Kim Toft Hansen

Aalborg University, Denmark

Rural areas have been underrepresented by a popular culture with a preferred interest in the capitals and central urban areas. Now, as discovered by the DETECt Project during a 3-year research, European peripheries are front and centre of contemporary European TV crime series. Within the past decade, this tendency has released new creativity in representing rural and provincial areas on the borders of European territories and the European continent.

European TV series co-creates the geographical mentality of Europe. The comprehension of the continent has been in perpetual motion, and the understanding of what ‘European’ actually connotes has been changing for centuries. For decades, Europe has been – sometimes derogatively – identified with a political process towards centralization and cosmopolitan interests in the capitals. The main stream of European TV crime narratives has been impacted by this. Across Europe TV series have especially catered to the capitals.

In the new multiplatform TV era things appear to be changing. Competition is fierce and new modes of differentiation are needed. Many territories across the continent, including French, British and Nordic areas, have instigated new economic and cultural incentives for moving TV series production out of the much-used capital settings and into rural and peripheral areas in the countries and regions of Europe. This tendency not only registers a different European mentality, integrating perspectives on a Europe of regions; it also frames television narratives as authentic stories about living in and going to the European peripheries.

The Swedish series Thin Ice debates the Arctic periphery in Northern Europe through narratives about conflict, geopolitics and global warming. The Polish series Wataha discusses the Eastern peripheries of the continent through attention towards migration and human trafficking. The Italian series La porta rossa introduces stylistic features from Nordic Noir in a supernatural detective series closely encompassing the Italian-Slovenian border around Trieste in the Italian periphery. The Welsh series Hinterland tells a tale of UK peripheries by cinematographically inspecting the Welsh countryside as an integral part of local mentality. These are but a few examples of a growing tendency within European TV crime series.

Series by the dozens across the continent are now shaping and changing the cognitive geography of Europe through local representation of authentic settings and locations. In this way, TV crime series have become a counter-narrative to the centralization narrative of Europe and the European Union. Incentivised by economic funds and production interests in ‘fresh’ on-location shooting, contemporary TV crime series production drive the European rural areas from the peripheral status to the cultural centre of attention.

Peripheral locations have been analysed in the report Researching European transcultural identity III: Representation, in the article “Producing Peripheral Locations” in the journal Cinéma & Cie, and in the forthcoming book Peripheral Locations in European TV Crime Series by Kim Toft Hansen and Valentina Re (Palgrave Macmillan).
For more information, contact associate professor Kim Toft Hansen from Aalborg University, Denmark (kimtoft@hum.aau.dk).

In the city of Coliandro, there is a new tool at the service of cultural tourism: to travel between the places of noir narratives and those of real crimes that have marked Bologna’s history. The initiative is part of the European research project DETECt, coordinated by the University of Bologna.

Discover Bologna in the footsteps of detective and noir stories, crossing the places narrated in detective series set under the Two Towers, from the TV raids of Inspector Coliandro to the intrigues that animate the novels of authors such as Loriano Macchiavelli, Grazia Verasani, Carlo Lucarelli and Giampiero Rigosi.

To do so, from today, there is DETECt Bologna, a new webapp created as part of DETECt (Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives), a European research project coordinated by the University of Bologna that studies the effects of the transnational and transmedia circulation of the crime genre in Europe.

“DETECt Bologna exploits a principle of semantic enrichment of urban space that allows the user to have a dual experience of the city: as a physical place, with its monuments, squares and historical buildings, and as a setting for cultural narratives and memories,” explains Monica Dall’Asta, professor at the University of Bologna’s Department of Arts and project coordinator. “Using GPS technology, the user’s position is transferred onto an interactive map divided into a series of stages: once the user has reached the marked places, the associated contents are unlocked and made accessible”.

Accessible via the DETECt project website, the app was developed by researchers from the Department of Arts and the Department of Classical Philology and Italian affiliated with the project – Sara Casoli, Silvia Baroni and Federico Pagello – under the supervision of Professor Ilaria Bartolini of the Department of Informatics – Science and Engineering (technological coordinator of the project). Various local organisations also collaborated, making their materials available: Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, Giallo Festival, Homemovies, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Associazione Culturale Luigi Bernardi.

 You can then travel through the places of detective stories in Bologna accompanied virtually by some of the most important authors of the genre, including Loriano Macchiavelli, Carlo Lucarelli, Giampiero Rigosi and Grazia Verasani. And several video clips are dedicated to delving into the birth of one of the TV audience’s best-loved detectives: Coliandro, a true case of collective creation. Born from Lucarelli’s pen in a short story in 1991, the character of the Bolognese inspector has in fact been remodelled through various subsequent adaptations, up to the now famous television series directed by the Manetti brothers (and scripted, among others, by Rigosi), the eighth season of which was recently broadcast on Rai 2.

There are two itineraries proposed by DETECt Bologna. “Bologna noir”, which allows to discover how different places in the city have been reinvented and transfigured through a long series of literary, film and television narratives. It also rediscovers unusual works, such as the amateur films shot in Super8 film by director Mauro Mingardi.

The “Delitti sotto i portici” (Crimes under the porticoes) itinerary focuses on the dark side of real Bologna, retracing the crimes that have profoundly marked its historical and cultural memory. To guide the user through these painful pages of local history, evoked also by recovering period photos and newspaper articles, are the figures of Sergeant Sarti Antonio (created by Macchiavelli) and Commissioner De Luca (born from Lucarelli’s pen): the former grappling with the tensions of the years of lead (anni di piombo), the latter with the ambiguities and violence of Fascist Bologna.

The trait d’union between the two itineraries is the extraordinary cultural legacy of Luigi Bernardi: tireless publisher, as well as the author of some highly original noir novels, he played a leading role in supporting and stimulating the work of the first generation of Bologna mystery writers, starting with the publication in 1991 of the anthology “I delitti del Gruppo 13”. Bernardi’s editorial work is also responsible for the first transmedia adaptation of Coliandro: the comic strip version by Onofrio Catacchio of the story “Nikita” by Carlo Lucarelli, the first in which the Bolognese inspector appears. It is no coincidence that the contents of the app also include Catacchio’s testimony, which recalls his process of graphically elaborating the story in the wake of the visual inspiration offered by Bologna’s porticoes.

