The association LOGGIA Design & Art, in collaboration with Zhong Art International and NEMO Academy, within the framework of the traditional celebrations of Chinese New Year 2026 (the Year of the Horse, a central moment in Eastern culture and imagination), offers the audience of Giunti Odeon an opportunity for viewing and reflection dedicated to animation cinema as a space for cultural dialogue between East and West.
With the support of the FánHuā Chinese Film Festival, the animated feature Into the Mortal World by Ding Zhong (2024, running time 118 minutes) will be presented.

In recent years, the presence of Chinese animation in Italy has become increasingly visible thanks to cultural contexts and dedicated festivals, fostering the circulation of animated works and the emergence of new narratives. Although more recent than the diffusion of Japanese animation, this growth has been significant, allowing an ever-wider audience to engage with imaginaries rooted in myths, legends, and universal values.

Federica Fabbri, lecturer in Animation Cinema, introduces the context of contemporary Chinese animation. Her talk offers a historical and cultural reading of the phenomenon, focusing on the central role of mythological and traditional narratives—from Journey to the West to popular legends—mirroring the Western tradition of drawing upon classic fairy tales.

Luca Chiarotti, lecturer in Game, Concept, and Illustration, introduces the feature film Into the Mortal World, exploring its value as a project developed within an academic environment. The film, originally conceived as a short created by students of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and later expanded into a feature-length work, becomes a case study on the relationship between education, research, and professional production.

This reflection is placed in dialogue with Yujo, an animated short produced within a training program involving students and teachers, highlighting how educational collaboration can become a genuine space for experimentation, learning, and cultural production. The screening of Yujo (6 minutes) concludes the talk, guiding the audience toward the viewing of the feature film.

The day continues with the full screening of Into the Mortal World, an animated feature that reinterprets a classic Chinese folktale by weaving together mythological elements and references to contemporary culture. The film offers a vision in which divine and human figures coexist and collaborate, and in which animation becomes a tool for dialogue between worlds, generations, and cultures.

LOGGIA Design & Art

LOGGIA Design & Art is an association dedicated to design and art, conceived as a space for encounter, dialogue, and innovation.

Born within the Italo-Chinese ecosystem of ZAI – Zhong Art International, with the collaboration of Antonio Locicero design and Tipstudio, LOGGIA Design & Art provides a creative forum for exchange and professional growth, where design and art professionals, together with cultural and educational institutions, can collaborate and inspire one another.

The mission of LOGGIA Design & Art is to create a dynamic and stimulating network in support of new generations of designers and artists. The association is founded on the values of inclusivity and the enhancement of cultural diversity, integrating research, education, and production. Through dialogue between Italian and Chinese culture and by connecting academia with the business world, LOGGIA contributes to a more open and global design and art landscape.

LOGGIA Design & Art’s activities include cultural projects, editorial content production, and public events. As a community of practice and innovation, LOGGIA Design & Art promotes the power of art and design as tools for dialogue and change, positioning itself as an institutional point of reference for the sector at both national and international levels.

The intimate account of a former Commander General of the Carabinieri grappling with issues of State security. Giovanni Nistri presents Ho servito lo Stato (Neri Pozza) at GO together with Simone Innocenti.

Il libro:

An intimate account by someone who chose to be a servant of the State without cloaking himself in heroism, simply placing himself at the service of the community—from his years at the Academy to the highest point of his career as Commander General of the Arma dei Carabinieri, while earning three university degrees and several master’s qualifications along the way.

When the redevelopment of ancient Pompeii entered a critical phase, the task fell to him—after four years as head of the Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage—to take responsibility and restore vitality to one of the most visited archaeological sites in the world. During his mandate, he faced situations of particular difficulty, without provoking scandal or adopting extremist positions.

Yet the most compelling narrative is that of the everyday life of a military officer who, when confronted with even serious issues concerning State security, sought solutions through philosophy, literature, music, and cinema. These passionate pages recount the lives of men and women, truths and carefully crafted parables, values, emotions and behaviours, and failures from which to learn.

It is a life marked by constant transfers across the Italian peninsula, lived in contact with people of ill intent as well as saints and murderers. And there is also the death of young carabinieri, brutally killed in the line of duty, and the tears shed alongside their families at funerals—always with the certainty that power must never be abused and that truth is never black or white, but rather a blend of infinite shades.

