Films byTexts by Cecilia Mangini
Conversation EN IT
9.11.2022
“Documentary film is what ensures the survival of cinema”

Interview with Cecilia Mangini

I don’t know if I lacked the courage to make a feature film or if I was genuinely attracted by the idea of recounting reality... because that’s the place where you get really close to people. What I was looking for was the cinema of the real, which has nothing to do with the cinema of reality, because the real is what underlies reality, it is what comes up when you succeed in explaining what happens beyond appearances.

Conversation EN IT
9.11.2022
“Il documentario è quello che garantisce al cinema la sopravvivenza”

Intervista con Cecilia Mangini

Io non lo so se è stato per non coraggio di fare il film vero oppure per attrazione di raccontare la realtà. Perché nella realtà tu ti avvicini veramente alla gente. Sei a caccia di quello che si può chiamare cinema del reale, che non è il cinema della realtà perché il reale è il fondo della realtà. È quella cosa per cui tu riesci a spiegare quello che succede al di là delle apparenze.

Article FR
2.11.2022
Affinités électives entre Cecilia Mangini et Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pour Cecilia Mangini, après la chute de Mussolini, c’est justement le cinéma qui donne forme aux espoirs de l’après-guerre : le néoréalisme, les films étrangers qui retrouvent la voie des écrans italiens (Vertov et Eisenstein, notamment, auront une influence fondamentale sur son œuvre), les revues de cinéma. En 1951, elle part pour Rome, où elle collabore à diverses revues comme Cinema nuovo, en tant que critique et photographe. Arpentant les marges de la cité, elle découvre un anneau de faubourgs « mal famés », ces borgate que Pasolini raconte dans le roman qu’il publie en 1955, Ragazzi di vita.

Article EN IT
26.10.2022
Cecilia Mangini: To Be a Documentary Filmmaker

Cecilia Mangini (Mola di Bari, 31 July 1927 – Rome, 21 January 2021) was the first Italian woman with the audacity to step behind the camera to document the socio-political transformations of post–World War II. A photographer, essayist, and filmmaker, she dedicated her whole life to militant cinema, an adjective – she used to say – “that today sounds like a profanity”.

Article EN IT
26.10.2022
Cecilia Mangini: essere documentarista

Cecilia Mangini (Mola di Bari, 31 luglio 1927 – Roma, 21 gennaio 2021) è stata la prima donna che ha osato mettersi dietro la macchina da presa per documentare le trasformazioni sociali e politiche del secondo dopoguerra italiano. Fotografa, saggista, sceneggiatrice e regista ha dedicato la sua vita al cinema militante, un aggettivo che oggi – sono parole sue – “sembra quasi una parolaccia”.

FILM
Stendalì: suonano ancora
Here They Play Again
Cecilia Mangini, 1960, 13’

Shot in Martano, Stendalí is the record of a female mourning ritual – enacted within ethnic Greek communities that spoke Griko, a dialect that can still be found in southern Puglia – on the brink of extinction.

FILM
La briglia sul collo
The Bridle on the Neck
Cecilia Mangini, 1972, 13’

Seven-year-old Fabio Spada is narrated into our awareness with pedestrian, bureaucratic details: the name of his parents, the exact location of his family’s cramped living situation in a tower block in the Roman suburbs, and this suburb’s transport connections.

FILM
Brindisi ’65
Cecilia Mangini, 1967, 14’

“A real cathedral in the desert” is how Mangini described the newly built Monteshell petrochemical plant, the biggest in the country and the bureaucratic force that brings together the managers and workers – both current and former – put before the camera in Brindisi ’65.

FILM
La canta delle marane
The Marshes’ Chant
Cecilia Mangini, 1961, 10’

A sensuous and vibrant vision of a group of boys who leave home barefoot and without breakfast to congregate by a marane – a small stream – in the Roman suburbs, forming a microcosmic society in which they scavenge for food, fight, swim and play.

FILM
Essere donne
Being Women
Cecilia Mangini, 1965, 29’

Boycotted and covertly censored by the producers and directors who formed part of the Commissione ministeriale, which decided on which short should accompany features in cinema programmes at the time, Essere Donne was a commission from the Communist-aligned production company Unitele

note EN
1.02.2021
Cecilia Mangini (1927-2021)

Cecilia Mangini, Italy's first female documentary filmmaker, passed away on 21 January at the age of 93.