But the plots of the detective story go beyond the city’s borders, because DETECt Bologna also has a Danish sister version, DETECt Aarhus, created by a research team from Aarhus University (Denmark), one of the project partners. DETECt researchers have investigated the formation and development of the various local traditions of detective stories that have emerged over the last few decades throughout Europe, discovering how this popular genre has contributed significantly to promoting the development of creative and cultural enterprises in territories that are also very decentralised with respect to traditional production centres.

“The phenomenon of glocal detectives, strongly rooted in their territories, but at the same time able to fascinate international audiences, and therefore act as vehicles of cross-cultural knowledge, is now a reality that affects the entire European continent,” confirms Professor Dall’Asta. “DETECt Bologna aspires to make a contribution in this direction, in the conviction that the by now long and prestigious narrative tradition matured in our city in the sphere of detective stories is worthy of being valorised also as a tool for promoting tourism and culture”.

This is the theme of a new monographic issue of the scientific journal Cinéma & Cie – Film and Media Studies Journal, which among other things contains a number of studies analysing the formidable potential that the imagery of detective stories has shown to have for the promotion of tourism in cultural areas.

On the afternoon of Tuesday 26th October (meeting point at 3.00 p.m. in Piazzetta Pasolini) it will be possible to see and test DETECt Bologna by taking part in a tour led by the writer and screenwriter Simone Metalli.

From 20 October, Link Campus University in Rome will host a series of meetings on crime, that will include literature, cinema, and TV series.

Four meetings with four professionals and teachers, to explore the universe of the most popular genre of the moment in its various forms, from novels to films and TV series.

What are the techniques and tools a storyteller needs to know to construct his crime story? What makes a character compelling? How do you transfer a story from the page to the screen? How do you choose the settings for a crime story and construct its narrative universe? These are the main themes that will be addressed by the guests.

The first meeting, on 20 October, will be attended by Alessandro Perissinotto, professor of Storytelling at the University of Turin. Perissinotto is the author of some twenty novels translated into 10 languages and has worked extensively, although not exclusively, in the noir genre.

On 21 October it will be the turn of Sofia Assirelli. Born in 1985, Assirelli is a screenwriter of documentaries, feature films and, above all, TV series. Since 2019 she has been head-writer of “La Porta Rossa” together with Giampiero Rigosi.

On 27 October, Sacha Naspini, author of fifteen novels, translated in 22 countries, and many short stories, and Valentina Santini, author, screenwriter, editor, and ghost-writer, will present their work. We will discuss with them the adaptation of the novel “Le case del malcontento – the houses of discontent” (Edizioni E/O) into a forthcoming TV series.

The screenwriter Tommaso Matano will be the guest of the last meeting, scheduled for 11 November. Matano has written the films “Liberi di Scegliere” (2019), “Gli Astronauti” (2022) and the series “Curon” (2020), “Non mi Lasciare” (2021) and “Sopravvissuti” (2022).

The meetings can be live streamed at this link.

For more information, please write to m.coviello[at]unilink.it.

The events are organised by the professors Valentina Re, Stefano Arduini and Massimiliano Coviello, within the Degree Course DAMS – Audiovisual and Theatre Production of Link Campus University, in collaboration with DETECt Project.

7-8 October 2021, “Crimes Fictionnels, Crimes Factuels – Fictions criminelles européennes et discours médiatiques du crime”. Join the 2-day International Symposium organised by the DETECt project and ANR Numapresse to address crime fiction and the porosity of discourse on violence in the media across the fictional and the factual, and its significance in terms of the imaginary, ideology or social discourse.

 

Discover the details and register to watch it live on Zoom at the links below: 

 

The award ceremony for the finalists of the screenplay competition organised by DETECt and Serial Eyes wrapped up the three-day conference “Detecting Europe in Contemporary Crime Narratives: Print Fiction, Film, and Television” (21-23 June, Link Campus University Rome). The event was part of an international research project which, over the course of three years, analysed the transnational circulation of cultural and creative products in the crime genre in relation to the creation of a shared European identity.

International experts Karen Hassan (Cattleya), Steve Matthews (HBO Europe), Giacomo Poletti (Mediaset Group), Eva Van Leeuwen (Netflix), and Maurizio de Giovanni (novelist and President of the Jury), were called upon to judge the 250 participating projects, among which they picked the five semi-finalists: Red Planet Blues by Harry Ayiotis (Cyprus), Silver Ghost by Carsten Jaeger (Germany), Wasteland by Francesco Meneghini and Leonora Sartori (Italy), Magerdo by Ewa Stec (Poland) and Sun City by Benedek Totth (Hungary).

Magerdo by Ewa Stec (Poland) won the Jury Prize with the following motivation:

“Magerdo promises to push the crime genre into new territory by taking the audience inside Poland’s much-discussed but actually little-known Roma community. By exploring the internal rules and conflicts that animate this fascinating but complex world, the project addresses social and cultural tensions that may be of interest to viewers across Europe. At the same time, the story presents us with a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game between its main characters, which is the key to an excellent crime story and forces us to formulate hypotheses until the last frame.”

Two further mentions were awarded to two series projects. Silver Ghost by Carsten Jaeger (Germany) won the Special Mention for Best Character awarded by the students of Link Campus University, with the following motivation:

“The main characters, Peff, a lesbian grease monkey, and Solo, a half-Asian producer of print silhouettes, do not conform to gender stereotypes and have the right characteristics to attract even a young audience that can identify with them. They act as a complementary duo and drive the story forward by supporting each other. Both have complicated pasts and clearly know the goal they want and need to achieve to save the ones they love.

The protagonists are well-developed and show a complex and somehow contradictory psychology that is well suited to the noir genre without falling into clichés. Their less virtuous sides as well as their humanity bring them closer to the viewer and help create empathy.”

Finally, a Special Mention was awarded by the DETECt researchers to Red Planet Blues by Harry Ayiotis (Cyprus), for the following reasons:

“A crime story set on Mars? A homicide detective who has never worked on a murder case? A cop named ‘Frank Kafka’?! Red Planet Blues is based on these weird premises. And more. Mixing crime and science fiction, Red Planet Blues addresses existential and political questions about contemporary lifestyles, asking whether the creation of a Martian colony could be an opportunity for humankind or just another form of escapism. A humorous, original take on crime narratives, this project promises to become an entertaining but at the same time enlightening reflection on the detective genre and why everybody loves it.”

