Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Film-Thinking 2022–23

Film-Thinking explores the ways in which filmmakers use their work as vehicles for thinking through political, historical, social, and philosophical questions, and how cinema itself might act as a thinking subject. This year’s series featured screenings and discussions of an international trio of films considering issues of gender, sexuality, and interracial politics; religion and class; and the ways in which politics and cinema itself can shape perceptions of reality.

The first film of the year, Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven (2002), was shown in partnership with the LGBTQIA+ Thinking initiative at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and tells the story of a woman whose failing marriage calls into question the idyllic appearance of her 1950s upper-middle-class community and ushers in a socially unacceptable relationship with a Black gardener.

The second film, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La ricotta (1963), originally a segment of the international multi-director omnibus film RoGoPaG, follows a starving man working as an extra in a film of the Passion of Christ and his attempts to find food on the set.

And the third film, Abbas Kiarostami’s First Case, Second Case [Qazieh-e shekl-e avval … shekl-e dovvom] (1980), is a pseudo-documentary shot in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and depicts political and social leaders, both real and fictional, reacting in highly polarized ways to a teacher’s demands that a group of students betray the one among them who caused a disruptive incident in class.

  •  Location: Granoff Center for the Creative ArtsRoom: Martinos Auditorium

    Film-Thinking presented “First Case, Second Case,” a 1980 pseudo-documentary directed by Abbas Kiarostami. The post-screening conversation included Brown University faculty members Timothy Bewes (English), Joan Copjec (Modern Culture and Media), and Stephen Kinzer (Watson Institute).


    About the Film

    First Case, Second Case (Qazieh-e shekl-e avval … shekl-e dovvom)
    Iran, 1980 (53 mins)
    Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

    Cast: Mehdi Azadbakht, Mohammadreza Barati, Hedayat Matin Daftari, Nader Ebrahimi, Gholamreza Emami, Mahmoud Enayat, Ezzatolah Entezami, Ali Mousavi Garmaroudi, Ali Golzadeh Ghafouri, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Iraj Jahanshahi, Sadegh Khalkhali, Kamal Kharazi, Noureddin Kianouri, Masoud Kimiai, Abdolkarim Lahiji, Ardok Manoukian, Jaleh Sarshar, Rob David Shoft, Gholamhossein Shokoohi, Ebrahim Yazdi, Noureddin Zarrinkelk, Karim Zarrineh | Assistant Director: Naser Zera’ati | Cinematography: Houshang Baharlou | Editing: Abbas Kiarostami | Sound: Changiz Sayad | Language: Persian with English Subtitles

    The film begins by depicting a scenario: a teacher is unable to identify which of his students is making a disruptive sound in class, so he tells a group of them to leave the class. He gives an ultimatum: either (case one) they inform him which of them was causing the disturbance, or (case two) they will all be suspended for a week. Director Kiarostami then goes on to interview the fathers of the students, as well as ministers, religious leaders, writers, filmmakers and directors of educational institutions about their opinions as to the proper course of action. The film was shot in 1979-80, during and in the immediate aftermath of the Islamic revolution; as a result, the answers are impassioned and highly politicized.

    Adapted from Mehrzad Bakhtiar, “Open Case: Kiarostami’s Film Reemerges After 30 Years,” Frontline: Tehran Bureau, November 27, 2009.


    Film-Thinking is a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to thinkthe many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. This project has been made possible, in part, by the Brown Arts Institute. Read more .

  •  Location: Granoff Center for the Creative ArtsRoom: Martinos Auditorium

    Il Cinema Ritrovato at Brown and Film-Thinking featured La Ricotta, a 1963 short film by Pier Paolo Pasolini. La Ricotta follows Stracci (Rags), a starving man who works as an extra (ironically, the “good thief”) in his desperate search for food on the set of a film of the Passion of Christ directed by a Pasolini-alter ego played by Orson Welles. The film is one of the four segments of Ro.Go.Pa.G., a French-Italian omnibus film also featuring work by Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Ugo Gregoretti.

    A post-screening conversation included Brown University faculty members Timothy Bewes (English), Massimo Riva (Italian Studies), and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Comparative Literature and Italian Studies), as well as guest speakers filmmaker Alina Marazzi and, from the University of Maryland, Mauro Resmini (Italian and Cinema and Media Studies).


