The "memetic contagion" in the metropolitan folklore of Danilo Arona

A multifaceted author whose interests range from film criticism to fiction to non-fiction dedicated to alternative realities, Danilo Arona has become the singer of a particular and very personal declination of horror and weird that has its roots in the Italian context. In his essay "Media Possession", Arona wonders if it is possible that certain media, especially audiovisual ones, are capable of provoking in predisposed subjects a temporary cancellation of conscience whose place is taken by "something else", in a nutshell what in other places, times and cultures would have been called possession.

โ€œThe house with laughing windowsโ€: fetishes and (self) sacrifices

Exactly 45 years ago, on August 16, 1976, "The house with laughing windows", the cult-movie by Pupi Avati ascribable to the so-called vein of the ยซPadano Gothicยป. In the film, the disturbing element of the peasant culture in which the Emilian director grew up and more exotic black suggestions, from Caribbean macumbas to self-sacrifice shared by the mystic and the madman, converge.

25 years of "Arcano Enchanter": conversation with Pupi Avati

Exactly 25 years ago, on April 19, 1996, "L'Arcano Incantatore" was released in Italian cinemas: a variation by Pupi Avati on the theme of a genre he himself conceived and codified - the "Po Valley Gothic". For the occasion we went to interview the director and we retraced the "making of" of the film and the final result.