Wrapping up the award ceremony, de Giovanni recommended the participants to allow their creativity to run free, “maintaining an extraordinary peculiarity and an appreciable singularity. I do not think they need suggestions, but on the contrary, they should be strongly encouraged to maintain such a bold, precise creative individuality.”

Award-winning projects logline

Magerdo: Set in a Roma community in southern Poland, Magerdo tells the dark story of a 17-year-old girl, Roza, a gifted student and bride-to-be, who breaks all the rules of her people and tricks Stefan, an unassuming police detective, into searching for her long-lost mother, Anna.

Silver Ghost: Two small-time crooks, engaged in classic car scams, find themselves in a situation bigger than themselves when they stumble upon a 1920 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost made of pure gold.

Red Planet Blues: A police detective on humanity’s first Martian colony is bored and tired of simply stating that obvious suicides are, well, suicides. Imagine his excitement when a real murder takes place on Mars… and his incompetence and lack of experience in trying to solve it.

Introducing the Arne Dahl project

Kim Toft Hansen

Aalborg University, Denmark

Jan Arnald is a prolific Swedish writer and literary critic. He has published a range of international crime novels under the pseudonym Arne Dahl. With his books translated into 32 languages, including some into Turkish, and a preference for stories about international crime, Jan Arnald is truly transnational in scope. His Intercrime series has been televised by Filmlance International and broadcast on Swedish and British television 2011-2015. Arnald’s crime stories draw on the Swedish tradition of socio-critical narratives, popularized by Mai Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. This article introduces the Turkish audience to the compelling authorship project by Jan Arnald, the real figure behind the Arne Dahl pseudonym. 

 

Related and in opposition to Nordic Noir

Internationally, the Arne Dahl novels have been associated with Nordic Noir, but the writer sometimes writes in opposition to some of the main characteristics of the subgenre. Most importantly, his main characters in the Intercrime and the OpCop series do not directly hold the physical and psychological flaws often associated with e.g. Martin Beck and Kurt Wallander. Instead, his project has, from the start, been to establish a truly interactive and collaborative police unit with no direct associations in body and mind to the flaws of society. Although the minds of the police officers, tricky plotlines and creative associations with embedded topics established through the narrative tension are sometimes almost fantastic, and although the structure of the novels are downright self-reflexive in stature, the intentions behind the collaborative police-force is a direct attempt to represent an actual, real idea about collaborative police-work.

In the OpCop series this idea becomes ideal, as it is taken to a political and principled level in the way that the collaborative, transnational police unit solves crimes in a truly transnational manner, serving an alternative to the lack of cohesion and collaboration often associated with European investigative bureaucracy. The creative, sealed and whimsical plotting of the Intercrime series is also, at the same time, tamed by the dogma to always touch upon the most important cultural topic in the year preceding the novel. In other words, planning the content of the 10 novels in the Intercrime series had at root to leave the opportunity open to integrate a pressing cultural phenomenon, e.g. Afterquake (2006) integrating European terrorism after the London attack in 2005. The result is a range of novels that intentionally pushes the boundaries of the crime genre through selfreflexive narratives, but at the same time the narratives stay closely related to the socio-critical vein of Nordic crime narratives.

Selfreflexive crime fiction

For Jan Arnald, the meta-layers of the narratives have also been directly protruding his project about authorship. The crime authorship started as the unknown pseudonym Arne Dahl, and only after the fourth Intercrime novel the real authorship behind the project was disclosed. The identity of Jan Arnald was, nevertheless, hidden in a name that was considered a ¾ anagram of Jan Arnald. However, the selfreflexive manner of the two now associated authorships – Arnald and Dahl – was taken to new levels when the author wrote an Arne Dahl novel under his real name, i.e. Jan Arnald’s Intimus, and a Jan Arnald novel under the Arne Dahl pseudonum, i.e. Arne Dahl novel Eleven.

From the start, the project has been less tied to steering closely to the contents of Nordic Noir and more associated with attempting to create direct associations with high art literature. Even if that is the case, the Arne Dahl project stayed within the dogma of Swedish crime narratives to write 10 novels in a series, but once again the title of the final novel in the Intercrime series Eleven sets out to stretch the boundaries of the crime genre, i.e. entitling the novel Eleven in opposition to the 10 novel dogma. In Swedish, the novel is entitled Elva, which actually means both ‘eleven’ and ‘elves’ at the same time. Once again, the authorship plays with ambivalences and artistic features, basically marked by the fact that the main characters of the Intercrime novels – the police collective – have no recollection of what goes on in the novel Eleven.

Crime fiction with two model readers

This means that the Arne Dahl novels work on two levels and contains, in fact, two model readers. On the one hand, it is very much possible to read the novels as entertaining, surprising and strongly plotted crime narratives in the vein of Nordic Nor. On the other hand, one gains access to a deeper level of artistic and intertextual features by reading between the lines and uncovering the hidden gems of literary, cultural, intellectual, pop-cultural and philosophical history scattered strategically throughout the authorship. Some of these features are abandoned in the Berger & Blom series that seeks a more intimate narrative with only two main characters and slightly more in the vein of traditional Nordic Noir novels.

The strong art-strategies and the play with authorship identities in the Intercrime series was, however, not a feature that was utilized to great extend in the TV series based on the novels. Rather, the series reads the novels in the vein of the entertained model reader and associates the narratives more directly with the tightly plotted crime features and less with literary project about infusing crime narratives with high art features. Nevertheless, the series maintains the collective idealism of the novel series and portrays a much more dialogical interpretation of the collaboration, and at the same time the local janitor of the police headquarters does imbue a certain selfreflexive layer into the crime series, but in keeping this layer to a minimum the series gains access to a wider both local prime time viewership and an international Nordic Noir audience.

For the Turkish readership

Arne Dahl’s novels has – in small bites – been translated into Turkish for the publisher Hep Kitap. However, this article incites a further translation of the novels in order for the wider readership to able to gain access to the much more through-going authorship project that trespasses all the Arne Dahl series and even into his authorship under his real name Jan Arnald. The Arne Dahl project really asks: what is an author? And if one should have a chance to reply to this question, then deeper access to the wider authorship is very much needed.

