Cinepoiesis: The visual poetics of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Franco Piavoli

The visual verses of a cinema of poetry are the result of the interaction between the concrete language of images, which mirror corporeal reality, and the abstract language of poetry, irrational because it comes from the infinite world of possibilities, which generates subjective and mental imagery. In a more conventional cinema of prose, narrative imposes an order which superintends the film\u27s signification, and which is concentrated in developing a sequential logic of events and of straightforward meanings, as classical Hollywood cinema exemplifies. Diverging from a cinema of narrative, a cinema of poetry depends more on the power of images rather than on that of spoken words. Cinematic images work as mirrors that allow viewers to look beyond the immediately perceptible pictures, to go beyond the logos , opening themselves to subjective interpretations, while reflecting on the gaze as a subject and object of its reflection. In this way, cinema of poetry depicts that subjective metaphysical connection between images and the real, once they have been liberated from the codified structures of the contemporary world. Cinema of poetry thus opens a new mode of looking and a need to delve into the profundity of the images. The focus of my dissertation is an examination of cinema of poetry both in its theoretical foundations and in the exemplary practice of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and the still relatively unknown Franco Piavoli, whose artistic paths are devoted to exploring and employing the poetic language of cinema. I will demonstrate how their cinema of poetry is able to open a dialogue between author, text, and viewers, while cinematic authors, like poietes, bring to life multiple possible worlds. My analysis will help to formulate new hypotheses about the interactions between visual images and poetry, keeping the enduring bond between them alive, while complicating the epistemology of the cinematic medium, whose subject is the public gaze, in its double capacity of looking through an image and beyond the limits of the world, while simultaneously reflecting on itself