Photographs by Cecilia Mangini;
curated by Claudio Domini and Paolo Pisanelli;
exhibition design by Francesco Maggiore and Efrem Barrotta;
conceived and produced by Archivio Cinema del reale, Erratacorrige, Big Sur, OfficinaVisioni;
in collaboration with Archivio Cecilia e Lino, Cineteca di Bologna, Gabinetto Vieusseux, Castello Volante di Corigliano d’Otranto.
Cecilia Mangini met Pier Paolo Pasolini between February and March 1958, whilst he was preparing to shoot his debut documentary, *Ignoti alla città*, inspired by the novel *Ragazzi di vita* and filmed in the Roman suburbs. Cecilia photographed Pier Paolo in the Monteverde Nuovo neighbourhood, where the poet and writer was living at the time. Of the sixteen photographs taken, the author selected seven, but only one was used in the column ‘Il loro primo successo’ (‘Their First Success’), which Mangini edited for the popular weekly magazine *Rotosei*. More than sixty years on, those seven photographs, accompanied by production documents from the three documentaries that Cecilia Mangini made in collaboration with Pasolini (Ignoti alla città, Stendalì – suonano ancora and La canta delle marane), are being shown together for the first time, bearing witness to a friendship and a cultural and personal bond that was already hinted at by the images of that first encounter. Cecilia recounts PPP’s openness to the world in a video produced specifically for the exhibition project.
The exhibition includes the section ‘Faces of the 20th Century’: Chaplin, Fellini, Moravia, Houston, Morante, Perkins, Mangano, Dassin, Zavattini, Pratolini… the faces of artists, journalists, filmmakers, writers, actresses and actors captured by Cecilia Mangini’s keen and unflinching gaze, which explores the landscapes of the face through the eyes of the great protagonists of 20th-century cultural life.
Completing the exhibition is a photographic installation by visual artist Alessia Rollo, which reworks a still from *Stendalì – suonano ancora*. The work is taken from *Parallel Eyes*, a multimedia project born of a desire to reconsider the cultural identity of Southern Italy in visual, historical and sociological terms, and to develop a different narrative centred on myths, rituals and ceremonies.
In the tower of Sant’Antonio, as if in a small cinema, visitors can watch the three short films written and directed by Cecilia Mangini, featuring commentary by Pier Paolo Pasolini; two of these are set to music by Egisto Macchi and one by Massimo Pradella. Enriching the exhibition is a section featuring reproductions of typewritten and handwritten documents, visual notes, places and scenes from life that Cecilia Mangini compiled from her first reading of *Ragazzi di vita* to incorporate into *Ignoti alla città*, right up to the final revisions made to the screenplay for *La canta delle marane*.
