At the margins of Rome, at the margins of the world: The Hawks and the Sparrows and Sacro GRA as peripatetic analyses of capitalist society

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the depiction of Rome’s periphery in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Uccellacci e Uccellini (The Hawks and the Sparrows) (1966) and in Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA (2013) by focusing on the types of shots, montage and the role of sound. In both films, the directors’ cinematic use of specific, local non-places offers the possibility to reflect not only on the margins of the Italian capital, but also on the global effects of consumerism and capitalism. Marc Augé’s theory informs the analysis of the process of homogenization that non-places and international architecture activate in the Italian territory and beyond. Moreover, this article both investigates the crisis of national identity in the postcolonial era and proposes an alternative way of dwelling in the world (as proposed by Rosi’s film) that touches upon ecocriticism, Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis and Pasolini’s ‘cinema of poetry’.