Still frame from the film Didone non è morta (Dido Is Not Dead), dir. by Lina Mangiacapre (1987) with Le Nemesiache, Courtesy Le Nemesiache and Mangiacapra Archive.
In recent years, the Neapolitan feminist artist group Le Nemesiache has gained renewed attention due to their experimental artistic practice and way-of-being-in-the-world based on feminism, mythology, folktales, sci-fi, and radical imagination. Researcher-in-residence at AWARE and curator Sonia D’Alto, who has been carrying out research on the group for several years, introduces their interdisciplinary practice that encompasses film, performance, critical writing, painting, poetry, music, collage, and costumes.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Le Nemesiache held several site-specific interventions in the urban and natural space of the Neapolitan area. However, they are best known today for their contribution to women’s cinema for their films that conjure art and feminist activism, ancient myth, and sci-fi. Nevertheless, Lina Mangiacapre’s seminal writings of poetry and film theory, her fervent experimental and collaborative film production, as well as the foundation of the off-program section at Sorrento Film Festival dedicated to feminist cinema, remain a neglected area of study.
In this regard, the evening features a conversation with Claudia Aglione and Bruna Felletti, two members of Le Nemesiache, and the projection of two 8 mm short films written and directed by Lina Mangiacapre in collaboration with the group: Il Mare Ci Ha Chiamate (1978) and Follia Come Poesia (1979). The conversation and the projection of the films explore the long-lasting engagement of Le Nemesiache (1970 — ongoing) with the collaborative practice characterizing their experimental filmmaking activities and celebrations of women’s creativity to overcome the secular colonization of their existence by the patriarchal culture. In particular, Il Mare Ci Ha Chiamate, addresses eco-feminist issues enlarged to local social actions; Follia Come Poesia, revolving around psychiatry and forced confinement, is a therapeutic proposal for the affirmation of the right to beauty of the marginalized, from the local sub-proletariat to the “mad” women’s, and it is the result of three years of work with Naples’s major psychiatric hospital.
Practical information
Thursday, April 4, 2024, from 6:00 to 8:15 pm
Villa Vassilieff
21, avenue du Maine
75015 Paris
This residency received the support of Neuflize OBC Foundation.
