'A face, a name, a story': Women's identities as life stories in Alina Marazzi's cinema

Alina Marazzi is a young Italian director who is charting a new trajectory for Italian documentaries. In Un'ora sola ti vorrei/For One More Hour with You (2002) Marazzi reconstructs-through family home videos, letters, diaries and medical reports-the fragile figure of her mother, who committed suicide when Alina was 7. Marazzi's work of mourning recomposes the fragments of a life into a cathartic ensemble. In her second documentary, Per Sempre/Forever (2005), the director depicts the faith and the doubts of the monastic vocation through her portraits of nuns and novices enclosed in various Italian convents. Finally, in the last chapter of her trilogy, Vogliamo anche le rose/We Want Roses Too (2007), Marazzi recreates a map-from the 1950s to the 1970s-of the previous generations of Italian women, facing new roles, new rights (abortion, divorce) and the discovery of sexuality. Focusing on inner psychic landscapes as well as on the public sphere, Marazzi composes a cinematic collage of words and images, private, public and 'found' footage, collective outcries and life stories. She reconstructs the condition of women in Italy, from the old to the new generations: who they were, who they are and who they may become in the light of Arendt's 'spectacular ontology'.