“Ancora donne”

Despite the critical and public attention garnered by the 2024 film Substance which attempted to grapple with Demi Moore’s battle with ageing on and off screen, mainstream films broaching the subject of old-age tend to proliferate disempowering or demeaning and fixed representations of ageing women. While recent scholarship indicates the dearth of narratives that explore the diversity, complexity and reality of ageing in Italian feature films and television series, alternative narratives have been proliferating in the short film space both internationally and in Italy. Festivals such as the Women Over-50 Film Festival (UK), the Legacy Film Festival on Aging (San Francisco), the Life in Pictures (Perth), Silver Fern Film Festival (Bilbao) continue to encourage discussion around ageism and promote positive ageing. The Italian short films examined in this paper have been featured in the Italian festival Corti di Lunga Vita promoted by the Associazione 50&Più, in existence since 2017. The festival aims to provide a positive and inclusive vision of ageing through a selection of rich and diverse intimate narratives of old age. In this talk, I focus on a range of shorts emerging from this festival that offer alternative ways of looking at and thinking about women’s ageing bodies and that talk back to ageist discourses. Furthermore, I highlight the transgenerational dialogue at play between the young filmmakers and subjects of the films. Films discussed include: Letizia (Romeo Vincenzo De Nicola, 2019); A cena con delivery (Daniele Cattini, 2023); Albicocche (Pasquale Armenante, 2024); L’alfiere (Daniele Camerlingo, 2024).

Bernadette Luciano is Professor of Italian and European Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and specializes in Italian cinema and cultural studies. She has published numerous articles and book chapters in the areas of cinema and documentary studies, film adaptation, women’s autobiographical writing, women’s history, the theory and practice of translation and subtitling, and issues of identity, migration and transnationalism in literature and film. She is co-author (with Susanna Scarparo) of Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women’s Filmmaking (Purdue UP, 2013) and author of The Cinema of Silvio Soldini: Dream, Image, Voyage (Troubador, 2008).

She has also held a number of leadership roles at her University, including Deputy Dean, Associate Dean International (responsible for faculty and student exchanges including the Wellesley exchange), Head of School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics. In 2024 she received the Knighthood of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy for her contributions to the dissemination of Italian culture.