Rare Takes: The Works of Cecilia Mangini
Rare is perhaps the best word to describe the works of Italian filmmaker Cecilia Mangini. Rare in that despite her distinctive body of work, her collaborations with Pier Paolo Pasolini, and that she was the first woman to make documentaries in post-war Italy, her films are hard to find. They weren’t widely available online until the feminist film magazine Another Gaze mounted a retrospective of her work following her passing at the age of 93 in 2021. They are rare, too, in their form, which combines a poetic sensibility with an anthropical study of Mangini’s own Italy and its people.
The most poignant rarity, however, is Mangini’s unwavering political commitment to these people, especially workers. (Mangini’s camera captured the position of, as film writer and programmer Daniela Persico wrote, "the outcasts of modernity.”) While many become cynical with age, in her 90s Mangini was still interested in picking up a camera (with the help of co-directors decades younger than she) to keep exploring, agitating, questioning, and creating. This selection of her films invites audiences to do the same.