Seville European Film Festival welcomes Cecilia Mangini, a pioneer in european cinema

- The 17th edition of the festival will trace the career of the filmmaker and photographer, a creator ahead of her time who fostered non-fiction in Italy

- The programme features the premiere of her latest feature film, Due scatole dimenticate - un viaggio in Vietnam (2020), a retrospective that will showcase her most relevant short films as well as a virtual exhibition of her photographic work

Seville, 29 September 2020. Seville European Film Festival will pay tribute, in its 17th edition, to an important figure in both Italian cinema and the non-fiction world, remaining low-key despite her lucid and committed career as a filmmaker: Cecilia Mangini (Mola di Bari, 1927), the first woman to shoot documentaries in post-war Italy and who is still active today, at the age of 93. This year' s festival will recognise the talent and solid filmography of the director and photographer, which has rarely been shown outside her country, with a cycle that will include two programmes with a dozen short films and the premiere of her latest film Due scatole dimenticate (2020). The SEFF is also running what will be the first exhibition of her photographic work in Spain, in a virtual format, an exhibition with some of the most beautiful images of an Italy in ruins that was being rebuilt after the war and the death of Mussolini, as well as other images that are the result of a fertile and never-ending professional career, including portraits of film giants such as Fellini, Pasolini and Chaplin.

An artist who rebelled against social impositions

Having a socialist father and a mother who holds a noble title, her origins are a mixture of a difficult coexistence in the turbulent first half of the last century. From childhood she experienced the enormous contrasts between her father's land, Puglia, scarred by poverty, and her mother's, the rich Tuscany. Nevertheless, very early on Mangini took the decision of moving away from the fascism propagated in the schools of her country and she quickly embraced the principles of the left, later labelling herself an anarchist. This ideology was applied to her vision, both in her films and in her photographic work. The filmmaker defines her documentaries as libertarian, focusing on social differences and confronting the conservative government of deep religious roots. Her political ideas and rebellious personality brought her into confrontation with censorship and the role of women in a man's world.

Having become a veteran of street photography, always carrying her camera around her neck, and influenced by the neo-realism of Rossellini and De Sica, she came to the world of cinema when she was commissioned by Pier Paolo Pasolini to write texts that she would later turn into Ignoti alla città (1958), a short documentary film that addressed the mythical Italian artist's concern for the young people of the periphery and their marginal world. Her work at that time clashed with the pre-established role that was expected of her as a woman, through which she rebelled against the censorship of the Italian government and the conventionality of the time. Her collaboration with Pasolini was later extended with Stendalì (1960) and with La canta delle marane (1961). The three shorts, being both devastating and poetic will be shown at the SEFF.

Another highlight of the cycle is the Spanish premiere of her latest film, the feature film Due scatole dimenticate (2020), co-directed with Paolo Pisanelli, with which Cecilia Mangini recovers an old, unfinished project: in 1965, she travelled with her husband, also a filmmaker, Lino Del Fra, her life's partner with whom she shot a multitude of film shoots, all the way to a war-torn Vietnam. More than half a century later, Mangini returned to these images almost by accident, after finding two shoe boxes full of negatives, a graphic testimony of those times.

Mangini also dedicated a substantial part of her work to showing the complex political-social transformation of post-war Italy, with a particular focus on the most disadvantaged, factory workers and the ancestral traditions of the countryside, with works such as Maria e i giorni (1959), La passione del grano (1963), Essere donne (1965), Tommaso (1965) and Sardegna (1965), among other titles that can be seen in this retrospective.

Cecilia Mangini. 36 shots: Italy and Vietnam in a grand virtual exhibition

Just as powerful as her films, the Italian photographer's work can also be enjoyed virtually through an exhibition entitled Cecilia Magnini. Thirtysix shots. Divided into four superb series. Each one of the blocks covers her views on life in the south of Italy and the north, her experience in Vietnam and her talent in the art of portraiture.

Each section of the exhibition will be accompanied by an audio explanation delivered by the filmmaker herself, a first-person testimony that helps understand the true dimension and magnitude of the work of a woman ahead of her time.

In 'Viaggio in Italia: Milano e Firenze' and in 'Sud', Mangini focuses on social inequalities, on those who are underprivileged and marginalised, showing, on the one hand, the imbalance between the economic boom in northern and central Italy, and on the other the misery of the south.

In 'Le Vietnam era libre' we will see some of the most impressive photographs she took in the mid-sixties. And finally, in 'Volti del XX secolo (Artisti e ritratti di celebità)', we will discover Mangini's incredible vision as a portraitist, with impressive images of celebrities such as Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Satyajit Ray, John Huston and Charles Chaplin.