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From Ancient to Digital

Situating Blackness in Salambo (Domenico Gaido, 1914)

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Abstract

The Italian production company Pasquali e Compagnia adapts the French writer Gustave Flaubert’s 1862 novel Salammbô into a ‘$100,000 Spectacle’. Despite the grandiose production values, a leading character named Spendius is not identified in the film’s credits. The record of Spendius on film, literally ‘pellicola’ or ‘with a skin’, continues to dissolve as compressed portions of the film reappear as pixels on YouTube. This paper analyses Spendius’ transnational character by situating him in an absent, yet present spectrum of media.


Open access

Published Dec. 22, 2020 | Language: en

Keywords Videographic criticism • YouTube • Speculative cinema • Film studies • Postcolonial studies • Italian Studies

Copyright © 2020 Jan De Lozier. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-462-2/015


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