The memory of the elephant. Recalls of a conference about images and disability

Abstract

The article is about the relationship between cinema and disability. Starting from a specific event, it wonders about the opportunity to establish a genre and about some factors orienting the choice of movies dealing with this subject. Moreover, it analyses three well-known movies (The Elephant Man, Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit and Le Pays des sourds) giving different representations of the disabled person: from an object of fear and compassion to an individual who invites us to participate to his/her condition in order to understand it close