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Lorenza Mazzetti
Lorenza Mazzetti (26 July 1927 – 4 January 2020) was an Italian film director, novelist, photographer and painter. She was connected to Albert Einstein through her aunt's marriage to Einstein's cousin, and survived a massacre of her family by German soldiers in August, 1944.
Mazzetti was born in Florence. Her mother, Olga Liberati, died shortly after giving birth to Lorenza and her twin sister Paola. Her father, Corrado Mazzetti, gave custody of his children to a nurse in the village Anticoli Corrado, where they spent the first three years of their lives. When Corrado Mazzetti realised that the nurse was taking advantage of his absence and leaving the children alone while he was out at work, his friend Ugo Giannattasio, a futurist painter, offered to temporarily take care of them.
Mazzetti and her sister eventually moved in with their paternal aunt, Cesarina (Nina) Mazzetti, on a farm in Rignano sull’Arno, where she lived with her husband Robert Einstein (cousin of Albert) and their two daughters Anna Maria and Luce. Here Lorenza and Paola became part of the family and lived happy and untroubled.
During the Second World War, the farm was occupied by a department of the Wehrmacht. With the advancement of Anglo-American forces, after the last motor truck had just left, three German officers stepped into the villa and asked for Robert. Nina answered that he was not at home. The officers announced that they would return shortly. Assuming that the only person in danger would be her husband, Nina begged him to hide in the woods. However, when the officers returned on 3 August 1944 and did not find Robert, they assassinated his family. This incident is known as the Strage di Rignano. Lorenza and Paola were able to escape the massacre because their surname wasn't Einstein. However, their lives had become tainted forever by the execution of their aunt and their cousins. After the carnage, they were carried away, along with a group of farmers who had been hiding in the basement seeking shelter from the bombing of the British armed forces. The farm was set on fire. Robert, who had hidden in the woods, was overwhelmed by pain and committed suicide on 13 July 1945. Lorenza and Paola were entrusted to a custodian that their uncle had authorised with the administration of his estate that he had passed on to them.
After obtaining her high school diploma, and determined to bury the terrible memory in her subconscious, Lorenza moved to London. There she received a message from her sister Paola that their custodian had squandered their whole wealth and had left the sisters penniless. In order to be able to stay in London, Lorenza took a job as a waitress in an eatery at Charing Cross. She could not afford to pay her rent, but thanks to the sympathy of the director William Coldstream, who was impressed by her tenacity, she was accepted into the Slade School of Fine Art.
Between 1952 and 1953, Mazzetti worked on her first film, K. The (unacknowledged) participation in the early stages by fellow Slade student Andrew Vicari has been described by a then-friend of both. The topic of the film deals with the story of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and is interpreted by the painter Michael Andrews. The film is considered to have anticipated the future Free Cinema, which in 1956 would be written down and signed by Mazzetti, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz.
K is a strongly biographically stamped story dealing with the theme of alienation. The soundtrack was produced by Daniele Paris, who also worked with Mazzetti and Anderson in their later projects. To develop the film reels and obtain a copy of her film, Lorenza was prepared to make a false statement and risk prison time. Fortunately, she was saved by Coldstream, who was convinced by her talent and organised a showing of the film at the Slade School. He invited Denis Forman, the director of the British Film Institute. At the end of the performance, Forman asked Mazzetti: ‘Would you like to make a film without running the risk of going to prison?’ He invited her to partake in a new film project, which was to be financed by the BFI Experimental Film Fund. The result was the film Together.
Together features the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi and Michael Andrews as two deaf-mutes in the East End of London and was produced by the same film crew as K. Together was also written by Denis Horne, but he left the production because of a disagreement with the director, who did not want to incorporate his long dialogues in the recording. The montage works, guided by Mazzetti, were finished thanks to an intervention by Anderson. He called on Daniele Paris from Rome to write and direct the soundtrack. Together won the "Mention au film de recherche" on the Festival di Cannes 1956, along with the Brassaï film Tant qu'il y aura des bêtes.
