Vincenzo Cerulli

2015 – 2018: Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at La Sapienza Università di Roma

2018 – 2019: Civil Service at La casa dei diritti sociali (Tivoli)

2019 – 2022: Master of Arts in Philosophy / Double degree programm between La Sapienza Università di Roma and the Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena (Deutscher Idealismus und moderne europäische Philosophie)

From 2023 – PhD student at the Max Weber Kolleg - Universität Erfurt (IGS - Resonant Self-World Relations in Ancient and Modern Socio-Religious Practices)

RESONANCE PRAXIS IN FILMMAKING AND FILM EDITING

The artistic practices of filmmaking have always been characterised by the ineliminable presence of uncontrollable forces such as randomness and contingency, and in this sense the filmmaker is constantly called upon to deal with schedule changes, rewritings and unforeseen accidents of all kinds. During the long and tortuous process of working on a film (pre-production, production and post-production), it is possible to witness a real conflict between centripetal forces, aimed at keeping the project on the tracks initially set (if the director has a rigid plan), and centrifugal forces, committed to disrupting the director's plans.

With this research I intend to analyse this conflict between the forces of control and the forces of uncontrollability to observe how it is possible to find in it a “Resonance relationship” (Rosa) between the director himself/herself and the film he/she is working on in the making. Of the whole long process of filmic creation, I will focus especially on the editing phase (montage) because it is in this moment that, in my opinion, the dimension of Unverfügbarkeit proper to the whole film medium manifests itself in an even more radical manner. The montage is, in fact, a highly significant moment within the dynamics of filmmaking because, even though it allows a maniacal control of all filmed material (down to the tiniest frame), it also allows the work (the film) to “speak with its own voice” (Rosa): showing the director new and unforeseen aesthetic-narrative paths, when the shooting is over.

The study of this “short-circuit” between control and uncontrollability, enacted by the montage, will be carried out in the light of Theodor W. Adorno's notion of the “aporia of art”. Adorno also argues that art is an internal moment in the process of “disenchantment of the world” highlighted by Weber, but however believes that something radically opposed to that process exists in it. “Nevertheless, the cliché about the magic of art has something true about it.” It is precisely on that “something true” that I will focus my attention through the study of filmmaking practices.

The aim of this research can now emerge more clearly: to study film practices through the critical lens of Resonance theory to answer the following question. Can cinema become a space free from rigid scientific causality and sheltered from the most chaotic randomness in which to elaborate practices of re-enchantment of the world?