A reportage of #DETECt2021 Conference. Written by Nicola Pimpinella and Lavinia Sansone, Students of the Dams Degree Course (Link Campus University).

The final day of the DETECt Conference at Link Campus University started with parallel sessions taking place in rooms A, B and C, followed by a plenary session.

 

PARALLEL SESSION 7

 

Panel A7: The Foreigner in Crime Fiction

Through the analysis of Deon Meyer’s post-apartheid, African noir “The Last Hunt” (2018), this panel reflected on the historical and contemporary relationship between Africa and Europe in relation to crime fiction: the panel focused on the complex interconnections between the two continents in terms of time, space, crimes and characters. In such sense, “The Last Hunt” comes across as “a hybrid literary product” that brings the local dimension into the global one, constantly moving from the national to the transnational level: by mentioning the central character’s exile in Bordeaux, the panel went on to stress the theme of mobility, while also complicating the socio-political landscape. Moreover, “the detective figure straddles the fine line between hero and villain”, which is typical in noir and therefore proves the osmotic relationship between fiction traditions that are only geographically distant.

 

Panel B7: The Geography of TV Crime Dramas: Local / Global

Starting with “The Break” (2016-2018), this panel wondered whether detective fiction is a “glocal” genre, as it exports local situations abroad and imports global ones: “crime fiction is a travelling structure, applicable and thereby a world literature par excellence” (Hedberg). Moving onto the topic of peripheral locations, the panel went on to list the “many reasons for choosing a tight-knit community as a setting to our dastardly plots” (Kiernan). In the case of Arctic and Greenlandic noir, the panel analysed “Thin Ice” (2020-present) to discuss opportunities and challenges of remote locations from a production perspective: so, it is inevitable that, for instance, the pitfalls shape both narrative and aesthetics, which can, however, benefit from it; in fact, “Iceland has become the centre of Arctic film and TV production, also concerning crime narratives”.

 

Panel C7: The Contribution of Digital Humanities to Cultural Studies Research 

Commenting on the digital infrastructure built by DETECt Project, this panel reflected on diversified resources, integrated tools and services supporting research, teaching and learning activities. Mentioning the MOOC on “Euro-Noir” created by DETECt, the panel described the different objectives of a MOOC on crime fiction as part of a research project: for instance, its ability to reach a large public has the potential to build a strong international learning community where it is possible to spread research outcomes and encourage transnational dialogue. Analysing the locative screen tourism experience “DETECt Aarhus”, the panel went on to show how smart screen tourism can provide “a multifaceted perspective on locations”, as it encourages people to explore local cultures: users can visit the places of the fictional worlds depicted in films and TV series.

 

Plenary session: Crime, Creative Industries and Contemporary European Media Policies

Research Fellow Federico Pagello from Università di Chieti-Pescara chaired this session that saw the participation of two teams of researchers, Italian and Danish. Research Fellow Luca Antoniazzi from Università di Bologna talked about the potentials (e.g. pursuing extra economic goals in media policy) and weaknesses (e.g. absence of future-led policies) of the new AVMSD. Next, Associate Professor Luca Barra from Università di Bologna focused on “foreign content and its travelling paths”: in his paper, he went on to the topics of format adaptations, subtitling and dubbing, which help to circulate ideas, safeguard minority languages and, eventually, build a more diverse European culture. Moving to the Danish team, Assistant Professor Cathrin Helen Bengesser from Aalborg University reflected on the geographical imbalances in fiction funding decisions while analysing Creative Europe’s TV Programming Scheme: for instance, looking at application statistics, you may notice that “big applicants have below average success rate” and “smaller applicants often do get a chance (but hardly ever for fiction)”. Finally, Associate Professor Kim Toft Hansen from Aalborg University took the example of “The Team” (2015-2018) to illustrate how TV crime drama can be a form of transcultural communication: as the first genuine “European” series of its kind (5 different European producers, 7 European broadcasters, 6 different languages, etc.), the series proves “the European added-value” behind the promotion of “differences that transcend various traditional cultures” (Hepp).

In the final afternoon, it was the turn of a keynote speech, a round table discussion and, finally, the DETECt Screenwriting Contest award ceremony.

Keynote by Peppino Ortoleva

In the Beginning Was a Murder. The Changing Meanings, and Pleasures, of Crime

Full Professor Peppino Ortoleva from Università di Torino started his speech on the gratifications we get from following a crime story by mentioning The Mechanics of Emotion (1913): in this article, Cohan and Nathan argue “there are emotional reflexes as well as physical reflexes”. Professor Ortoleva went on to recall the Latin etymology of “emotion” (to move), claiming that movements of the psyche are essential for crime stories. Introducing what he calls “the field of the gratifications tied to detective fiction”, Professor Ortoleva started to explore “the vertices of this rough pentagon” and finally tried to consider the whole area: for instance, he mentioned the need for “a spice of danger” expressed by Agatha Christie’s Poirot, which blends with the vicarious experience of the audience; in fact, “noir genre is full of danger” and what makes it so interesting is the shift in emotions it provokes. Professor Ortoleva concluded that it is incorrect to regard a particular emotion as central, since “it is a field open to further investigation”.

During the discussion following the keynote speech, Full Professor Maurizio Ascari from Università di Bologna asked a few questions to Professor Ortoleva, who claimed, for instance, that nowadays “the notion of genre is partially blurred” and that according to him the two main supergenres in contemporary mass culture are noir and melodrama.

 

Concluding round table: Research Impact in the Humanities – New Directions

Associate Professor Luca Barra from Università di Bologna chaired this discussion that involved the testimonies of research projects like DETECt, ViCTOR-E and CInCIt. Full Professor Monica Dall’Asta from Università di Bologna and PI of DETECt Project pointed out what guided her team in the elaboration and evaluation of the project, of which one of the most successful activities has been the Screenwriting Contest itself, which highlighted “what it means to be European today in popular culture products”. Next, Full Professor Valentina Carla Re from Link Campus University, after hinting at the project results in terms of impact, offered some provocations considering the critical issues they have faced as scholars and researchers: for instance, she wondered “how can we make dissemination and promotion more interesting and attractive for researchers” or “how to manage an international press office”. Moving from DETECt, Full Professor Francesco Pitassio from Università degli Studi di Udine and PI of HERA ViCTOR-E Project mentioned some “pitfalls and advantages of measuring and assessing the impact of a research project”. Next, Associate Professor Simon Popple from University of Leeds talked about “the slightly different concept of impact” they have in the UK, which is closer to the concept of “social consequences of research”. Finally, Full Professor Massimo Scaglioni from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and PI of CinCIt Project suggested the importance of interpreting impact “as a substantial concept” and later mentioned some of the project’s academic challenges.

