A distance of more than a century from the beginnings of Italian cinema, the figure of Elvira Notari remains one of the most important and least known of the national audiovisual history. Born in Salerno in 1875 and active mainly in Naples, Notari is considered the first Italian woman director and a pioneer of European silent cinema. Of its production – about 60 feature films made between the Ten and Twenty years – today survive little more than 160 minutes of images, among three complete films, two short documentaries and some fragments.
This material gap is not only the result of the fragility of cinematographic support of the time, but also of a wider cultural removal. Notari’s films, focusing on popular stories set in the alleys of Naples and on female protagonists autonomous and often controversial, were progressively marginalized, hidden or destroyed during the fascist regime, which promoted a more uniform, controlled and machista image of the country. This exclusion has been added, in the following decades, a delay in official historiography in recognizing its contribution.
The documentary Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence, directed by Valerio Ciriaci, is part of a real work of recovery of the director’s legacy. Presented at the 82nd Venice Film Festival in the Venice Classics section and candidate for the Silver Tapes, the film reconstructs the artistic path of the director through archive materials, critical testimonies and a reflection on the theme of cultural memory. The film is a co-production between the United States and Italy that involves, among others, Luce Cinecittà, custodian of a significant part of the national audiovisual heritage.
The film will have its first American on April 6, 2026 at the Film Forum, an independent reference room for filmmakers in New York, followed by a meeting with director, producer Antonella Di Nocera and film historian Giuliana Bruno. A second screening is scheduled on April 8 at the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò of New York University, a centre dedicated to the promotion of Italian culture in the United States. Other meetings are scheduled in the rest of the United States:
8 April 2026 — Cleveland, Ohio (Case Western Reserve University, Italian Film Festival USA)
8 April 2026 — Rochester, New York (Rochester Institute of Technology)
9 April 2026 — Rochester, New York (George Eastman Museum)
10 April 2026 — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (University of Pittsburgh, Italian Film Festival USA)
12 April 2026 — Los Angeles, California (UCLA)
12 April 2026 — Indianapolis, Indiana University, Italian Film Festival USA
15 April 2026 — San Diego, California (Digital Gym Cinema, San Diego Italian Film Festival)
16 April 2026 — Los Angeles, California (USC)
17 April 2026 — Orange, California (Chapman University)
18 April 2026 — St. Louis, Missouri (Washington University, Italian Film Festival USA)
19 April 2026 — Detroit, Michigan (Detroit Film Theatre, Italian Film Festival USA)
25 April 2026 — Rhinebeck, New York (Upstate Cinemas, New Italian Cinema Showcase)
Next to the documentary, the Film Forum will also host a special screening of È Piccerella (1922), one of the three surviving feature films of Notari, with live musical accompaniment at the piano. The film is a representative example of its style: narration rooted in the popular Neapolitan culture, use of non-professional actors and attention to the details of everyday life. Elements that, second part of the criticism, anticipate some characteristics of Italian neorealism developed after World War II.
The American path of the documentary will continue in different cities – from Los Angeles to Detroit, passing through universities and festivals like the Italian Film Festival USA – confirming the international interest for a figure that already, in indirect form, had a connection with the United States. The films of Dora Film, the production house founded by Notari with her husband Nicola, were in fact distributed in the American Little Italies in the 1920s, intercepting the audience of the Italian emigrants. And this also explains why, today, the recovery of his work also goes from New York, a city that the director never visited but which represented one of the main markets for his cinema.
The Notari case does not only concern the rediscovery of a forgotten author, but opens up questions about how cultural memory is built and on what criteria determine what is preserved and what is excluded. In Italy, in recent years, his name has returned to the center of academic studies, restorations and festival planning, but remains little present in the dissemination. The international distribution of the documentary could help to bridge this gap, bringing to the centre a figure that has significantly engraved on the birth of Italian cinema.
L’articolo In New York a screening to rediscover Elvira Notari, Italian cinema pioneer proviene da IlNewyorkese.
