Italian Female Filmmakers in the Sixties and Seventies

A project by Fondazione In Between Art Film, edited by Carla Subrizi, Paola Ugolini, and Maria Alicata, this illustrated volume investigates the cinematic, documentary, and video output of women artists and filmmakers operating in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, situating their research at the intersection of artistic experimentation, politics, society, and technology.

With 18 newly commissioned essays about artists and filmmakers Valentina Berardinone, Anna Valeria Borsari, Pia Epremian, Giosetta Fioroni, Rosa Foschi, Laura Grisi, Ketty La Rocca, Le Nemesiache, Cecilia Mangini, Federica Marangoni, Marisa Merz, Gina Pane, Marinella Pirelli, and Angela Ricci Lucchi, it charts a captivating, multifaceted period, the elements of which have now been compiled for the first time in this publication.

Each chapter, which is accompanied by illustrations and previously unpublished archival documents, analyzes a series of moving-image works as well as the personalities of pioneering (and on occasion non-professional) female directors and artists involved, who embraced the camera as a medium for investigation, documentation, and critique. In their efforts to construct a form of agency for visual imagery, they fostered new narratives, leaving in their wake a plethora of stories and visual strategies that remain vital and worthy of re-examination today.