Cinéclub Podcast number 23 is a conversation with Brighid Lowe and Henry K. Miller about Lorenza Mazzetti.

Mazzetti was an Italian-born filmmaker who met her best-known films, K and Together in London in the 1950s whilst she was an art student at the Slade School of Fine Art. If you know her name it might, as it was for me, be from Ali Smith’s 2020 novel Summer, in which she wrote about Mazzetti’s films and life story. This episode’s guests had a role in that connection, which we’ll explore later.

Mazzetti’s debut film, K, is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis – the one where a man wakes up one day to find he’s transformed into a giant beetle, an idea that Mazzetti approached in an inventive, energetic, and non-literal manner. She was one of the signatories of the Free Cinema manifesto and her next film, Together, played in the first Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in 1956. The film shares the blend of quasi-documentary observation and more lyrical narrative elements of others in that movement, but is also a very personal work of art, an indirect expression of the trauma Mazzetti’s experiences in the Second World War, when she was a teenager, left her with.

She later returned to Italy, where she made a few more obscure films, and turned to writing, beginning with her wonderful novel The Sky is Falling in 1961.

To discuss Lorenza Mazzetti’s life and work, I was joined by Brighid Lowe and Henry K. Miller. Brighid is an artist, and Professor of Fine Art at the Slade, and is the director of the 2023 documentary Together with Lorenza Mazzetti. She collaborated closely on that project with the film historian and critic Henry K. Miller, who conducted the on-screen interviews, and Henry and Brighid are also co-directors of the Slade Film Department research project. Henry is also writing a book on Lorenza Mazzetti.

We discuss Lorenza’s traumatic experiences in the Second World War, her move to London, her approach to adapting Kafka, her involvement in the Free Cinema movement, how Brighid and Henry came to make a documentary about her, how Ali Smith became a fan, and much more.

You can also find this episode on…

* Apple Podcasts

* Pocket Casts

* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.

Show notes

* The BFI’s Blu-Ray, The Lorenza Mazzetti Collection

* Together on BFI Player

* Info on the beautiful Another Gaze edition of Mazzetti’s novel The Sky is Falling

* Mazzetti’s account of her time in London, London Diaries is widely available, including in nice shops like Pages of Hackney and Printed Matter in Hastings

* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine

* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.

* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com