Libere (Free Women) is a 2017 documentary by Rossella Schillaci about the women who participated in the Italian Resistance against the Nazis at the end of Second World War. Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò will offer the screening on April 16 at 6.30 pm in Italian with English subtitles, plus a post-screening Q&A with the director in conversation with David Forgacs, NYU.
Through valuable archival material and the real voices of women partisans, this film tells the story of the role of young women – most of them teenagers – at the time of the Italian Resistance. This period marked the birth of feminism in Italy and in other European countries, where the struggle for liberation was also the fight for female emancipation and the pursuit of freedom and equality, in the family and in the workplace. How did they participate in the Resistance and in these political battles? What happened after the Liberation? Were expectations fulfilled and promises maintained? Their reflections, lucid, ironic, sometimes bitter, reveal a piece of our forgotten history. They make us reflect on the role of women today and on the challenges yet to be met.
Rossella Schillaci is a filmmaker and visual anthropologist. Her works are based on her in-depth anthropological research using cutting-edge audio-visual methodologies. She obtained her PhD in Digital Media, with practice-based research in digital media and anthropology. Her experimental Virtual Reality documentary Affiorare (Surfacing), won the Best Practice Research prize from BAFTSS and several prizes in international documentary festivals. She has produced and directed more than 20 films, broadcast on TV by ARTE, Sky, and Al Jazeera. All her documentaries have been awarded in international film festivals, including: RAI, NAFA, Fespaco, Jean Rouch, Venice film festival, Sheffield doc fest. Among her latest films, Les enfants en prison was co-produced and broadcast by French television Arte and won the Etoile de la Scam, recognition given to the best documentary films broadcast in France, and Libere has been distributed in more than 200 Italian cinemas.
