AGHI thanks everyone who came out on April 7 to our film screening and discussion around “Devoti Tutti [Devoted],” director and professor Bernadette Wegenstein’s recent documentary about Saint Agatha of Catania. The film imagines the long afterlife of the saint herself, invoking the creative and critical fabulation (Hartman) to allow Agatha to speak and—in the film’s final moving scenes and animation, to be free.
The film also gives a compassionate and harrowing look at some of the worst gender violence imaginable, interviewing women and men from Sicily who rely on Agatha for many things—for an ideal, for a companion, for a terrible historical precedent for ongoing harm.
During the discussion following the screening, Dr. Wegenstein chatted with Professor. Eugenio Refini (NYU) to talk about how some of the keywords that cropped up in the documentary—myth, masculinity, humor, even power—informed the production choices. Audience Q&A then opened up discussion of recent reception of the film, in Italy and elsewhere, and how different viewers around the world have reacted to this sharply real yet at times whimsical look at such a difficult topic as femicide and gendered violence.
We wish to thank the Italian Cultural Institute (Istituto Italiano di Cultura) of Washington for helping us gather such a terrific audience and for its members wonderful questions during our Q&A.
Though this is the end of this season’s Humanities on the Mall events, AGHI invites everyone—in DC, Baltimore, and beyond—to continue this theme of imagination at our final Humanities in the Village event on April 29. We will gather at Bird in Hand Cafe at 5pm to hear Prof. Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei discuss her new book, OUP’s Imagination: A Very Short Introduction, including a conversation with Prof. Jane Bennett.
All are welcome! More info at the links above.
Grazie tutti!