Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
CECILIA MANGINI
February 10 – February 13
One of the projects that was in the works at Anthology when the pandemic triggered an 18-month closure was a retrospective devoted to the filmmaker Cecilia Mangini, a pioneer of documentary and politically engaged filmmaking in Italy. Mangini, who was, in fall 2019, still a vibrant and spirited presence at 92 years old, was just beginning to receive international recognition, thanks to recent preservation work on several of her films and a resulting spotlight (and in-person appearance) at that year’s Vienna International Film Festival. While Mangini sadly passed away in 2021, we’re pleased to be able to host a retrospective of her work at long last, in collaboration with Another Gaze, a journal of film and feminisms, which showcased her films in 2021 via the related streaming platform Another Screen, and whose founder Daniella Shreir will be here in person to help present the programs.
Organized into three programs, the retrospective encompasses a selection of the short documentaries Mangini made throughout the 1960s-70s, as well as the feature film ALL’ARMI SIAM FASCISTI (1962), which she co-directed with Lino Miccichè and her longtime partner and collaborator Lino Del Fra.
“As poetic as they are militant, Mangini’s quietly confrontational documentaries of daily life in Italy were covertly censored for many years by a specifically Italian system that forced documentary filmmakers to act, in Mangini’s words, ‘under the radar like drug dealers.’ This selection of films, made between 1960-72, features textual and musical collaborators including Pier Paolo Pasolini and Egisto Macchi, as well as some of Mangini’s favored subjects: rituals on the verge of extinction; the fate of the young and disenfranchised; and the proletariat. The form of some of these documentaries might now be labelled ‘hybrid’, given her methods of reconstruction and reenactment, following long periods of research. The result is often a stylized and exaggerated version of the object of study; Mangini hones in on the essence of these objects and turns to strategies of lyricization and repetition to ensure that we do not forget.” –ANOTHER SCREEN
For a wealth of information and commentary on Cecilia Mangini’s work, visit this page: https://www.another-screen.com/cecilia-mangini
For more info about Another Gaze and Another Screen, visit: www.anothergaze.com/ and www.another-screen.com/
This series is presented with generous support from the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.
Special thanks to Daniella Shreir (Another Gaze); Fabio Finotti & Malina Mannarino (Italian Cultural Institute in New York); Carmen Accaputo & Andrea Meneghelli (Cineteca di Bologna); Filippo Masti & Monica Ciarli (Minerva Pictures); Aurora Palandrani (Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico); Paolo Pisanelli; Noa Steimatsky; and Alessandro Vitto (Videa).
All films in this series are in Italian with English subtitles. With the exception of ALL’ARMI SIAM FASCISTI, the exhibition copies in this series are courtesy of the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.
