The tour - a true tour de force - of IL MONDO A SCATTI, the latest film by Cecilia Mangini, the first and greatest Italian post-war documentarian, starts on Wednesday 23 February from the DB d'essai cinema in Lecce, a key figure in understanding charm and the historical-social depth of reality cinema.
The Cinecittà initiative will involve theaters in Rome, Turin, Bologna, Puglia, Sardinia, Liguria and Tuscany.
It is Paolo Pisanelli, who signs the direction with Cecilia Mangini, the interlocutor, friend, continuator of this extraordinary and very lively 90-year-old, the author who convinced Cecilia (who died in Rome a year ago) to get involved behind and in front of the video camera.
In reality, everything comes from some boxes of negatives and photographic proofs found by chance: a sort of diary of the trade,
shots still to be developed in the reddish light of the dark room, moments of illusion and magic of the image that stimulate the memory of Cecilia Mangini in a long journey that began in Puglia, where she was born in 1927, at the beginning of the 1950s.
"In our film - says Paolo Pisanelli - we pass from one analogue shot of the other, we start from another world, for a time without a mobile phone. We are in Rutigliano, in Puglia: everyone looks enchanted into the lens, towards a woman who her shoulders took the place of the conductor of the marching band, a sorceress-photographer who captures all the faces at once. From this image 'The world in shots' can begin.
First a photographer and then a documentary director, tireless companion of a husband-director like Lino Dal Fra,
Cecilia Mangini left an artistic legacy that it would be reductive to summarize in the over 40 documentaries and various feature films that have punctuated her activity.
Loved by Pasolini who wrote for her the comment on one of the first works, considered an authority by anthropologists and ethnographers, esteemed throughout the world (today the Los Angeles Oscar Museum dedicates a solo show to her), awarded in 2009 with the President's medal della Repubblica, this combative and rebellious director always with a smile, accompanied with her artist reportages all the transformations of the country for over half a century.
In 2016 she started her collaboration with Paolo Pisanelli leading to famous works such as "Facce" (2019) "Two forgotten boxes - a trip to Vietnam" (2020) "