Tutto parte da me: Alina Marazzi, regista. Videosaggio

A video-essay that Marini-Maio created from her interview with acclaimed filmmaker Alina Marazzi in New York City on March 17, 2018. The interview is presented in alternate editing with clips from Marazzi’s experimental non-fiction films Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose, and her stylistically hybrid theatrical feature Tutto parla di te. The goal of the video-essay is to unpack, in conversation with the filmmaker, the discourse of maternity that is constructed in the films’ narratives revolving around both historical and fictional mothers. With Alina Marazzi. Ideated, produced and directed by Nicoletta Marini-Maio; camera and sound by Costanza Maio; edited by Nicoletta Marini-Maio, Paola Bonifazio, and Costanza Maio.

Winx’ Transformations and Saints’ Ecstasies

This side-by-side montage is related to the article titled “The ‘Angelification’ of Girls: Winx Club as a Neoliberal-Catholic Project” by Nicoletta Marini-Maio and Ellen Nerenberg. The article, currently under review for publication, explores the transmedial, transnational text which we refer to as “the Winx Project.” The Winx Project targets female tweens and teens and consists of 182 episodes (and still counting) of an animated television series for children and tweens, Winx Club (Iginio Straffi, Rainbow, Loreto, Italy), which premiered in Italy in 2004 and is broadcast globally in 150 countries; several feature films; a spin-off commissioned by Netflix US, WOW–World of Winx, as well as tie-in merchandise. Transformation is the indisputable focus and visual anchor of each episode as the individual fairies transform into angelic superheroes, each endowed with super powers. The video attempts to show how structural similarities proliferate between the religious ecstasy of the saints, the assumption of the virgin, and the Winx’ transformation.

Journeys
This is a short experimental documentary featuring two young women coping with their inner and external journeys. Both girls travel abroad for an extended period of time and have similarly contradictory experiences in intellectual and emotional terms.

From Counter to Table
A process documentary featuring an Italian native couple preparing a dish of parmesan eggplants. While it focuses on the process–including shopping, preparation of ingredients, cooking, choice of wine, and table decoration–it also emphasizes the couple’s cultural heritage and closeness. It has a comedic touch.

Coming of Age
This is a palindrome silent short-film featuring a boy’s and a girl’s ambivalent feelings towards their coming of age in our society-imposed ideas of masculinity and femininity.