CECILIA MANGINI SESSION #2 SHORTS
In this session we will see closeness and understanding, mixed with an outstanding cinematographic intelligence, different approaches to people that combine human interest with militant determination. Starting with the enlightening portrait of Maria, a farmer from Puglia, in Maria e Giorni, to continue with the disconcerting peasant ritual of Lucania, portrayed in an expressionist way in La passione del grano, a film co-directed with his partner Lino del Fra. Sardegna which narrates how Mangini turns around an assignment given by the Ministry of Labor, by displaying a region of ancestral traditions crushed by progress. Next we have Essere donne, an emblematic work that goes ahead of feminism and that contrasts the image of the woman whose ads sell with that of the real, hard working women and mothers. La scelta and La briglia sul collo close the session. The first is on the moral conflict of euthanasia, and the last is a very fresh portrait of Fabio Spada, a child from the Roman suburb of San Basilio in the 70s.
MARIA E I GIORNI
Cecilia Mangini | Italy | 1959 | 10 min. | O.V. in Italian subtitled in English and Spanish
A day in the life of Maria, an energetic old woman who lives on a farm in Puglia. She is not afraid of death, the gestures and actions that fill her days give meaning to time.
LA PASSIONE DEL GRANO
Lino Del Fra, Cecilia Mangini | Italy | 1963 | 10 min. | O.V. in Italian subtitled in English and Spanish
An expressionist and hypnotic vision of a disconcerting rural ritual in Lucania, the symbolic slaughter of a goat, a collaboration between Mangini and her husband and partner Lino Del Fra.
SARDEGNA
Cecilia Mangini | Italy | 1965 | 7 min. | O.V. in Italian subtitled in English and Spanish
A work commissioned by the Ministry of Labour to which Mangini brings an eloquence that transcends any propaganda ambition. It is an accurate portrait of a vision about a land of new highways and factories built on the grounds of shepherds and farmers.
ESSERE DONNE
Cecilia Mangini | Italy | 1965 | 28 min. | O.V. in Italian subtitled in English and Spanish
An emblematic work that anticipates the feminist movement, in the simple but radical gesture of contrast between the images sold by advertising of "women" and real women: workers, mothers, who struggle to make ends meet.
LA SCELTA
Cecilia Mangini | Italy | 1967 | 13 min. | O.V. in Italian subtitled in English and Spanish
A film that poses the moral dilemma of euthanasia, through the story of a young man who faces the terminal phase of his father's illness and decides to help him stop suffering.
LA BRIGLIA SUL COLLO
Cecilia Mangini | Italy | 1974 | 13 min. | O.V. in Italian subtitled in English and Spanish
We enter the universe of Fabio Spada, a child from the Roman suburb of San Basilio: Fabio has been defined by the school as a misfit. His father, his mother, the director and the psychologist of the public school of the "borgata romana" (and even himself) tell us about him.