VOGLIAMO ANCHE LE ROSE

An immaculate post-war fashionista looks into a crystal ball and recoils at the sight of the sexualised future of Italian womanhood. This sets the tone for a remarkable narrative of words and pictures, illustrating how feminism and the sexual revolution transformed women's lives in the 60s and 70s. Built around spoken extracts from the diaries of three women, the prolonged struggle for the right to contraception, divorce and abortion in the face of Italy's Catholic conservatism is brought to life.

Anita is 18 and the product of a repressive family; her thoughts are contrasted with images of Italy's sexual awakening. At the peak of the revolution, Teresa's diary tells of the exploding feminist subculture. Valentina has a darker tale to tell. Her abortion and mistreatment are spliced with images relating to the struggle to define the illegality of rape and family roles. Intimate testimonies, advertisements, animation and archive footage are skilfully combined to juxtapose the personal and political in this fascinating and humorous inquiry into the coming of age of Italian womanhood and its current state of affairs. 

"In 1912, thousands of striking women workers from textile mills in Massachusetts marched on the street chanting the famous slogan "We want bread, but we want roses, too". Today, the bare necessities - bread - may perhaps be taken for granted. But women fought for a world in which the poetry of roses also had a place, and this battle is as current today as it was then." Alina Marazzi

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