Staff profile

Mr Roland Caputo

Associate Lecturer

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry

HU2 325, Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Qualifications

BA (Hons-La Trobe)

Membership of professional Associations

Editor, Senses of Cinema

Area of study

European Studies
Creative Arts
Cinema Studies

Brief Profile

Rolando Caputo’s early research focused on formal analysis of narrative codes of storytelling, particularly in relationship to voice-over narration in stories structured around flashback sequences. This soon developed into an interest in avant-garde and experimental cinema, and was complimented in a practical form through him making a series of short ‘free-form’ films which were screened at a range of local and international festivals and forums, such as the Berlin and Melbourne film festivals. More lately, one of his key areas of teaching and research has been the traditions of European modernist narrative cinema. In this light he has contributed numerous scholarly audio commentaries and monograph essays to DVD releases of such canonical modernist works as Jean-Luc Godard’s Band àparte and Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Red Desert and La Notte, and the early films by R.W. Fassbinder. In 2005 he was appointed as an editor of the internationally acclaimed web journal Senses of Cinema.

Research interests

Creative Writing

- Screenplay Analysis and Creative Writing

Film and Television

- Cinema and Eroticism

Screen and Media Culture

- European Cinema and its Modernist Traditions

- Film History and Aesthetics

Teaching Units

CST1MSM - Making Sense of the Movies.
CST2/3CIC - Contemporary European Cinema.
CST2/3SCN - Screenplay as Narrative Form.
CST2/3CAS - Cinema and Sexuality.
CST4/5FAT - Film As Text.

Recent Publications

Caputo, R 2009, ‘An Oversensitive Despair: F.W. Fassbinder's Gangster Trilogy’, monograph essay accompanying DVD boxset ‘The Gangster Films: 1. Love Is Colder Than Death 2. The American Soldier 3. Gods Of The Plague. Rainer Werner Fassbinder/Directors Suite, Madman Films in association with Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, Region 4.

 

Caputo, R 2007, ‘La Commare Secca: A Film Whispered Like a Secret’, monograph essay accompanying DVD La Commare Secca (The Grim Reaper), Bernardo Bertolucci/Directors Suite, Madman/AV Channel, Region 4.

 

Caputo, R & Danks, A 2007, ‘They’re a Weird Mob’, in The Cinema of Australia & New Zealand, Ed. Geoff Mayer & Keith Beattie, London: Wallflower Press, pp. 91-99.

 

Caputo, R 2004, ‘Literary cineastes: the Italian novel and the cinema’, The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, Ed. Peter Bondanella & Andrea Ciccarelli, London: Cambridge University Press, pp182-196.

 

Caputo, R 2003, ‘Design for Living: J.G. Ballard and the Visionary Present’ in Experimenta: House of Tomorrow, Ed. Alex Taylor, Melbourne: Bambra Press. 

Research projects

Radical Beginnings: A History of Filmmaking at La Trobe between 1970-75.
Neo-Burlesque and image making.