Spotlight on Bolzano: A City History Through the Gaze of a Flâneur
Updated: 1 day ago
This year marked the 5th edition of the Spotlight Summer School: a milestone that made this year’s edition special in more ways than one.
For 5 consecutive years, we have travelled to different places to immerse ourselves in their histories, cultures, rhythms, landscapes, and the voices of their inhabitants. Through short films made by outsiders looking in, our participants have sought to capture the essence of each place, discovering its stories through the film cameras' lenses.
This year also brought a new destination: Bolzano. After exploring cities across Central and Eastern Europe, we ventured to a city whose history remains deeply intertwined with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which it was part until the end of the First World War.
This year’s Spotlight invited participants to explore the visual portrait of the city through a central question: Is history a form of utopia or nostalgia? What does history mean to those who live in the region, and how do they mobilise, interpret, and use history, memory, and material culture, and to what ends? In a world where the past continues to shape our understanding of the present, these questions feel more relevant than ever
We invite you to discover Bolzano through the eyes of this year’s wonderful participants, who travelled from across Europe and beyond to spend a week exploring the city and translating their encounters into film.
Step into Bolzano through their lenses and see what stories emerge when a city meets an outsider's gaze.
“161”
The streets of Bolzano are discreetly marked by recurring graffiti bearing the number “161.” Do the city’s residents even notice it? Do they know what lies behind it?
“Forgotten in Translation”
Bozen, Bolzano, Bulsan. Can three official names fully encompass the multilayered identity of a single city?
“Arrivant”
How do residents perceive the role of urban infrastructure in shaping the memory and future of their surroundings? Combining ethnographic observation with archival material, the film explores a dismantled yet unrealised project that returns to the urban fabric as an ambiguous arrival.
“Shifts”
Turning the lens towards the vineyard overlooking the city, the idyllic landscape becomes a stage for quiet, inevitable transformations to which its inhabitants—willingly or not—must adapt.
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