Women in Italian Film Production
The Researchers
This AHRC-funded project brings together a core group of researchers with established expertise in different aspects of the film industry to explore the role of women in the Italian film industry between 1945 and 1985. Stephen GundleLink opens in a new window (SCAPVC - Film and TV) leads the team including researchers from Oxford Brookes University and a filmmaker, working in partnership with the Cineteca di Bologna.
The Challenge
This project will challenge a longstanding assumption that the many achievements of Italian cinema in the decades after World War Two were entirely due to the creative genius of a handful of male directors and the business acumen of the big producers who supported them. This picture of one of the world鈥檚 largest film industries ignores the fundamental role played by women at every level. We will explore female contributions that often remained invisible and which have been granted minimal space in film history.
Our Approach
The project blends conventional historical methods of archival research and research on the press, whose value has been underlined by the new film history and new cinema history, with techniques developed within production studies and family history. It uses oral history to capture experiences that have remained largely or completely undocumented. The project has four core objectives. The first is to identify women working as screenwriters, assistant directors, editors, production managers, producers, legal officers and set and costume designers. Second is to investigate the hierarchical and gendered divisions of labour that governed the film industry. The third objective is to challenge the way the industry鈥檚 history has been written by exploring the personal papers of Mara Blasetti (one of the first female production managers), Cecilia Mangini (a pioneer director of documentaries who was always critical of the industry), and the screenwriter Suso Cecchi D鈥橝mico 鈥� all of which will be catalogued and digitised. Finally, the project interprets the place of women in the industry adapting the insights of international research to highlight the varied nature of the obstacles women faced and the ways in which their labour was often configured as of a service nature and limited to supporting functions.