Lorenza Mazzetti Collection (Blu-Ray)

Lorenza Mazzetti arrived in London from Italy in 1951, survivor of a wartime atrocity in which her Jewish relatives were murdered; she quickly made friends with other artists in a new and different world. Though associated with the realist Free Cinema movement, her stark yet playful films – all shot on location in the capital’s bomb-devastated, smog-caked vistas – take the form of psychodramas, influenced by Kafka’s bleak absurdity, the horrors she had endured, and the agony she faced missing her twin sister back home.

This new set includes Mazzetti’s three deeply poetic, avant-garde, narrative London works, all newly remastered by the BFI National Archive, plus a brand new feature-length documentary.

The Films
– K (1953, 29 mins): the angular, chopped-up K, based on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, made on equipment ‘borrowed’ from the Slade art school, captures feelings of genuine animalistic terror
– The Country Doctor (1953, 11 min): considered a lost film and only discovered in Wisconsin in 2019, The Country Doctor is based on the writing of Franz Kafka, and stars painter Victor Willing
– Together (1956, 51 mins): focusing on two deaf-mute and alienated dockworkers in the bombed-scarred East End of London, Together stars artists Eduardo Paolozzi and Michael Andrews
– Together with Lorenza Mazzetti (2023, 55 mins): Brighid Lowe’s new, intimate documentary, made with Henry K Miller, builds around candid interviews, with Mazzetti herself, to provide new insights about the Italian’s life of love and trauma and the unparalleled efforts she expended to make films in 1950s London

Extras
– Audio commentaries: a series of discussions about the BFI National Archive’s curatorial and restoration processes for these films, featuring the BFI’s William Fowler, Elena Nepoti and Mike Kohler
– Refuge England (1959, 26 mins): with its uncompromising outsider’s view of an inhospitable 1950s London, the themes in Robert Vas’s Refuge England are just as resonant in today’s society
– The Landscape of Free Cinema (2022, 3 mins): a short video essay presented by William Fowler, looking at some of the themes of Together and how they relate to Lorenza Mazzetti’s life
– Limited Edition (1,000 copies) with 40 page booklet with writing by William Fowler, Henry K Miller and Ali Smith plus notes on the restorations by Elena Nepoti