Thursday 7 December, at 10.30 am in the Aula Magna of the University of Messina, Marco Bellocchio – internationally renowned director, screenwriter, producer and cinema teacher, will be awarded an Honorary Research Doctorate in Cognitive Sciencescurriculum “Social, territorial, media and performing arts theories and technologies”.
Bellocchio will hold a Lectio Doctoralis dedicated to his film production. The Laudatio will be entrusted to prof. Federico Vitella, Professor of Cinema, photography and television.
Marco Bellocchio, one of the most important living Italian film directors, has made around thirty feature films in the last sixty years of constant creative activity and has received as many national and international awards and recognition.
An exponent of the new Italian cinema of the second half of the 20th century, he was able to constantly renew himself, while always remaining faithful not only to an unmistakable style, but also to some key themes that transversally define his entire poetic horizon: the relationship with the law , with authority and with the father (Fists in the Pocket, In the Name of the Father, China is Near, etc.). Among his most recent successes include Il Traditore (2019), Esterno Notte (2022, which earned him the David di Donatello for Best Director) and Rapito (2023, Nastro d’Argento for the categories Best Film, Best Director and Best Film script).
Over the last twenty years, his cinema has become an absolute point of reference for European art films, in light of his unparalleled ability to combine his thematic agenda with the continuous reworking of the film language of his time.
Among the major awards he has received are the Golden Globe for Lifetime Achievement for Journalists of the Foreign Press (2007), the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival (2011), the David di Donatello at career of the Academy of Italian Cinema, the Gold Medal of Meritorious Culture and Art (2013), the Pardo d’onore of the Locarno Film Festival (2015), the honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (2021) . Since March 2014 he has been President of the Cineteca di Bologna Foundation.