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Lorenza Mazzetti
Lorenza Mazzetti (26 July 1927 – 4 January 2020) was an Italian film director, novelist, photographer and painter. She was connected to Albert Einstein through her aunt's marriage to Einstein's cousin, and survived a massacre of her family by German soldiers in August, 1944.
Mazzetti was born in Florence. Her mother, Olga Liberati, died shortly after giving birth to Lorenza and her twin sister Paola. Her father, Corrado Mazzetti, gave custody of his children to a nurse in the village Anticoli Corrado, where they spent the first three years of their lives. When Corrado Mazzetti realised that the nurse was taking advantage of his absence and leaving the children alone while he was out at work, his friend Ugo Giannattasio, a futurist painter, offered to temporarily take care of them.
Mazzetti and her sister eventually moved in with their paternal aunt, Cesarina (Nina) Mazzetti, on a farm in Rignano sull’Arno, where she lived with her husband Robert Einstein (cousin of Albert) and their two daughters Anna Maria and Luce. Here Lorenza and Paola became part of the family and lived happy and untroubled.
During the Second World War, the farm was occupied by a department of the Wehrmacht. With the advancement of Anglo-American forces, after the last motor truck had just left, three German officers stepped into the villa and asked for Robert. Nina answered that he was not at home. The officers announced that they would return shortly. Assuming that the only person in danger would be her husband, Nina begged him to hide in the woods. However, when the officers returned on 3 August 1944 and did not find Robert, they assassinated his family. This incident is known as the Strage di Rignano. Lorenza and Paola were able to escape the massacre because their surname wasn't Einstein. However, their lives had become tainted forever by the execution of their aunt and their cousins. After the carnage, they were carried away, along with a group of farmers who had been hiding in the basement seeking shelter from the bombing of the British armed forces. The farm was set on fire. Robert, who had hidden in the woods, was overwhelmed by pain and committed suicide on 13 July 1945. Lorenza and Paola were entrusted to a custodian that their uncle had authorised with the administration of his estate that he had passed on to them.
After obtaining her high school diploma, and determined to bury the terrible memory in her subconscious, Lorenza moved to London. There she received a message from her sister Paola that their custodian had squandered their whole wealth and had left the sisters penniless. In order to be able to stay in London, Lorenza took a job as a waitress in an eatery at Charing Cross. She could not afford to pay her rent, but thanks to the sympathy of the director William Coldstream, who was impressed by her tenacity, she was accepted into the Slade School of Fine Art.
Between 1952 and 1953, Mazzetti worked on her first film, K. The (unacknowledged) participation in the early stages by fellow Slade student Andrew Vicari has been described by a then-friend of both. The topic of the film deals with the story of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and is interpreted by the painter Michael Andrews. The film is considered to have anticipated the future Free Cinema, which in 1956 would be written down and signed by Mazzetti, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz.
K is a strongly biographically stamped story dealing with the theme of alienation. The soundtrack was produced by Daniele Paris, who also worked with Mazzetti and Anderson in their later projects. To develop the film reels and obtain a copy of her film, Lorenza was prepared to make a false statement and risk prison time. Fortunately, she was saved by Coldstream, who was convinced by her talent and organised a showing of the film at the Slade School. He invited Denis Forman, the director of the British Film Institute. At the end of the performance, Forman asked Mazzetti: ‘Would you like to make a film without running the risk of going to prison?’ He invited her to partake in a new film project, which was to be financed by the BFI Experimental Film Fund. The result was the film Together.
Together features the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi and Michael Andrews as two deaf-mutes in the East End of London and was produced by the same film crew as K. Together was also written by Denis Horne, but he left the production because of a disagreement with the director, who did not want to incorporate his long dialogues in the recording. The montage works, guided by Mazzetti, were finished thanks to an intervention by Anderson. He called on Daniele Paris from Rome to write and direct the soundtrack. Together won the "Mention au film de recherche" on the Festival di Cannes 1956, along with the Brassaï film Tant qu'il y aura des bêtes.
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