Event Details
Mon, March 10, 2025
18:00 – 19:30
VILLA SASSETTI
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Florence, italy
Screening of the movie Libere, by Rossella Schillaci (Italy, 2017 – 76′), followed by a conversation with the film director.
This film highlights the role of young women in the Italian Resistance, many of whom were teenagers at the time. The Italian Resistance (Italian: Resistenza italiana) refers to various groups that battled against the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborators of the Italian Social Republic during World War II, specifically from 1943 to 1945. Through valuable archival material and firsthand accounts from female partisans, the film showcases how this period marked the birth of feminism in Italy and other European countries. The struggle for liberation evolved into a fight for women’s emancipation, emphasizing the pursuit of freedom and equality within families and the workplace.
How did these Italian women participate in the Resistance and the political fight? What transpired after liberation? Were their expectations met and promises upheld? Their reflections—lucid, ironic, and sometimes bitter—reveal a vital piece of our forgotten history. These insights encourage us to consider the role of women today and the achievements that still need to be realized.
Featured Biographies
Rossella Schillaci
FILMMAKER AND ANTHROPOLOGIST
Rossella Schillaci is an award-winning filmmaker and visual anthropologist. Her works are based on her in-depth anthropological research using cutting-edge audio-visual methodologies. She has a Master in Visual Anthropology obtained from the University of Manchester (UK) and a PhD in Digital Media with practice-based research in visual and multimodal anthropology connected to new media, from the Nova University of Lisbon, in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Turin, Italy. Her PhD project, the experimental Virtual Reality documentary Affiorare (Surfacing), has been selected by more than 100 festivals and exhibitions, winning the Best Practice Research prize from BAFTSS and the prize for Cultural Anthropology Costantino Nigra.
She has produced and directed more than 20 documentary 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.
She has published several journal articles about her multimodal research and methodological contribution to anthropology. She has taught visual anthropology and documentary film at several schools, including the New York University (as Adjunct Professor), the Holden School, the Italian National Experimental Cinema School.