I will consider myself satisfied if, at the final word of the final page, I have succeeded in describing without pretense significant aspects of my experience and, even more so, the spirit with which I sought to confront the related responsibilities. This does not mean that I always fulfilled them adequately, but it does testify to the constant effort invested in trying. To serve the Arma means to be a meaningful part of that constellation of values we call the Homeland—a term too often neglected, for a whole series of reasons.

L'autore:

Giovanni Nistri is a Lieutenant General of the Carabinieri, of which he served as Commander General from 2018 to 2021. He holds degrees in Law, Political Science, and Internal and External Security Sciences. He has taught Cultural Heritage Security at LUMSA University in Rome.

From 2014 to 2016, he served as Director General of the Great Pompeii Project, funded by the European Union to secure the archaeological site and redevelop the surrounding UNESCO Buffer Zone. The author of essays on public communication, cultural heritage protection, and cognitive warfare/disinformation, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

The Internet is not just technology: it is a terrain of power and desire. Behind the apparent freedom of the web, the same hierarchies of the real world are reinforced. Algorithms learn from stereotypes, platforms monetize gender-based violence, sexism becomes entertainment. Between revenge porn and sexual deepfakes—and insinuating itself even into the most mainstream trends and aesthetics—patriarchy updates itself, disguises itself as a meme, and thrives within code. Silvia Semenzin will talk about all this while presenting her book Internet non è un posto per femmine (Einaudi), in conversation with Vera Gheno.

The book:

Who said technology is a man’s thing? In the beginning, it was women who wrote code and programmed computers. Then something went wrong. Or rather: someone decided that the internet should become technical and masculine. From that point on, exclusion, sexism, and discrimination only escalated.
Silvia Semenzin tells this story in a personal and engaging style that weaves together data, history, pop culture, and feminist theory. From her first experiences on social media to her work as a sociologist and activist, she guides us on a revealing journey into the darkest, most misogynistic side of the internet. She analyzes forms of digital gender-based violence, the role of algorithms in spreading stereotypes, and the emotional and political radicalization that increasingly takes place online, in an ecosystem where ultraconservative communities, anti-feminist influencers, and aesthetic models proliferate—models that, beneath a glossy veneer, reinforce and normalize gender inequality. The so-called “manosphere” is now a global phenomenon, fueled by political agendas and ever more sophisticated communication strategies. If we are not to leave new generations alone in the face of the internet’s abyss, we must develop a new awareness and a new capacity to imagine the future. Technology is never neutral: it must be understood, critiqued—and changed—before others decide for us.

The author:

Silvia Semenzin is a digital sociologist, researcher, and feminist activist. Her work focuses on technology, gender, and online violence from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective. In 2019, she contributed to the introduction of Italy’s first law against the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and she now collaborates with international institutions such as the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and the European Institute for Gender Equality, working on platform governance and digital rights. For Einaudi she published Internet non è un posto per femmine (2026).

“Perhaps those who are born in a city like Istanbul are destined to feel at home in two different places. Perhaps it was my city that inspired this path. Or maybe it simply had to happen this way, as part of my destiny. I’ll ask next time my tarot cards are read. Or maybe the answer will emerge from the grounds of my next cup of coffee.”

Serra Yilmaz, together with Fausto Calderai, will transport us into her world with the book Cara Istanbul (Rizzoli).

The book:

How do you tell the story of the city of your childhood—especially when that city is Istanbul, a legendary place steeped in history? Serra Yılmaz chooses to do so by placing side by side, like in a memory album, the neighborhoods, streets, and homes where she lived, when Istanbul—already vast—had only one million inhabitants, not twenty as it does today. Reading these pages feels like listening to a voice that, beside a tiled stove during a harsh winter or looking out over the Bosphorus from a terrace on a warm evening, reconstructs and brings back to life the sounds and smells of a corner of the world that, like few others, has been overwhelmed and transformed by progress and tourism.

The unmistakable voice is Serra’s: one of Turkey’s most celebrated actresses, deeply loved by Italian audiences who came to know her on the big screen in the films of Ferzan Özpetek. In this kind of “autobiography through people, houses, and neighborhoods,” we discover long summers spent at her grandmother’s home on the Asian side of the city, among beaches and gardens; her relationship with her parents; friendships and youthful loves; her first work experiences; the emergence of her passion for France, for Italy, for theater; and once again departures and returns to a place “whose memory is inseparable from the possibility of any story.”

