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Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence

A leading figure in the golden age of Neapolitan silent cinema, Elvira Notari created some 60 feature films that wove the passions of popular melodrama with unflinching depictions of urban life, captivating audiences from Naples to the Little Italies of America. Undermined by Fascist censorship and family strife, she withdrew from filmmaking in 1930. Her name slipped into silence, and most of her work was lost.
Today, 150 years after her birth, Elvira returns to centre stage. More than a biographical documentary, Elvira Notari: Beyond the Silence is a living, prismatic portrait of a cinematic pioneer whose vision continues to resonate — a belated recognition that restores Notari to the historical place she deserves.

Elvia Notari: Beyond Silence is a meditation on memory itself — on how it is written and how it is erased, on who is allowed a voice in the history of cinema.

Followed by an online q and with director Valerio Ciraici and producer Antonella Di Nocera, led by Lizzie Thynne

FREE ADMISSION but please register with, l.thynne@sussex.ac.uk.

ALL WELCOME!

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By: Lizzie Thynne
Further information: https://awenfilms.net/Elvira-Notari
Last updated: Friday, 24 April 2026