Volcanic Matters: Magmatic Cinema, Ecocriticism, and Italy

Return to the Aeolian Islands (Fughe e approdi, 2010) chronicles director Giovanna Taviani’s journey to the Aeolian Islands, a volcanic archipelago off the coast of Sicily and setting for a host of films. Return documents the islands’ geological past in a study of ecological, and not just cinematic history. This essay begins to unravel the threads of a magmatic Aeolian landscape where volcanoes, cinema, and memory collaborate in the creation of more-than-human stories.