Sabzian presents five short films by the Italian filmmaker Cecilia Mangini (1927–2021) as part of its Milestones series. Milestones are a series of screenings of landmark films in the history of cinema, films that put aesthetic and political issues on the spot, incite debate and reflection. The selection of films represented in this series, made between 1960–74, feature the many different facets of her filmmaking, as well as her textual and musical collaborations, including those with Pier Paolo Pasolini and Egisto Macchi, her long-time composer.

Cecilia Mangini, born in 1927 in southern Italy’s Mola di Bari, began her career as a photographer. In the early 1950s, she came into contact with cinema and later became the country’s first female documentary filmmaker. Mangini’s films, which include a number of notable collaborations with Pier Paolo Pasolini, penetrate deeply into post-war Italy, where social reconstruction is struggling, especially in the south, and industrialisation is creating precarious conditions in the north. In front of her camera, the daily lives of Italians living socially on the margins become both poetic and political. Their words, but especially gestures, body language and facial expressions, contain a disruptive potential revealed by Mangini’s gaze, which was clearly shaped by neorealism. Besides the proletariat, Mangini focuses her lens on traditional and archaic rites in danger of disappearing. Inspired by the research of Italian anthropologist and philosopher Ernesto de Martino, she records religious and magical rituals, staged or otherwise, with the aim of safeguarding the past.

19:30 doors & drinks
20:30 start films

La canta delle marane, 1962, 11’

Brindisi ’65, 1966 ,15’

Essere donne, 1965 , 30'

La Briglia sul collo,1974, 15'

Stendalì: Suonano ancora, 1960, 11’

Sabzian is an online film platform dedicated to fostering and contributing to a lively and profound film culture. Sabzian aims to think seriously about cinema, averse to projected certainties, as part of a constant history of forms and fictions. Founded in 2013 by a group of young filmmakers, Sabzian has now developed into a collective of filmmakers, authors, lecturers, film critics and researchers, themselves reinforced by a growing group of avid cinephiles.
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