DETECt Screenwriting Contest Award Ceremony

The award ceremony was preceded by a conversation with writer and Jury President Maurizio De Giovanni. Interviewed by writer and Associate Professor Alessandro Perissinotto from Università di Torino, Jury President De Giovanni wanted to congratulate all finalists of the Screenwriting Contest for their new takes on crime fiction: in fact, he went on to talk about the reasons for the success of the crime genre, which DETECt Project has demonstrated to be international in scope. Next, hinting at the role played by literature in leading the way to TV seriality, the Jury President commented on his choice to take a close interest in the transformation of his novels into TV series. Moving to the setting of his literary series, he mentioned how important it is for him to portray a city of Naples that is far from postcard stereotypes, as in the case of “I bastardi di Pizzofalcone” (2017-present).

Approaching the proclamation of the winner, Ben Harris, Head of Programme for Serial Eyes, asked Jury members Steve Matthews (HBO Europe), Karen Hassan (Cattleya) and Giacomo Poletti (Mediaset Group) about their impressions of the projects to get an insight into how the mind of an industry executive works.

It was then the turn of two special mentions: the Special Mention for the Best Character(s), given by Link Campus University Student Staff, went to Peff and Solo from “Silver Ghost” by Carsten Jaeger, and the Special Mention given by DETECt Researchers went to “Red Planet Blues” by Harry Ayiotis. Finally, Jury member Karen Hassan, on behalf of the International Jury, announced the winner of DETECt Screenwriting Contest: “Magerdo” by Ewa Stec, for addressing “social and cultural tensions that can be of interest to viewers across Europe” and presenting “a suspenseful cat and mouse game between its main characters […] as a good crime story should do”.

Full Professor Valentina Carla Re closed the DETECt Conference thanking again all the Jury members and Ben Harris and congratulating all the participants of the Screenwriting Contest.

A reportage of #DETECt2021 Conference. Written by Nicola Pimpinella and Lavinia Sansone, Students of the Dams Degree Course (Link Campus University).

The second day of the DETECt Conference at Link Campus University started with several panels taking place in rooms A, B and C.

 

PARALLEL SESSION 3

Panel A3: Crime Narratives: A Crossborder Perspective

Starting with Stefano Sollima’s work as the first authentic Italian showrunner, this panel mentioned: “Romanzo Criminale – La serie” (2006-2008), “Gomorrah” (2014-present) and “ZeroZeroZero” (2020-present). In the first case, characters still embody the struggle between good and evil; in “Gomorrah”, they become highly complex in a claustrophobic world. Unlike the novel by Roberto Saviano, from which the series was adapted, the absence of that figure who guides us through the events and who represents the alternative to crime should be noted. Instead, a more global dimension can be found in “ZeroZeroZero”, a series in which deep human feelings (e.g. desire for power and revenge) lead to the eventual dehumanization of characters. Finally, aesthetically speaking about the role of landscape, although the representation of Southern Italy is authentic, none of the clichés of the Campania region (e.g. sea, sun and Vesuvius) is present.

Panel B3: Crime Narratives, Periphery and Multiculturalism

Analyzing the concept of “peripheral locations”, which “does not exclusively imply a distance from Rome” (Coviello and Re 2021), this panel focused on some recent examples of films set outside of primary tourist routes. For instance, over the last thirty years, the Po Valley has become a “particularly dark crime setting”, as it is full of unexplored areas that are ideal for hiding mysteries: not surprisingly, it has been described as a “Padanian-Gothic landscape” (Cappi 2007). In the case of “Human Capital” (2013), the director Paolo Virzì “transplants a novel set in Connecticut to Brianza” (Bertarelli 2014), proving that local specificities can be integrated into innovative but also challenging ways. In fact, locals have accused Virzì of painting an inaccurate picture of the area. As in the case of “Mediterranean noir”, the label “Padano noir” can be interpreted also in terms of glocal narratives, transnational identity, and cosmopolitism: ultimately, “the river has no centre […], it is the elsewhere” (Belpoliti 2021).

Panel C3: The Geography of Crime Fiction: Local / Global

Mentioning the works of Spanish authors like José Luis Correa, Antonio Lozano, Dolores Redondo, Ibon Martín and Eva García Sáenz de Urturi, this panel reflected on the description of routes taken by characters, which add realism and also contribute to follow the steps of the investigations. Moreover, in the case of “La Ceguera del Cangrejo” (2019) by Alexis Ravelo, the author promotes sustainable tourism in Lanzarote: in fact, the description of natural and artistic heritage of the island occupies more than six pages in the novel, that is therefore located halfway “between narration and transmission of knowledge”. And as more and more readers wish to visit the story’s locations, literary routes have been organised with the involvement of the writer himself. The fertility of regional crime fiction in Spain shows how Madrid and Barcelona are no longer the main settings: in fact, always more writers choose to set their stories in territories they know very well and wish to make known. If similar phenomena can be found in Italy, France and other European countries, instead of a literary movement tout court, one can talk about “exchange and openness in the mosaic of Europe, whose cultural unity emerges strongly”.

PARALLEL SESSION 4

 

Panel A4: Crime Narratives: a Transmedia Perspective

This panel reflected on how the subgenre of noir narratives have become perhaps “the most critically and commercially successful case of transnational TV seriality in Europe”, as is shown by series like “Inspector Montalbano” (1999-2021), “Wallander” (2008-2016), “Babylon Berlin” (2017-present), “Money Heist” (2017-present) and “Witnesses” (2014-present). Taking as an example the noirification of the Italian TV “giallo”, which took place first in the field of literature, the panel reflected on the equivalence between this process and that of complexification. As “the act of labeling something noir, particularly a visual fiction, is a way of insisting on its status as art” (Steenberg 2017), these series have achieved the status of “quality” products and therefore present recognizable elements that can “gain audiences and circulate transnationally”. And if “the Italian public broadcasting system didn’t take long to follow this model”, similar trajectories can be seen in other countries, too.

