Antonio Somaini

Antonio Somaini (b. 1968) is Full Professor of Film, Media, and Visual Culture Theory at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3), where he chairs the Department of Cinema and Media Studies. He is a Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France and a Member of the Academia Europaea. Trained in philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Milano, he received his doctorate from the Università degli Studi di Firenze (2002) and held positions at the Polytechnic of Milan, the Catholic University of Milan, and the Università degli Studi di Genova before joining the Sorbonne in 2012. His research operates at the intersection of historical film and media theory — he is internationally recognized as a leading specialist on Eisenstein and montage — and contemporary visual culture, particularly the impact of artificial intelligence on images. Visiting professorships at Yale (2022) and Harvard (2024); fellowships at the ZfL Berlin, the IKKM Weimar, and the Center for Advanced Studies BildEvidenz at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2025, he served as Chief Curator of “Le Monde selon l’IA / The World Through AI” at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, a major exhibition featuring some forty contemporary artists working with analytical and generative AI. Co-director of the Médias/Théories series at Les Presses du réel. Homepage: univ-paris3.academia.edu/antoniosomaini

Selected Bibliography
Somaini, Antonio. Ejzenštejn. Il cinema, le arti, il montaggio. Turin: Einaudi, 2011.
Somaini, Antonio. La Glass House de Sergueï Eisenstein: Cinématisme et architecture de verre. Paris: Éditions B2, 2017.
Pinotti, Andrea, and Antonio Somaini. Cultura visuale: Immagini, sguardi, media, dispositivi. Turin: Einaudi, 2016.
Casetti, Francesco, and Antonio Somaini. La haute et la basse définition des images. Paris: Mimesis, 2021.
Kleiman, Naum, and Antonio Somaini, eds. Sergei M. Eisenstein: Notes for a General History of Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.
Somaini, Antonio. “Walter Benjamin’s Media Theory: The ‘Medium’ and the ‘Apparat.’” Grey Room 62 (Winter 2016): 6–41.
Somaini, Antonio. “Algorithmic Images: Artificial Intelligence and Visual Culture.” Grey Room 93 (Fall 2023).