To conclude our celebrations for Women’s History Month, we are happy to present a special screening of Cenere (Ashes). The 1916 silent film by Febo Mari, based on the eponymous book by Nobel Prize-winning writer Grazia Deledda, features theatre icon Eleonora Duse in her only film performance.

Set in Sardinia, Cenere tells the melodramatic story of Rosalia Derios, an unmarried woman who is abandoned by her lover when he discovers she is pregnant. Despite her best efforts to raise her son, Rosalia realizes that she cannot escape from her poverty and the shame of having an illegitimate child and, reluctantly, she decides to entrust the boy to the natural father.

The musical score accompanying the film has been composed and performed, specifically for this occasion, by Ben Model, one of America’s leading silent film accompanists. The screening is followed by an all-women panel moderated by Margaret Parsons, Head of Film Programs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, featuring prof. Stefania Lucamante (University of Cagliari) and prof. Laura Di Bianco (Johns Hopkins), discussing Grazia Deledda, the only Italian woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Eleonora Duse and the role of women in early cinema.