Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of Parma, author of books such as The Empathic Screen: Cinema and Neuroscience (with Vittorio Gallese, 2019) and Il limite dello sguardo. Oltre i confini delle immagini [The Limits of the Gaze. Beyond the Borders of Images] (2020), Michele Guerra is since 2017 the Councillor for Culture of the Municipality of Parma. From this position, he has been the initiator and the coordinator of the cultural program of “Parma 2020. Italian Capital of Culture”: a rich cultural program including exhibitions, concerts, operas, films, theater plays, as well as various other activities taking place throughout the city. In this interview, Michele Guerra discusses the meaning of the general theme of the cultural program of Parma 2020 – “ la cultura batte il tempo” [“culture beats time”] – and then the idea of organizing an exhibition “on the way in which cinema, throughout its history, has changed our perception of time”: the idea that has been the guiding concept of the entire curatorial project of the exhibition Time Machine: Cinematic Temporalities. He also discusses what it means to organize an exhibition centered on cinema and moving images in a city like Parma, closely connected to crucial figures in the history of Italian cinema such as the screenwriter Cesare Zavattini (one of the first theorists and proponents of the Neorealist movement) and the film director Bernardo Bertolucci.
Cinematic Temporalities
