Testimonies

The diversity of roles and the plurality of approaches to the world of work in cinema are the distinctive features that the female testimonies in this section have in common.
Emi De Sica, Silvia and Caterina d’Amico, all daughters of creative professionals, talk about their mothers; the first, underlining the difficulty experienced by Giuditta Rissone in reconciling her profession as an actress with her family obligations; the others, by contrast, declaring that they did not even notice that their mother worked.
Cecilia Mangini is a case apart. Coming from a lower middle-class family that had nothing to do with the world of cinema, she developed a deep passion for this art, feeding off films, leaving her mother unaware, ever since her early adolescence.
And finally, for the moment, the testimonies of some women who tried their hand at film production. Marina Cicogna – who led an extraordinary life – over a period of around ten years produced films of great artistic value; Marina Piperno, despite no family connection to cinema, is the first woman to found her own production company, giving new life to the documentary genre; and Rosalba di Bartolo who, after working in the administrative of an agency dealing with international co-productions, took on the role of director of production, like her friend Mara Blasetti.

Born into art: daughters recount their mothers

In this documentary, Emi De Sica retraces the personal life and the various stages of the acting career of her mother, Giuditta Rissone. Born into a family that had been part of the theatre world for generations, she did not have the freedom to choose her own destiny. She had an adventurous youth, but one that at the same time was extremely hard, passed working without interruption on the stage in Italy and overseas.
According to Emi, Giuditta’s personal emancipation came when she formed a family to which she could dedicate herself. The relationship with Vittorio De Sica and the birth of her daughter gave her the social justification to abandon the stage – not for the love of her husband, but for herself.

Daughters Silvia and Caterina d’Amico paint a portrait of Suso Cecchi d’Amico that is different from her public image, that is studded with awards and honors; they bring to light a personality capable of seamlessly blending family and work. It was this natural disposition that made her indispensable to the many directors with whom she worked and who found in her a calm collaborator with a deep understanding of their needs and uncertainties.

Cecilia Mangini
Becoming the first post-war Italian documentary filmmaker

Being Women (1964) is the first filmed investigation into the discrimination that afflicted Italian women in the workplace and in their homes. It was commissioned from Mangini by the Italian Communist Party, in the run up to local elections. An openly subversive and critical documentary, it was denied a certification of quality by the ministerial cinema commission which in this way censored it since the consequence was exclusion from mandatory programming. The film received a diametrically opposite reception abroad. Presented in competition at the Leipzig Festival, it won the special jury prize for its artistic and political merits.

The pioneer women producers of Italian cinema

Marina Cicogna
Marina Cicogna became a producer – one of the first women in Italy to do so – thanks to the acquisition of Euro International Film by her mother, a relative of the Venetian entrepreneur and politician Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata. Cultured and anti-conformist, Cicogna gave Euro a very original commitment to auteur production, achieving success for the films of Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Elio Petri and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her activity as a producer and distributor, which lasted approximately from 1966 to 1975, was brief but one that left a legacy of innovation in Italian cinema.

Marina Piperno
Marina Piperno, in 1962 the first woman in Italy to found her own film production company, REIAC film, committed herself to a type of documentary production that was attentive to the processes of decolonization and liberation of third world countries. She won two consecutive Nastri d’Argento awards, in 1967 and 1968. With the film Sierra Maestra (1969), which was shot by Antonio Giannarelli at the height of the guerrilla war in Venezuela, she engaged with fiction and opened up to collaboration with the state broadcaster RAI, for which she produced experimental films, scientific documentaries and inquiries.

Rosalba di Bartolo
Rosalba di Bartolo entered the world of cinema by chance, starting out as the personal secretary of the director Carmine Gallone. Thanks to her excellent knowledge of English and French, she was hired by the administration office of the International Film Service agency, where, in the early 1960s, she met the already established practitioner Mara Blasetti. An exceptional personal and working relationship was born between them, which would help Di Bartolo to reach the same professional level of her friend in the management of film productions.