Professor Francesco Casetti was the recipient of the 2024 Limina Award for the best International Book on Film and Media for his Screening Fears: On Protective Media (Zone Books/Princeton University Press, 2023). His book provocatively suggests that visual media do not augment fears of the outside but serve a protective function. They have reshaped how we engage with the world via this projective/protective mechanism over the past three centuries, whether we are looking at 18th-century phantasmagorias, cinema, or pandemic-era videoconferencing.
The award is given by the Film Forum, an International Conference organized by the University of Udine and supported by the Italian Scholarly Society for Film and Media. The jury is composed by the editorial board of the transnational film journal Cinema & Cie, whose members are renowned scholars from several countries and continents.
Read more about the Prize Ceremony here: https://www.consultacinema.org/2024/10/04/premio-limina-2024-i-vincitori/.
A review of Casetti’s book appeared on Critical Inquiry (see https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/richard_grusin_reviews_screening_fears/#:~:text=The%20stress%20of%20everyday%20life,death%20from%20exposure%20to%20the).