Elvira Notari: Oltre il silenzio – Film Screening and Discussion with Director Valerio Ciriaci

Speaker(s): Valerio Ciriaci (Awen Films), with Hank Okazaki, Tania Rispoli, Tom Whiteside, Roberto Dainotto

Join for a screening of Elvira Notari: Oltre il silenzio (Awen Films, 2025), presented at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, followed by a conversation with director Valerio Ciriaci.

Elvira Notari was Italy's first woman film director. From her studio in Naples, Dora Film, she wrote, directed and produced dozens of feature films in the 1910s and 1920s: popular melodramas shot in the streets of the city, with a realism that anticipated later Italian cinema. Most of her work has been lost, and her name was nearly erased from film history. Ciriaci's documentary follows the traces she left behind and asks what it means to recover a filmmaker from silence.

Introductions by Hank Okazaki and Tania Rispoli. Discussion to follow with Tom Whiteside (Director of Durham Cinematheque) and Roberto Dainotto (Professor of Literature).

Co-sponsored by Cinematic Arts and the Center for Documentary Studies; Italian Language Program; Romance Studies; Franklin Humanities Institute; History, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies; Literature.

This event counts for credit for Tavola Italiana and extra credit for the course of Italian Cinema.