COLLEGIUM

COLLEGIUM CALL 2023
CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS FOR THIS YEAR’S COLLEGIUM: MONDAY JULY 17, 2023

The 24th edition of the Collegium, held in conjunction with the Giornate del Cinema Muto’s 42nd edition, is a much-anticipated occasion to recapture the essence of this unique forum, designed to create an atmosphere of full immersion not just in silent cinema but the silent film community. More than ever before, we have been feeling the loss of those common spaces to meet in-person and share passions; those who have attended the festival previously know that the Giornate is not only a place to watch what’s onscreen, but an open symposium where free discussion is encouraged, and new approaches are debated as we rediscover the past and renew our ties to the art form.

The Collegium provides this opportunity to 12 people under 30 who are eager to experience the festival’s screenings through a structured programme in which conversation is privileged over lecture. Each session brings programmers, archivists, film historians, scholars, collectors, critics, academics – whoever is part of this big “show” – closer to those just beginning to explore the riches of the silent era.

Instead of formal lectures and panels, the daily sessions are designed as “Dialogues,” in the Platonic sense, where collegians sit down with groups of experts in various disciplines. The Dialogues are designed not just to elicit information and instruction, but to allow the collegians to make direct personal and social connections with Giornate habitués who can be approached as peers throughout the week for supplementary discussions. To focus their inquiries, the members of the Collegium are tasked with producing a collection of papers on themes emerging from, or inspired by, the experiences of the week. Each collegian is required to contribute an essay whose subject must derive from some element of the Giornate programme or conversations and interviews with attending scholars and experts. The papers will be published on the Giornate website, and the best Collegium Paper is eligible for the annual Collegium Prize.

To apply to the Collegium please send an application letter with a description of your background, some discussion of your passion for silent films, and what you expect to find at the Festival. You can send it to: collegium.gcm@gmail.com.

Winners
2022
Sofie Cato Maas: “A discontinuity given an illusory wholeness by the blessings of light”: the luminous quality of the silent cinema.
Ex aequo 2021 Leticia Magalãhes: It’s a mad mad mad world: mental health, slapstick and stardom in Carlo Campogalliani’s La Tempesta in un Cranio
Ex aequo 2021 Travis R. Merchant-Knudsen: The Intrusive, Necessary Labor of Archivists in the Face of Change
2019
Stephan Ahrens:
Unheard music. Notes on silent music moments
2018 Sarah Rahman Niazi: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto and the encounter with Indian silent cinema
2017 Sebastian Köthe: Silent Film as Ambiguous Heritage
2016 Danielle Crepaldi Carvalho: Blessed Tears: the Human Soul Unveiled in Les Misérables by Henri Fescourt (1925-26)
2015 Guilherme Maggi Savioli: The Outcasts, or notes on a revolution
2014 Cesar de la Rosa Anaya: Aura Footprints of Early Cinema
2013
Thomas Clearly: The Accidental Artists: Art in Early Cinema
2012 Tom Brockley: Preserving a ‘Way of Seeing’: Post-archival Film Preservation
2011 Raphael Luce: Born by accident
2010 Ioana Salagean: Le mythe et le retour
2009
Polly Ellen Goodwin: How to Watch a Silent Film: The View from the Pit
2008 Maria Belodubrovskaya: Understanding the Magic:Special Effects in Ladislas Starewitch’s L’Horloge magique

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