The British School at Rome screens Lorenza Mazzetti’s films K (1953, 28’, prod. Slade School of Fine Art) and Together (1956, 52’, prod. BFI), followed by an encounter with the artist, on Monday 5 May from 17.00-19.30.

Orphaned of both parents at a very early age, Lorenza Mazzetti (Florence, 1928) was raised, along with her twin sister Paola, by their paternal aunt Nina Mazzetti and uncle Robert Einstein (first cousin of Albert Einstein) and their two daughters. On 3 August 1944, the SS killed Lorenza's aunt and two cousins in the massacre of Rignano in Tuscany. Uncle Robert, devastated by the loss, committed suicide the following year.

In the early 1950s Lorenza moved to London and was accepted (though penniless) as a student at the Slade School of Art, where she made her first short film K, from Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

The British Film Institute produced her movie second Together, which tells the story of two deaf-mutes in the East End of London. The film, made with the collaboration of Lindsay Anderson, was one of the earliest examples of the British Free Cinema; Mazzetti participated in 1956 in the writing of the first manifesto of the group with Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson. Together was awarded a prize at the Cannes Film Festival 1956.

Jacopo Benci