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TOGETHER (1956)
Directed by Lorenza Mazzetti
Two deaf-mute dock workers eke out a humble East End existence in Lorenza Mazzetti’s striking and poetic example of Free Cinema.
Italian director Lorenza Mazzetti borrowed techniques from the neorealist school to conjure this striking study of East End life, one of the original Free Cinema shorts. Following the ambling existence of two deaf-mute dock workers, Mazzetti crafts a poetic depiction of post-war London populated by unruly children, sparse bedsits and harsh realities.
With its minimal dialogue and focus on the everyday minutiae of working-class life, Together shared some stylistic similarities to the emerging documentary movement Free Cinema, but it was still the only narrative film included in the original Free Cinema programme as presented at the National Film Theatre in 1956.
Lorenza Mazzetti made her first film K in 1954 while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 1956, with the support of the Slade and the BFI, she completed Together with fellow students Michael Andrews and Eduardo Paolozzi in the roles of the two deaf-mute dockworkers living in the still semi-destroyed London’s East End. Together was one of the films screened at the first Free Cinema event at the NFT in 1956. In line with Free Cinema’s focus on subjectivity and poetic freedom, Mazzetti’s films reject traditional cinematic conventions and give life to a fascinating combination of Neorealist practices, radical documentary cinema and ‘Kitchen Sink’ drama.
As a woman and a foreigner in a British male-dominated world, Lorenza Mazzetti’s early works open up many questions about the relationship between British and Italian avant-garde cinema in the 1950s.
Lorenza Mazzetti 1927-2020
As a woman and a foreigner in a British male-dominated world, Lorenza rly works open up many questions about the relationship between British and Italian avant-garde cinema in the 1950s.
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