Screening of 'Voci dalla Cascata - Voices from the Waterfall' & presentation by Arianna Cavalensi

The film Voci dalla Cascata - Voices from the Waterfall is a monologue filmed in a theatre in Venice where a puppet embodies Medea, one of the most notorious women in Greek tragedy, that narrates stories of women, healing, and sisterhood. The film is a fruit of a collaboration between women who met in and out of the frame, and part of a long term artistic research and collaboration with the anti- violence centre based in town of Mestre (VE), Italy.

Following the screening, Cavalensi will give a presentation exploring how her film connects to this larger research project, which is entitled Insieme Abbiamo Avvolto I Nostri Segreti in una Foglia - Together We Wrapped Our Secrets in a Leaf (2021—ongoing).

The project explores the topic of gender-based violence, its resistance, and the wider demand for women’s rights with a geopolitical focus on the North-Eastern part of Italy. The research began over two years ago when Cavalensi first approached the anti-violence centre, called the Centro Donna (Woman’s Centre), based in the town of Mestre, in the province of Venice. This work comes in a form of a printed thesis, which contains over 50 images produced and collected during the field research. The photographic documentation is encompassed by the written component that collects personal accounts of the participants, which are aligned with feminist writings to question the complexity of silencing gender- based violence. By weaving archival images from the 1970s with contemporary documentation, she researches in what ways images can become a form of collective feminist memory.