Panel B4: New Takes on the Police Procedural

Through the analysis of series like “Criminal” (2019-present) and “In Treatment” (2008-present), this panel went on to investigate the modus operandi of the “chamber play” as a transnational format and how it articulates popular geopolitics and social or psychological realities linked to crime and criminality. Either the police interrogation room and the therapist’s office show the so-called “aesthetics of the closed place”, but each local series has its peculiarities. For instance, in the case of “Criminal”, even if the criminal act stays the same, there is a difference in terms of framing and/or social status (e.g. the depiction of sexual abuse in “Criminal: UK” and “Criminal: Spain”). Furthermore, the panel showed how “Western chamber plays highlight the crisis of modern democracies’ institutions”, whereas “Eastern chamber plays highlight how multiple modernities reframe the institutions of modern democracies”.

Panel C4: Crime Narratives and Ecocriticism

Analysing the novel “Earthly Remains” (2017) by “eco-detective writer” Donna Leon, this panel reflected on the “use of crime fiction formula to orientate some of its conventions into environmentalist discourse”. Talking about global issues, while also succeeding in reaching exoticism, the ecocriticism conducted by Leon starts in the Venetian lagoon and concretizes the “large-scale effects of climate catastrophe”, thus reaching a worldwide audience. The crime novel also underlines “the connivance between local criminal organizations and large international corporations”. The panel went on with the role played by the Mediterranean in making these “complex scalar tensions” visible: they also contribute to the global circulation of the author’s work and ecocriticism, indeed a vast and challenging topic, closely related to the theme of narrative delocalization, too.

In the afternoon, it was the turn of two parallel sessions and one keynote speech:

PARALLEL SESSION 5

 

Panel A5: Crime Narratives and Politics

Analysing “Suburra” (2017-2020) through the concept of “New Italian Epic” by literary group Wu Ming, this panel reflected on the series’s political plot, which is also evident by the presence of a character of a corrupt, professional political figure. Still, in reality, “every level of community in Suburra is basically rotten to the core” (e.g. church, police and industrial corruption). The solution then is either revolution or apocalypse: in fact, Stefano Sollima’s film “Suburra” (2015) is punctuated by chapters entitled “7 days before the apocalypse”, “6 days before the apocalypse”, etc. A similar atmosphere is also reflected in advertisement, as in the dark clouds in the background of the series’s poster. The panel concluded that “the apocalyptic vision of crime and politics is a shortcut for spectacularizing Italian plots in the New Italian Epic TV”, as proved by the idea of interconnection between criminality and the fertile ground it finds in recent Italian political history.

Panel B5: Crime Narratives and Gender

Analysing Turkish crime drama miniseries “Persona” (2018), which takes the form of a critique of social justice while focusing on gender inequalities, this panel reflected on gender representation in cultural identity, stereotypes and roles. Female roles generally present passive characteristics as wives, mothers or daughters; the male ones, on the other hand, are more dominant in the shoes of workmen, husbands and fathers. The “male-dominated social order” is also represented by the fictional, conservative town of Kambura, where a male-dominated culture pressures women. Concerning social memory, the character of Reyhan witnesses and concretises through his diary the suppression of social memory perpetrated by men: in fact, protagonist Nevra Elmas “forgets what was traumatic for her” and this inability to remember is compared to Alzheimer’s disease, since “if the facts are forgotten or made to be forgotten, there is neither a crime nor a conscience”.

Panel C5: Netflix and the Popularity of TV Crime Drama

Focusing on pop songs as relevant tools on both narrative and production sides of TV series, this panel considers their role in building genre identity, as proved by Netflix’s local productions. The two main functions of pop songs in crime TV series are enhancing the mood (e.g. fear) and changing the mood (e.g. love song in a murder scene): in the second case, pop songs can be used to “contradict the typical dark tone of crime series in contrast with stereotypical song choices”. Examples of sound branding include Italian partisan song “Bella Ciao” (in “Money Heist”) and “Red Right Hand” (in “Peaky Blinders”). In Italian crime series, it can also be noted the presence of electronic sounds and lyrics in Neapolitan dialect (e.g. “Gomorrah”) and dark, blues-rock theme songs (e.g. “Rocco Schiavone”. The panel concluded that pop songs have become “a quality trademark, a production tool through which a crime series can display its originality and modernity”.

Keynote by Janet McCabe

“Divided Bodies, Crossing Borders, Transnational Encounters: Towards a Feminist Approach of Transnational TV Studies”

Dr Janet McCabe from Birkbeck, University of London started with a case study of the high-concept scripted TV format of “The Bridge” (2011-2018) to discuss on feminisms in the world, locational feminism and new ways of feminism thinking. By showing a series of audio-visual essays (“Flow/Cut”, “Body/Matters” and “Law/Fear” by McCabe and Grant, 2018), she went on with the theme of cultural legitimacy in relation to crime stories involving women, especially complex female detectives with borderline personalities. Later, Dr McCabe moved to the concept of locational feminism, which translates in different spatial-temporal contexts (Stanford Friedman 2001).

During the discussion following the keynote speech, Associate Professor Pia Majbritt Jensen from Aarhus University, answered the questions with Dr Janet McCabe, hinting at structures of representations and other available tools to tell different stories.

PARALLEL SESSION 6

 

Panel A6: Crime Films and Transnationalism

Stressing that crime fiction communicates Europeannes at a transnational level like no other genre, this panel reflected on the complex structure of European crime films in relation to the more prosperous case of TV production. Claiming that crime is “a national genre” whose international reach does not depend solely on its autonomy, the panel mentioned national and supranational support schemes like the Selective Distribution one: even though crime is the most popular genre, it obtains less funds than drama (52%) and comedy (12%); for instance, French drama takes as much budget as the total of comedy and crime all over Europe. The panel concluded that “supranational supports in distribution could help a broader circulation of European crime films”, which seem to become European only when associated with an authorial figure.

