Cecilia Mangini: Unpublished Interview with Italy's First Female Documentary Filmmaker

An unpublished interview with Cecilia Mangini (1927-2021), Italy's first female documentary filmmaker, is published posthumously. In the interview, Mangini discusses her landmark 1964 documentary 'Essere donne' (Being Women), which contrasts glamorous images of actresses and models with the reality of working women. The film was commissioned by Luciana Castellina at the PCI headquarters and won a Special Jury Prize at the Leipzig festival in 1964, but was denied a quality award in Italy by a commission led by Piero Regnoli, a critic for L'Osservatore Romano. Despite this, the film received a censorship visa and has been screened continuously since 1965, including at the Festival des Femmes in Créteil-Paris (2011), Barcelona (2012), Montreal and Quebec (2014), and Tehran and South Korea (2022). Mangini reflects on the commodification of women's bodies, criticizing both Christian moralism and modern self-objectification, and distances herself from contemporary feminism, calling gender quotas 'shameful.' She recounts meeting Agnès Varda at 'Cinema del reale' in Salento, and notes that Francesca Bertini, not she, was Italy's first female director. The interview was conducted by Martina Trocano, a student who discovered Mangini's work while interning at the Archivio del Movimento Operaio e Democratico.