Microphysics of a Rationalist Utopia. Ruins, Town Plans and the Avant-Garde Documentary

In 1934, Giuseppe Terragni, the father of Italian architectural Rationalism, planned and directed the renovation work of the city of Como. Retracing this utopian project – definitively withdrawn after some years and never completed – the article points out the singular relationship between the Terragni Studio and the young comrades of the University Fascist Film Club of Como: the ‘Cineguf’. The Cineguf were a complex network of film clubs spread all over the country; they were fostered and equipped by the National Fascist Party in order to create a new generation of filmmakers for the new fascist cinema. In these groups the avant-garde culture of the cine-clubs and the official aesthetic debates about a genuine realism found an original and controversial solution. The focus here is on the short film realised by the Cineguf which was commissioned by the Terragni Studio and financed by the Urban Office of the Municipality: Renovation of the Quarter ‘La Cortesella’. I proceed by taking into account different degrees of conceptualisation of the ‘trace’, presenting a reflection on the complexity of the historiographical operation, including the ways in which the historical traces of these filmmakers’ experience of modernity are identifiable in the text.