06.10.2026 –, Room 1 Sprache: English
This presentation examines one of Europe’s earliest university-organised festivals devoted to scientific documentary film, established at the University of Padua in 1956 and active until 1975. Conceived in close collaboration with the Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia, the initiative rapidly acquired international visibility and became a significant reference point for scientific and educational cinema during the Cold War period.
The analysis situates the festival within the epistemic and institutional framework of the post-war deficit model of science communication. From the outset, the event was explicitly designed to serve academic needs: it was organised by the university, directed by senior professors, supported by successive rectors, and oriented toward higher education. Its intended audience was not a lay public but what contemporaneous reports described as an “extremely specialised” one: university students in scientific disciplines, researchers, and disciplinary experts. Films were selected and evaluated primarily for their didactic and scientific value, often through the involvement of academic specialists who assessed their relevance for university teaching. The festival thus operated less as a space for widening access to science than as an extension of disciplinary pedagogy and institutional authority.
Based on archival documentation and oral history interviews, the presentation reconstructs how this configuration generated a relatively coherent institutional arrangement that endured for nearly two decades. The festival’s governance was markedly vertical and strongly personalised around its directors, whose authority shaped both programming choices and organisational structures. Student participation played an important role, yet mainly in the form of extra-role organisational work embedded within academic hierarchies rather than in decision-making processes. Participation, in this context, reinforced the boundaries of an expert-oriented public rather than expanding them.
The long-term viability of the festival depended on sustained institutional alignment. Over time, however, the relationship between the leadership of the initiative and the broader academic body weakened. Faculty engagement declined, tensions emerged regarding priorities and governance, and university financial support diminished. Despite maintaining international connections and a global profile from its earliest editions, the festival proved structurally dependent on internal academic recognition. International visibility did not compensate for the erosion of support within the university. Once that alignment faltered, the organisational and financial foundations of the event collapsed, leading to its closure in the mid-1970s.
By revisiting this early European university festival for scientific documentary, the presentation offers a historical counterpoint to contemporary participation-oriented models such as citizen science. The case shows that participation can take highly institutionalised and vertically organised forms, and that the stability of science communication initiatives depends on continued institutional recognition and internal legitimacy. In this sense, the study invites reflection on how present-day participatory infrastructures are embedded within (and dependent upon) specific institutional configurations that shape both their publics and their durability.
Università degli Studi di Padova - University of Padua (Italy)