 

Panel B6: The Other in TV Crime Dramas

Mentioning the importance of the crime genre in Hungary, this panel wanted to systematise a large amount of data in relation to the representation of international relations and foreigners: Italy and France, mainly associated to the drug trade, are countries where Hungarians go to study; Austria, Germany and the UK are countries where they go to work, therefore are connected to immigration; Luxembourg represents the banking centre of incomes in many Hungarian storylines; from Russia and Ukraine come, for instance, many Hungarian characters trained in the former KGB; Thailand and New Zealand, at the end of the world, represent an “escape route for criminals”, and South America comes across as a place where “everything illegal can happen”.

Panel C6: Generic and Narrative Hybridity in European Crime Television

Mentioning films like “Almanya: Welcome to Germany” (2011), “Jupiter’s Moon” (2017) and “District 9” (2009), this panel reflected on the detection of the “Other” through the figure of the “Intermediary”. For instance, “Diamantino” (2018) suggests that “the African refugee has always been part of the country [Portugal]”, therefore he is a constant reminder of Portuguese colonial history, implying that “the external is just the internal in disguise”. In the case of “Morgen” (2010), the fear of the refugee is conceived through that of the internal other. The panel concluded that, in European cinema, the representation of the “Other” is not new, since it can be traced back to German Expressionism; some have even ventured to argue that “immigration is simply the new term for race”.

A reportage of #DETECt2021 Conference. Written by Nicola Pimpinella and Lavinia Sansone, Students of the Dams Degree Course (Link Campus University).

The first day of the DETECt Conference at Link Campus University “Detecting Europe in Contemporary Crime Narratives:
Print Fiction, Film, and Television” started with a short welcome address by Full Professor Valentina Carla Re. She greeted guests and attendees joining online and then briefly presented the conference programme.

The Director of Link LAB (the Social Research Centre of Link Campus University), Associate Professor of Sociology Nicola Ferrigni welcomed everyone.  He pointed out the goals of DETECt Project, which have found in the host Research Centre a correlation even in terms of mission. Next, Full Professor Roberta Bartoletti from Università di Urbino Carlo Bo and Coordinator of PIC-AIS (Associazione Italiana di Sociologia, Sezione Processi e Istituzioni Culturali) stressed the impact crime narratives have on the audience, as they produce a critical vision of society while dealing with controversial, transnational topics. Later, Giulia Anastasia Carluccio, from Università degli studi di Torino and President of CUC (Consulta Universitaria del Cinema) discussed the importance of interrogating the concept of “Europeanness” as a critical category, which is particularly useful when applied to the works of crime fiction.

It was then the turn of Full Professor Monica Dall’Asta from Università di Bologna and PI of DETECt Project: she commented on some of the project results. To evaluate what was learned over the last years of research, she suggested getting back to the initial hypotheses and then comparing them with the results. For instance, Professor Dall’Asta recalled how the research team assumed that the crime genre had increasingly worked as a driver for narrative delocalization.

 

Keynote by Theo D’Haen

“How Glocal are Contemporary European Crime Narratives?”

Full Professor Theo D’Haen, from KU Leuven, started with the interest that T. S. Eliot had in detective fiction, a popular kind of literature that, besides providing entertainment, echoes general feelings and attitudes. He went on with a broad background to European crime fiction and its place in world literature, analyzing such a productive genre, socially and ideologically. Professor D’Haen ended his keynote speech suggesting a more fitting label for the most recent crime European fiction that, rather than “glocal” from a national perspective, might be called “Euro-glocal”: he even ventured to say that “these recent TV crime fiction and drama series argue not only for diversity and unity, or rather, unity in diversity, but even for ever closer union”.

During the discussion following the keynote speech, Associate Professor Andrew Pepper from Queen’s University Belfast, answered the questions with Professor D’Haen and mentioned, for instance, to what extent crime fiction can be considered a driver of tourism, a theme that will be discussed later in the conference.

PARALLEL SESSION 1

Panel A1: New Takes on Mediterranean Noir

Mentioning Mediterranean noir writers like Andrea Camilleri (whose stories are set in Vigata, Italy), Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Barcelona, Spain) and Batya Gur (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel), this panel reflected on the terms “Mediterranean crime fiction” and “Mediterranean noir”, always highlighting their contribution to the crime fiction genre at large. Even though it is usually challenging to go from local to global, from the nation to the world, attempts to go beyond the national approach in research have been made and similarities among different crime fiction traditions, like the Scandinavian one, have been spotted. In the geopolitical region of the Mediterranean, since the ancient Greeks, the literary and cultural dynamics of the Mare Nostrum have been significant, as the very Latin name immediately evokes the movement of people, history and cultures.

Panel B1: New Takes on Nordic Noir

Mentioning a series like the British Nordic noir “Marcella” (2016-present), this panel reflected on how the character of Marcella Backland reflects the pained city of London, littered with bodies and, besides the dead, full of “moribund zombie-like workers”, including DS Backland herself. The scripts, written in Swedish and then translated into English, criticize the economic system of the UK, describing the capital as an “ignominious expression of violence… hidden beneath ideology, mundanity and the suspension of critical thought” (Springer and Le Billon 2016): “Marcella is, in many ways, a product of what it condemns”. Then, the choice of the setting, which is “one of the biggest, most challenging metropolises in the world” meant that it would potentially be a “hit here [in the UK] and in America” (Larder 2019), perhaps introducing the more easily exportable label of “London noir”.

Panel C1: A Tale of Three Cities: Crime and the Urban Tissue in Contemporary Fiction

Mentioning Loriano Macchiavelli’s literature, primarily set in the historic centre of Bologna, this panel retraced the geopoetics of the noir identity of the same Italian city to give an example of a so-called “edge city”. Noirisation and fictionalisation of places often lead to various levels and forms of historical, social and political depth. When real and fictional places come to coexist, fans may even want to visit them, constituting yet another source of enjoyment. Riding the hybridization of reality and fictional universes, Bolognese noirists like Macchiavelli have succeeded in exploiting even the symbolic potential of Bologna: in so doing, even street names prove to be germs that can blossom into stories. And when the construction of the place is so powerful and vivid, in later novels or chapters even some tiny details are enough to perceive the noir atmosphere.

