When we think of cinema pioneers, female faces rarely come to mind. Yet, at the dawn of the seventh art, there were women writing, directing, producing, and distributing. Women who knew how to move both in front of and behind the camera. Women who created, dared, and invented new cinematic languages.
From May 16 to September 28, 2025, the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome hosts in̶Visibili. The Pioneers of Cinema, an exhibition that, through both power and poetry. restores voice and visibility to thirty extraordinary women. Long forgotten by official histories, they were in fact foundational to the story of cinema. From Elvira Notari, Italy’s first female film director, to lesser-known names like Giulia Cassini Rizzotto and Daisy Sylvan, each chapter of the exhibition is a recovery of identity, a cultural act of justice.
Through rare films, archival materials, original documents, and vintage photographs, the exhibition reconstructs a lost chapter of history. Not merely actresses or muses, these women were directors, producers, editors, screenwriters, and founders of production houses. They operated across all stages of the creative process, breaking conventions and anticipating narrative models that still resonate today.
Errani Studio curated the press and media relations for the exhibition in close collaboration with Archivio Luce Cinecittà, the Italian Ministry of Culture, and leading cultural institutions including the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino, and the Cineteca di Bologna.
in̶Visibili is more than an exhibition: it is a necessary gesture, a visual and symbolic rewriting that restores space and memory to a generation of women who imagined cinema, long before it became an industry.
