This lecture offers an introduction to *Blade Runner*, a seminal work of cinematic modernity: a science fiction film, but also a metaphysical noir and a reflection on the body, memory, identity, and the relationship between the human and the artificial. 
Starting with the cultural context of the early 1980s, Roy Menarini will trace the genesis of Ridley Scott’s film as a convergence of cyberpunk imagery, the crisis of the modern metropolis, advertising aesthetics, postmodern culture, and questions about the fate of humanity in the age of technology. 
Particular attention will be given to the figure of the replicant—not merely a machine, but a creature driven by desires, memories, fear of death, and a need for recognition. Through this figure, *Blade Runner* challenges many conventions of classic science fiction and leads us to question what defines humanity, in an era when memory, the body, emotions, and identity can be constructed, manipulated, or programmed; there will also be references to current developments in artificial intelligence and robotics.
The screening, accompanied by live music, will also provide an opportunity to explore the role of sound and music in the film experience. Rain, neon lights, shadows, smoke, screens, and vertical architecture compose a visual universe that interacts with an equally decisive sonic dimension, transforming the city of the future into a sensory, melancholic, and hypnotic space. 
The event therefore aims to offer the audience some insights for interpreting a film that, more than forty years after its release, continues to challenge our present: artificial intelligence, digital memory, the ecological crisis, surveillance, and the increasingly unstable boundary between biological life and artificial life. 

Full Professor at the University of Bologna, where he teaches Film and the Cultural Industry. Menarini is a senior editor of the academic journal *Cinergie – Il cinema e le altre arti*; he co-directs the international research center INC (Italian Research Network in Celebrity Studies). He has published numerous essays on contemporary cinema and on topics such as the methodology of film criticism, the theory of cinephilia, and film analysis. His most recent books are *The Body in Cinema: Stories, Symbols, and Imagery* (2015), *Discourse and the Gaze: Forms of Criticism and Practices of Cinephilia (2018), The Great Illusion. Stories of a Spectator (2021), Hitchcock: The Woman Who Lived Twice (2023), and Film in the 21st Century (2025). He serves as a consultant for the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and for the Sergio Amidei Award in Gorizia.