the first European festival on creativity

2016 Programme

Event #3

Matteo Nucci, Valentina Carnelutti

The space of words: Helen and Odysseus

“Fair-tressed” Helen and Odysseus who “excels all men in wisdom” are the heroes of seduction. Charming, irresistible, they come across as models of persuasion in Homer’s poems. Helen due to eros inducing her devastating beauty. Odysseus due to the cunning intelligence with which he is always able to circumvent obstacles and beguile his adversaries. Neither, however, would be what they are without their artistry with words. Evoking past moments, depicting an instant, relaying sensory perceptions through accounts. Like Homeric bards, they are narrators and cantors above all else. And their song is the life they’ve lived and witnessed. A life transformed into epos which is reserved for heroes after death, in a sort of literary eternity. For, at its essence, life is logos and mythos – that is, word. Readings by Valentina Carnelutti.

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Valentina Carnelutti

actress and author, nominated this year for the Nastro d’Argento, has been directed by M. T. Giordana (La meglio gioventù), T. Angelopoulos (La polvere del tempo), P. Virzì (Tutta la vita davanti, La pazza gioia), C. Maselli (Le ombre rosse), A. Orlando (Sfiorarsi) and many others. She is the author of Sfiorarsi (A. Orlando) and of the film ReCuiem which she also directed. She also directed the documentary Melkam Zena in Ethiopia and the videoclip Le conseguenze dell’ingenuità.

Matteo Nucci was born in Rome in 1970. With Ponte alle Grazie Publishers he published the novels Sono comuni le cose degli amici (2009, shortlisted at Strega Award), Il toro non sbaglia mai (2011), È giusto obbedire alla notte (2017, shortlisted at Strega Award) and the narrative-essay L’abisso di Eros (2018). He curated the new edition of Plato’s Symposium (Einaudi, 2009) and the narrative-essays Le lacrime degli eroi (Einaudi, 2013), Achille e Odisseo. La ferocia e l’inganno (Einaudi, 2020), Il grido di Pan (Einaudi, 2023). With HarperCollins he published the novel Sono difficili le cose belle (2022). His short stories were published in magazines, anthologies and eBooks. He collaborates with Venerdì di Repubblica, Specchio by La Stampa and l’Espresso.

2016 Programme

Event #3

Matteo Nucci, Valentina Carnelutti

The space of words: Helen and Odysseus

An idea of public space

That place called “home”

The space of words: Helen and Odysseus

The last day of summer

The birth of space (and time)

The birth of space (and time)

The space of war. The First Italian War of Independence

Immunity and the brain: a dialogue between two chief systems. From memory to vaccines.

New males: as teenagers, in couples, as fathers

Tv series: a newly emerged continent

Across the American deserts: a voyage through 20th century collective imagination

What do algorithms think of?

That place is gone

The space of rebellion

Other maps, other worlds. Representations of space

The analyst at the movies: thinking by images

From the stars to Life: one, one hundred, one thousand Earths

Architectural space in the past, the present, the future

Families confined and without borders

The best ideas of our lives. Make room for innovation (the real kind)

The space of absence: Patroclus and Andromache

On the other side of the sea

Play it again

The space of war. The second Italian War of Independence

School is an idea of the world

Asperger Talk Show

Let’s make space for stupidity

Voyages through spaces real and imagined

Is there space for us all? The future of European migrations

When painters left their studios to paint en plein air

The memory of space. The rubble of climate and rubbish in our homes

Graffiti, tags and murals: when art extends to walls

The poetry of space. Words and drawings on that place we call home

The river is never wrong

Mirror neurons: anatomy of a revolutionary discovery

The boundaries of the soul and of the world