A new BFI collection celebrating the work of filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti, including new remasters of her short films, plus a new documentary.
Lorenza Mazzetti arrived in London from Italy in 1951, survivor of a wartime atrocity in which her Jewish relatives were murdered, she quickly made friends with other artists in a new and different world. Though associated with the realist Free Cinema movement, her stark yet playful films - all shot on location in the capital’s bomb-devastated, smog-caked vistas - take the form of psychodramas, influenced by Kafka’s bleak absurdity, the horrors she had endured, and the agony she faced missing her twin sister back home.
This new set includes Mazzetti’s three deeply poetic, avant-garde, narrative London works, all newly remastered by the BFI National Archive, plus a brand new documentary.
Contents:
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K (1953, 29 mins): the angular, chopped-up K, based on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, made on equipment ‘borrowed’ from the Slade art school, captures feelings of genuine animalistic terror
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The Country Doctor (1953, 11 min): considered a lost film and only discovered in Wisconsin in 2019, The Country Doctor is based on the writing of Franz Kafka, and stars painter Victor Willing
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Together (1956, 51 mins): focusing on two deaf-mute and alienated dockworkers in the bombed-scarred East End of London, Together stars artists Eduardo Paolozzi and Michael Andrews
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Together with Lorenza Mazzetti (2023, 55 mins): Brighid Lowe’s new, intimate documentary, made with Henry K Miller, builds around candid interviews, with Mazzetti herself, to provide new insights about the Italian’s life of love and trauma and the unparalleled efforts she expended to make films in 1950s London
