field, he launched and coordinated an applied research project
titled “Regard” and dedicated to the digitization of film archive,
as well as to remediation and re-use of the filmic heritage by the
users. The project used, with a didactic and research purpose, new
modes of access and use of audiovisual contents, allowing users to
directly intervene with annotations and metadata on the audiovisual
text.
Within the same field of research it might be remembered the
publication of a series of book dedicated to cross-mediality in the
contemporary mediascape, whose first issue has been the collection
of essays “Matrix. Uno studio di caso” (2006) and that continues
with a book on cinema and the digital and, particularly, on cinema
and Web (forthcoming for the publisher Carocci).
In his research, constant attention has been dedicated to cultural
industries in relation to user generated creative practices. After
writing the foreword to the Italian edition of the book by David
Hesmondhalgh “The Cultural Industries”, Guglielmo Pescatore got
involved with the topic of grassroots productions and published an
essay on machinima for the academic journal “Bianco & Nero”.
The field of the user generated production had been partly explored
also in the book dedicated to TV serial narratives (“Le nuove forme
della serialità televisiva. Storia, linguaggio, temi”) where a
close examination is focused on the forms of reworking of cultural
products (from audivisual products to writings, from drawings to
music) within an audience community.
Guglielmo Pescatore has been the curator of several film screenings
and national and international conferences and has been invited as
keynote speaker to many conferences in Italy and abroad.
He has been a member of the editorial board of the following
academic journals: “Cinegrafie”, “Cinema & Cinema” and
“Fotogenia”. Nowadays he is the director of the book series “I
prismi cinema” for Archetipolibri. He is a member of the advisory
board of the international academic journal "Cinéma & Cie", of
the MA for “Analysts for cinema, television production and
cross-media communication” of the University of Turin. He is also a
member of the advisory boards for the book series "Stili di vita"
(Publisher Archetipolibri, Bologna); "Media cultura" (Publisher
Franco Angeli, Milano); for the journal "GAME - The Italian Journal
of Game Studies"; for the bookn series "innesti / crossroads"
(Publisher Edizioni Ca' Foscari, Venezia); for the book series
“Cinergie” (Publisher Mimesis, Milano-Udine), of the conference
"FarGame", Bologna. He is vice-president of the CUC, the Italian
association of film and media studies university professors.
From 2003 to 2009 he has been President of the MA in “Cinema,
television and Multimedia Production” and, until October 2010,
vice-head of the Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo. Today, he is
the coordinator of the Ph.D. programme in “Cinema, music and
theatre” of the University of Bologna.
