Controversial feminism and an ever-vigorous dialogue. The short yet carefully lived life of Carla Lonzi

Carla Lonzi is the woman who, more than anyone else in Italy, has raised the issue – not merely in theory – of freeing women from a given order, from a pre-established world (created by men, of course). She did so by writing, living her life, raising issues, withdrawing from public life, and discussing matters with other women. ‘We communicate only with women’ is the final point of the Manifesto of Female Revolt, written in 1970. Scandalous, exaggerated, unexpected – how dare she? What utter nonsense. “The world will not come to an end if men no longer have the psychological equilibrium based on our submission” (this sentence, read and reread, changes something forever). Carla Lonzi was thirty-nine years old in 1970, with a son who was still a child; she had discovered in 1968 in America that she had cancer and had undergone surgery. She loved Pietro Consagra, an artist and sculptor, and loved him right to the end despite the impossibility of resolving their relationship – both personal and universal – through dialogue (she died aged fifty-one because the cancer returned); she lived this short life with great nonchalance and immense care: for words and for relationships. The words with which to describe art, first, and then to define and express the feminine difference. Her relationships with her friends, with her comrades in the protest group, with men, and with Consagra. Her books are essential for giving the mind a jolt, for starting to think and reason again, almost from scratch.

At the Venice Film Festival, as part of the Giornate degli Autori section, Francesca Archibugi has just presented her documentary on Carla Lonzi, produced by Fandango, "Carla Lonzi, dentro e fuori dal mondo". It is a very special film, not only because of Francesca Archibugi’s special bond with Lonzi: her partner, and composer of the documentary’s score, the jazz musician Battista Lena, is that very child – Carla Lonzi’s son – who in 1968 was ‘sent off like a bullet’, all on his own, to America to find his mother, who was undergoing emergency surgery. ‘Fired off like a bullet’ appears in the film and in Carla Lonzi’s endless diary, Taci, anzi parla, published in 1978 in the Scritti di rivolta femminile (the famous, marvellous green booklets that can still sometimes be found at the Libreria delle donne in Milan) and now in the La tartaruga series (which is republishing all of Lonzi’s writings). “Sparato come un proiettile” features Carla Lonzi’s voice recreated using artificial intelligence, so that the voice-over is almost as much hers as the words themselves. These words explore art and then life, a woman’s place in the world, and the ever-present possibility of being misunderstood. It also includes the amused account of an American doctor who was “more than scandalised by my frivolity”.

The special bond with Carla Lonzi began many years ago, when Archibugi, then a schoolgirl, first saw her from a distance in the school corridors, finding her charismatic and irresistible. She was the mother of her thirteen-year-old school friend – who later became her boyfriend, the father of her children and her lifelong partner – Bat, but above all she was a woman who listened, asked questions and knew how to recognise the importance and worth of those in front of her. Archibugi recounts this with shyness and admiration in the film, whilst Carla Lonzi’s son presents his mother to the audience with equal shyness and admiration, yet with clarity, and watches and re-watches alongside us private – and therefore exceptional – footage that is exceptionally moving. Intimate moments of happiness, the sun on bare bodies, family gatherings, travel photographs, moments of discussion, and moments of pain in which, however, the pain does not pass, because Carla Lonzi’s strength in facing it is greater. Always with a book and a pencil in her hand, even when half her face was covered by a bandage and she was reading with just one eye, yet still attending meetings as usual.

“I set out on my own, following no one. I had no need to flaunt ideologies, nor to seek political gratification: I was – and still am – living through, clarifying and transcending the limits imposed by male-dominated culture and society on human relationships. For me, the only desirable society is one in which it is possible to live these relationships.”

All this is constantly happening both within and outside the world. A world that labels feminists as dangerous, extremist and aggressive. “They’re overdoing it,” says a woman in the 1970s footage that opens the documentary. “They’re overdoing it,” many say even today – women say it too. “She’s overdoing it,” they used to say of Carla Lonzi even back then. Strangers said it; sometimes even her friends said it – women who, having fallen in love with Carla Lonzi, found themselves facing the great struggle of having to deal with Carla Lonzi, who demanded a higher and more constant level of uncompromising commitment.

“According to Marisa, I form unhealthy relationships with others. I have an unhealthy outlook. I want to see myself reflected and constantly be told that I’m extraordinary; otherwise, I don’t know how to live. When the mirror doesn’t work, I break down. She says I’m extremely narcissistic; I can’t accept solitude or find a sense of self when I’m alone.”

Archibugi captures the complexity of a woman who analysed criticism deeply, who took it to heart and never stopped thinking and reasoning, who hoped, believed – and then no longer believed – that she could resolve everything through dialogue. Dialogue above all else. Continuous dialogue, never tiring. The words to express oppression, the words to say: ‘I exist and I no longer wish to exist solely in relation to men’; this is the foundation of the struggle and the foundation of freedom. The Clitoral Woman and the Vaginal Woman and Let’s Spit on Hegel are books that emerged after the break with the art world. Battista Lena identifies illness as the moment of change, the transition to this searing feminism—never exclusionary, concerned with the living substance of existence.

Whilst watching the film, I found myself thinking back to Elena Ferrante’s tetralogy, My Brilliant Friend, and the protagonist, Elena’s, encounter with Carla Lonzi through her books: ‘Whilst men devote themselves to space exploration, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. Woman is the other side of the earth. Woman is the Unforeseen Subject. To free oneself from submission, here, now, in this present moment. The author of those pages was called Carla Lonzi. ‘How is it possible,’ I said to myself, ‘that a woman can think like this?’ I struggled so much with books, but I merely endured them; I never truly made use of them, I never turned them against themselves. That is how one thinks. That is how one thinks against the system.” How is it possible for a woman to think like that? That’s the moment when your brain gets a jolt and often says: enough is enough. In Elena Ferrante’s novel, Elena tries to share her enthusiasm with Lila, acknowledging in her that independence of thought, that capacity to exist, which she herself lacks. She discusses with her on the phone the concept of the ‘clitoral woman’, the ‘vaginal woman’, and the feminist group she had joined, and Lila’s reply is unforgettable: “What the fuck are you on about, Lenù? Pleasure, the pussy – we’ve got enough problems as it is; you’re mad.” She advises her not to waste time and instead focus on what truly matters.

Yet Carla Lonzi had grasped the deepest essence of the matter, and the people interviewed in this film (family members, her partners at the time, feminist philosophers, academics, historians and artists) confirm this: she got to the root of the problem.

It was too early, it was too late, she was too alone – she of all people, who, according to her friend, couldn’t bear to be alone? And who used to say: ‘Enough is enough, we need a break.’ Away from the celebrations of male creativity, let’s stop playing the handmaidens. It was all so scandalous, and it still is. So much of her remains, and thankfully this film, with her face, her movements, those slightly damaged home movies showing the great love between a man and a woman, and the great vitality and tormented freedom of a woman happy even to devote herself to describing a pink skirt, a pale green belt, a white blouse. “I was happy,” says Carla Lonzi. Happy with that pink skirt, the pale green belt, the white blouse, Pietro Consagra photographing her against the backdrop of a luminous structure at the Sant’Antonio International Fair, which thus serves as her halo for ever. There, too, the coat is pink, the scarf red. Archibugi says she was so elegant, but not in a bourgeois way.

“I realise how much I may have let slip along the way, and sometimes I am frightened when I look back at what has been and what might have been, but I realise that nothing would have dissuaded me from turning to what is essential. Now the superfluous captures all my attention and my desires.” The film will be in cinemas for three days, on 26, 27 and 28 October. Viewers are encouraged to discover Carla Lonzi and recognize her.