Still from Essere Donne, Being Women (1965) by Cecilia Mangini
In the 1960s, the Norwegian filmmaker Erik Borge argued the need for more “free artistic short films” in Norway, which he defined as “the deviant product – the strange, the difficult, the angry”.
Friday 24 June we invite you to join us for an evening in the series of screenings The Deviant Product feminist films from the 60s and 70s by Norwegian director Vibeke Løkkeberg, and Italian filmmaker Cecilia Mangini.
For the Trondheim edition The Deviant Product -series has a special focus on feminist moving images, with two knowledgeable guests introducing two very rarely seen films. Daniella Shreir, the founder and co-editor of Another Gaze, a journal of film and feminisms, will introduce Cecilia Mangini’s Essere Donne (Being Women), a blazing essay film on the reality of women’s lives in the wake of Italy’s ‘boom economico’. Film scholar Ingrid S. Holtar will present Norwegian director Vibeke Løkkeberg’s groundbreaking film on abortion, Abort (1971), which will be shown with English subtitles for the first time.
The event is free – we look forward to see you!
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Program
5 pm
Introduction by director of PRISMS Mike Sperlinger
5.10 pm
Abort (Abortion 1971-1972, 40 mins., Norwegian, English subtitles) by Vibeke Løkkeberg
5.55 pm
Essere Donne (Being Women, 1965, 30 mins., Italian, English subtitles) by Cecilia Mangini
6.30 pm
Daniella Shreir and Ingrid S. Holtar in conversation with Mike Sperlinger about their choices of films for the screening.
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About the films
Abort (Abortion)
Vibeke Løkkeberg
1971-1972, 40 mins. Norwegian, English subtitles.
Abort explores the social ramifications of the Norwegian abortion legislation in the early 1970s. The film was feminist filmmaker Vibeke Løkkeberg’s first film as a director, and it is a hybrid documentary that combines fictionalized segments with interviews with physicians in support of self-determined abortion and with anti-abortion activists. The film’s frame story is about a 16-year-old girl, Kirsten (Ege Askildsen), who discovers an unwanted pregnancy, and the film follows her process towards applying for an abortion from the Norwegian abortion committee.
Essere Donne (Being Women)
Cecilia Mangini
1965, 30 mins., Italian, English subtitles.
Boycotted and covertly censored by the producers and directors who formed part of the Commissione ministeriale, which decided on which short should accompany features in cinema programs at the time, Essere Donne was a commission from the Communist-aligned production company Unitelefilm, who had approached a selection of left-wing filmmakers to investigate fully a collective social problem. The result is a series of interviews conducted by Mangini with women workers from the olive groves of Puglia to the factories of Milan. Often filmed as they work at home or at the factory, these women speak candidly about issues including abortion, housework, unionisation and boycotts.
Cecilia Mangini says:
“I discovered that women are restless, often openly dissatisfied with the existential burden that weighs upon them, and secretly driven to understand what is not working and how to free themselves of the endless penalties imposed on them since their childhood. A full awareness of the system that penalises them – its causes, its reasons – is still lacking. The women are unconsciously still only becoming complete women. This embryonic situation applies to me; it applies to all of us; it even applies to those who refuse to grow. It is undoubtedly down to hindsight and to a contemporary reading of Essere donne that I now believe that I was instinctively driven to identify myself with all of them – entering into the film as an olive-picker in Apulia or as a weaver at the loom in the north."
About the contributors
Ingrid S. Holtar is a researcher and lecturer in film history. She is currently affiliated with the Department of Art and Media Studies at NTNU, where she has recently written a Ph.D. dissertation on feminist filmmaking and feminist film culture in Norway in the 1970s.
Daniella Shreir is the founder and co-editor of feminist film journal Another Gaze, founder-programmer at Another Screen, and works as a translator of literature, non-fiction, art writing and subtitles, from the French. Her translation of Chantal Akerman’s My Mother Laughs (Silver Press) won a PEN prize in 2019. She is currently working on translations of two books and will launch, together with Missouri Williams, Another Gaze Editions, a new imprint dedicated to writing by women about film.
Mike Sperlinger is director of PRISMS. He is also currently Professor of Writing and Theory at the Oslo Academy of Fine Art.
The event is supported by Arts Council Norway.
Public program taking place at Kunsthall Trondheim is curated by Mette Woller, Promgram Curator.