PARALLEL SESSION 2

Panel A2: French Noir and the Transformations of European Crime Fiction

As a symbol of humanity’s quest for truth, the figure of the journalist is a crucial one in contemporary noir fiction, sometimes becoming part of wide imagery of a more inquisitorial process. Even when the journalist gets closer to being a spy or when he investigates conspiratorial tendencies, it proves to be an indeed fascinating trend to analyze. The comeback of James Bond in 2006, for instance, shows how “spies had to be, in a way, more noir in order to be successful”. This panel reflected on how noir fiction is the heir of criminal and urban mystery of the XIX century yet showing a strong realistic aim. In this sense, realism can be interpreted as aesthetics but also as a cognitive process. By paying attention to some metaphors that Frédéric Paulin or Dominique Manotti have always used to describe their quest as noir writers, we can also spot the obsessive presence of the image of the underground world (“bas-fond”) exactly as in the urban mystery of the XIX century.

Panel B2: Crime Films and National Identities. The Case of Greece

Through the analysis the period between 1966 and 2004, strongly marked by immigration flows, redistribution of political power and also new forms of entertainment, studies on “Modernisation noir” in Greece have shown how Athens, becoming a space of multiethnic conversation, boasts filmmakers with greater awareness and even crime TV series with growing popularity. Nevertheless, talking specifically about adapting literature to cinema or TV, there is still little adaptation, for instance, of the greatest Greek noir writer Petros Markarīs, although his stories have proved to be very good for the small screen, but less easy to export abroad. One of the reasons is the authorial tradition of Greece: filmmakers write their own scripts and most creators are also writers; likewise, on the production side of things, the budget restrictions discourage the purchase of rights.

Panel C2: The Black Rome. The Eternal City as Protagonist of Crime Narrative

Analysing the very complex concept of “Romanità” (Romanism, i.e. the idea of Rome) in terms of journalistic coverage and audience’s perception, this panel aimed to show the link between them, all starting from case studies from Italian TV series like “Distretto di polizia” (2000-2012), “Suburra” (2017-2020) and “Rocco Schiavone” (2016-present), which are all set in Rome or otherwise involve Roman characters. Talking about the media in relation to setting, in both “Suburra” and “Rocco Schiavone” we can observe “a transferred idea of Romanism from periphery to the city centre” or, especially in the second case, “from Rome to other cities”. Talking about the audience’s perception, instead, and in relation to characters, it seems that Romanism strongly depends on Roman actors and accent: Romanism, in fact, is “a way of thinking, living and speaking”. When asked to express the level of influence they perceived from the journalistic sources, most of the respondents of a survey answered “Little” and 1 out of 4 answered “Not at all”, so it can be concluded that “the TV series represent the real Romanism storytelling more than the journalistic coverage”.

We are glad to announce that the first two stages of the selection process for our Screenwriting Contest are now completed. Two large committees formed by professional readers and members of the DETECt project have carefully examined the 250 proposals that were submitted and the ten semi-finalists have been selected. Their projects will compete for the main prize award by our International Jury, as well as two special mentions awarded by a jury of DETECt members and a jury of students of Link Campus University (Rome).

Here are the names of the semi-finalists the titles of the proposed TV crime series and the loglines:

Harry Ayiotis

RED PLANET BLUES

A police detective on mankind’s first Mars colony is bored and tired of simply declaring clear suicides as being, well suicides. Imagine his excitement when an actual murder does take place on Mars… and his incompetence and lack of experience in trying to solve it.

Silvia M. Blakely and Andrea Gastaldon

LIKE A FAMILY

During a corporate company’ team building party in a posh villa in Venice, two women die. Vivienne, the company PR Manager, who also nearly died during the event, decides to find the killer.

Jaeger Carsten

SILVER GHOST

Two down-on-their-luck, small-time crooks engaged in vintage car scams find themselves in way over their heads when they come across a 1920s Rolls Royce Silver Ghost made of pure gold.

Stefanie Eisenschenk and Eveline Staehelin

DARK DATA. INVISIBLE POWER

Forensic profiler Leonie Riedle is investigating her first case-a money laundering scandal. She is not only caught between the fronts of dubious party interests and data giants in the EU election campaign, but also becomes the hunted. Who is manipulating whom here? Whom can she trust?

Samuel Jefferson

DISRUPTIVE

An ambitious young officer in Europol’s niche Disruptive Technologies department struggles to convince his old-school bosses that a new, highly organised and technologically savvy criminal organisation is at work from the shadows of Europe, and if they don’t do something soon, the organisation will grow to the point where it becomes unstoppable.

Francesco Meneghini, Leonora Sartori

WASTELAND

A group of diverse immigrants, working in slavery in modern-day, Southern Italy, are about to establish a new life and new society after killing their capturers.

Ivan Pavlović

HOTEL EUROPA

The Italian alpine town of Brunico is ready for the most anticipated event of its lifetime: to shoot the long-running soap opera Hotel Europa’s 30th and final season – when the protagonist unexpectedly disappears.

Ewa Stec

MAGERDO

Set in a Roma community in Southern Poland, “Magerdo” tells a dark story of a seventeen-year-old Roza, a gifted student and a bride-to-be, who breaks all the rules of her people and tricks Stefan, an unremarkable police detective, into the search for her long-lost mother, Anna.

Benedek Totth

SUN CITY

In Hungary, a nurse avenges the murder of her family in former Yugoslavia, putting herself in danger and evoking traumas from the past.

Jakob Ziemnicki

BALTIC NOIR

A priest has to face his murky past as he returns to his native Gdansk to unravel the mystery of his father’s death.

 

Five projects, to be announced on June 18, will be the finalists and be examined by the international Jury formed by Karen Hassen (Cattleya), Steve Matthews (HBO Europe), Giacomo Poletti (Mediaset), Eva van Leeuwen (Netflix) and the President of the Jury, the bestselling Italian crime fiction writer Maurizio De Giovanni.

The names of the winners will be announced during the closing event of the DETECt conference, to be held on June 23, at 5:30 PM, at Link Campus University in Rome as well as online. On this occasion, the members of the International Jury will give their feedback on the five projects that made it to the final stage, and the scholar and crime writer Alessandro Perissonotto will interview Maurizio De Giovanni.

 

The Semifinalists