The University of Lugano, Switzerland, in association with the Locarno International Film Festival, organises for the sixth year running a Summer School on the analysis of non-fiction films and factual audiovisual products. The 2005 edition, scheduled to take place in Locarno from July 31 to August 6, will focus specifically on the documentary film and its representation of work.

There seems to be, of late, quite a revival of interest in the question of how to represent work on the silver screen. Undoubtedly, much of this is ascribable to the documentary, no longer a ‘minor genre’, but increasingly a reality to be reckoned with, as much for its creative potential as for its market value. Besides, the keen eye of the documentary turns out to be a source of inspiration for many fiction productions, with intriguing processes of decantation and contamination. On the other hand, things are changing quite dramatically on the work front, too. For if traditionally cinema has paid attention mainly to labour and industrial work (either to celebrate the “poetry of machines” or to show real labour conditions), there are a variety of other forms of work that have yet to find their appropriate representation. Invisible forms demand to be represented by documentary cinema; likewise, forms of difficult depiction are calling for due recognition and identification on a screen. Intangible work is one such form. How can we show it, except by the typing hand poised over the keyboard? How do we tell its story, how do we capture its fleeting features? The 2005 Summer School hopes to tackle the whole gamut of relations connecting cinema, documentary, and work, while focusing more particularly on the different forms of visibility which the past knew how to process, but which the present day seems to be unable to capture.

The Summer School offers the opportunity to undergraduate and graduate students to explore the techniques of analysis and the processes of creation and production of the documentary film through the following teaching activities:

Cinema, Documentary, Work:
A series of four seminars - coordinated by Professor Fancesco Casetti - will look at the documentary film both from the historical and from the stylistic point of view; in particular, questioning the strategies used to explore reality, and the difficulties to interpret the idea of information. Guest teachers will include professors Marco Bertozzi (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy) and Yvonne Zimmermann (Universität Zürich, Switzerland).

Workshops on the documentary film:
The four modules - coordinated by Professor Giovanni Cesareo, with the assistance of Nevina Satta - will consist of two workshops conducted by two renowned documentary filmmakers: Mimmo Calopresti (Italy) and Alexander J. Seiler (Switzerland). Using analytical methods, the authors will present their own creative-production processes and the typical features of their relevant market. Laboratory work includes the viewing and the discussion of one or more films, each author’s presentation of his conception and production cycle in its main stages, to conclude with a group discussion with the film director.

Meeting the professionals of the documentary film industry:
This is a study day where the students meet the professionals of the film industry, especially those concerned with the documentary genre, and hear about professional characteristics, the forms their activities may take and related problems. This series of meetings has been designed to familiarise students with a rather complex professional world, but also to capture the documentary film world in all its facets (aesthetics, production, and distribution). Guest lecturers include: Heino Deckert (sales agent, Deckert Distribution, Germany), Federico Jolli (producer, TSI, Switzerland), Luciano Rigolini (commissioning editor, ARTE, France), and Alessandro Signetto (financing policies expert, Antenna Media Torino, Italy).

Round Table "Representing tangible and intangible work in documentary cinema":
The Summer School ends with an open forum, to which are invited a number of personalities attending the Festival. This forum is open not only to the Summer School students, but also to the Festival goers.