All of this is richly seasoned with caustic irony, picaresque anecdotes, rings lost and found, women without navels, a certain Levantine superstition against the evil eye, a magmatic and driving rhythm—and, why not, a few traditional recipes (cooking has long been one of Serra’s passions…).

The author:

After studying psychology in France, she joined a small Turkish theater company and began her stage career. She made her film debut in 1983 with Turkish director Atıf Yılmaz, but the film that truly launched her career in Turkey was Motherland Hoteldi by Ömer Kavur, which competed at the Venice Film Festival in 1987. From 1988 to 2004, she was a member of the Istanbul City Theatre company.

An icon of Turkish director Ferzan Özpetek, she has appeared in the cast of all his most important films. In 2006, she served as the official interpreter during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey. She has never, however, abandoned her theatrical work: she is part of the company that staged L’ultimo harem, directed by Angelo Savelli at Teatro di Rifredi in Florence, which has been running since 2005.

Moira Lilli will be at Giunti Odeon to present her book I Swear to Be Faithful (Rogiosi), accompanied by Rita Pecci.

The book:

“Society moves fast, shifting rapidly into a thousand different shapes, changing direction, and we must always feel up to the task—keeping pace, tuning in perfectly to a channel with ever-changing frequency. Pain, however, does not move at this rhythm. It is slow, creeping, relentless, cruel, often sadistic. It works like a woodworm, wearing us down, making us look fine on the outside while damaged within. Only the dust we absentmindedly drop as we walk may be a sign, but everyone is rushing and no one stops to look at it. In this world, what makes the news are dazzling successes and pathetic miseries, extraordinary victories and crushing defeats—not the silent dust of those who suffer.”

1945-1975: this was the golden age of Italian cinema, full of masterpieces that left their mark on the entire history of film. From the ruins of war arose Neorealism, the “movement” that, with Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica-Zavattini, changed the way cinema was made and conceived forever. From the early 1950s, the revolutionary charge of Neorealism faded, becoming contaminated with popular genres such as comedy and other forms of popular cinema, passing through the golden 1960s with the affirmation of great auteur cinema (Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, etc.), “Italian-style comedy” and other genres (such as spaghetti westerns), until the anxieties, experiments and new sensibilities of the early 1970s. A long history in which Italian cinema reflects and reworks the enormous political, social, economic and cultural changes experienced by the country during those crucial three decades.

1945-1975: this was the golden age of Italian cinema, full of masterpieces that left their mark on the entire history of film. From the ruins of war arose Neorealism, the “movement” that, with Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica-Zavattini, changed the way cinema was made and conceived forever. From the early 1950s, the revolutionary charge of Neorealism faded, becoming contaminated with popular genres such as comedy and other forms of popular cinema, passing through the golden 1960s with the affirmation of great auteur cinema (Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, etc.), “Italian-style comedy” and other genres (such as spaghetti westerns), until the anxieties, experiments and new sensibilities of the early 1970s. A long history in which Italian cinema reflects and reworks the enormous political, social, economic and cultural changes experienced by the country during those crucial three decades.

1945-1975: this was the golden age of Italian cinema, full of masterpieces that left their mark on the entire history of film. From the ruins of war arose Neorealism, the “movement” that, with Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica-Zavattini, changed the way cinema was made and conceived forever. From the early 1950s, the revolutionary charge of Neorealism faded, becoming contaminated with popular genres such as comedy and other forms of popular cinema, passing through the golden 1960s with the affirmation of great auteur cinema (Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, etc.), “Italian-style comedy” and other genres (such as spaghetti westerns), until the anxieties, experiments and new sensibilities of the early 1970s. A long history in which Italian cinema reflects and reworks the enormous political, social, economic and cultural changes experienced by the country during those crucial three decades.

1945-1975: this was the golden age of Italian cinema, full of masterpieces that left their mark on the entire history of film. From the ruins of war arose Neorealism, the “movement” that, with Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica-Zavattini, changed the way cinema was made and conceived forever. From the early 1950s, the revolutionary charge of Neorealism faded, becoming contaminated with popular genres such as comedy and other forms of popular cinema, passing through the golden 1960s with the affirmation of great auteur cinema (Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, etc.), “Italian-style comedy” and other genres (such as spaghetti westerns), until the anxieties, experiments and new sensibilities of the early 1970s. A long history in which Italian cinema reflects and reworks the enormous political, social, economic and cultural changes experienced by the country during those crucial three decades.