Lectio Digitalis

Lectio Digitalis is a series of lecture-based encounters that brings academic knowledge to the screen in a narrative and accessible form.

In each approximately 20-minute episode, host Vittoria Mascellaro engages in dialogue with scholars, scientists, and intellectuals affiliated with Italian academies and universities, transforming a keynote lecture into a visual storytelling experience, combining interviews, real locations, and visual inserts using animation and generative AI.

The series moves across different disciplines with a common thread: making the extraordinary ordinary, and restoring thought as a living experience.

Lectio Digitalis is a series produced by the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania as part of the C-Fabit project (PNRR funds), with executive production by MM Film.

The first guest of Lectio Digitalis is historian Francesco Benigno, in a reflection on history, memory, and presentism: what it means to think historically in a time dominated by the present. Between the interview, locations across the city (the University of Catania, Le Ciminiere, and the Opera dei Pupi theatre as part of Sicily's cultural heritage), and animated inserts that visually translate key concepts, the episode explores how the past continues to speak to us today.

The second episode of the series is currently in production and features researcher Simona Grimaldi (participant in the 21st Italian Winter Antarctic Expedition). The episode retraces her experience of a year of extreme isolation at the Italo-French Concordia Station, addressing themes such as climate research, human adaptation, and the profound relationship between humans and nature.