    About the Film

    La ricotta, episodio di Ro.Go.Pa.G.
    Italy-France, 1963 (35 mins)
    Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

    Cast: Orson Welles (il regista), Mario Cipriani (Stracci), Laura Betti (la ‘diva’), Edmonda Aldini (un’altra ‘diva’), Vittorio La Paglia (il giornalista), Maria Bernardini (la stripteaseuse), Rossana Di Rocco (la figlia di Stracci) | Production: Alfredo Bini per Arco Film | Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli | Film Editing: Nino Baragli | Production Design: Flavio Mogherini | Music: Carlo Rustichelli | Language: Italian

    Restored in 4K in 2022 by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Compass Film at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the original camera negative and the up & down soundtrack positive, both provided by Studio Cine.


    About the Speakers

    Timothy Bewes is professor of English and interim chair of the Department of English at Brown University. Among his many publications are the books Cynicism and Postmodernity (Verso Books, 1997); Reification, or The Anxiety of Late Capitalism (Verso Books, 2002); The Event of Postcolonial Shame (Princeton University Press, 2011), and Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age (Columbia University Press, 2022). He convenes the Film-Thinking series at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities.

    Alina Marazzi is an award-winning Italian filmmaker. Her films explore events of the recent past and present in Italy through a gendered perspective based on women’s biographical experiences. Her most critically acclaimed work is her trilogy on female subjectivity, motherhood, and memory: Un’ora sola ti vorrei (For One More Hour With You, 2002), Vogliamo anche le rose (We Want Roses Too, 2007) and Tutto parla di te (All About You, 2012), starring Charlotte Rampling.

    Mauro Resmini is associate professor of cinema and media studies and Italian at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also serves as core faculty in comparative literature. He is the author of Italian Political Cinema: Figures of the Long ’68 (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) and has published essays on Italian and European cinema and media, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and the relationship between cinema and politics. He earned his Ph.D. in Italian studies and modern culture and media at Brown University in 2014.

    Massimo Riva ​is professor of Italian studies at Brown University. He is the author of four books, published in Italy: on literary maladies in the 18th century, national identity in the 19th century, post-humanism and the hyper-novel, and literature in the digital age. His digital monograph, titled Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analogue World (part of Brown University Digital Publications) was published by Stanford University Press in 2022.

    Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg is professor of comparative literature and Italian studies and chair of the Department of Italian Studies at Brown University. She is the author of the books Sublime Surrender: Male Masochism at the Fin-de-Siecle (Cornell University Press, 1998), The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (1860–1930) (University of Chicago Press, 2007), and Impious Fidelity: Anna Freud, Psychoanalysis, Politics, (Cornell University Press, 2012). She is currently working on a manuscript with the working title “Grounds for Reclamation: Fascism, Postfascism, and the Question of Consent.”


    Film-Thinking is a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to think the many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. This project has been made possible, in part, by the Brown Arts Institute. Read more.

  •  Location: Granoff Center for the Creative ArtsRoom: Martinos Auditorium

    Film-Thinking, in cosponsorship with the LGBTQIA+ Thinking Initiative of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, featured Far from Heaven, a 2002 period drama directed by Todd Haynes. A post-screening conversation included:

    • Timothy Bewes (Professor and Interim Chair, English)
    • Lynne Joyrich (Professor, Modern Culture and Media; Director, LGBTQIA+ Thinking Initiative, Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women)
    • Leon Hilton (Assistant Professor, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies)
    • Patricia White (Swarthmore College | Centennial Professor, Film and Media Studies; Coordinator, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

    About the Film

    Far from Heaven

    US, France, 2002 (107 mins)

    Written and directed by Todd Haynes

    Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson, Viola Davis | Production: Jody Allen, Christine Vachon | Cinematography: Edward Lachman | Editing: James Lyons | Music: Elmer Bernstein | Language: English

    Cathy (Julianne Moore) and Frank (Dennis Quaid) have a beautiful home and two happy, healthy children, but she senses something isn’t quite right in her marriage. While Cathy’s relationship with Frank is falling apart, her friendship with the family’s Black gardener (Dennis Haysbert) deepens.

    Julianne Moore earned a Best Actress nomination for her role as an affluent 1950s wife and mother whose idyllic world is shattered by a shocking discovery about her husband’s forbidden love affair.

    Read the Film Note.


    Film-Thinking is a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to think the many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. Read more .