Feminists in the Courtroom: Observational Filmmaking and Militancy in "Processo per stupro" (1978)

The 1978 documentary Processo per stupro (A Trial for Rape) marked the first time a trial was broadcast on Italian state television. Directed by six feminist filmmakers, the film documents a trial for gang rape and exposes the secondary victimization experienced by women who take their rapists to trial. The encounter between feminism and the new technology of videotape enabled an unprecedented production of film language: in accordance with the idea that the feminist presence in male-dominated spaces would serve to monitor the men in power, the directors produced an observational documentary. Though determined to promote viewers’ autonomous reflection, they also strategically twisted the observational mode to show that reality is never objective and that it must be critically accounted for. After reflecting on the 1970s Italian feminist approach to images, this article addresses the impact of the editing strategies via the visual close readings of certain sequences. More precisely, I argue that the combination of long, distant shots with detailed ones unveils the asymmetry between the abstract claim of “equal justice” and the specific application of the law to bodies whose gender, ethnicity, and class matter. My contribution juxtaposes the story of the violence of the judicial system as narrated in the documentary with another institutional violence, this time perpetrated by the information system which effectively censored the film. Despite this, the dissemination of the documentary within independent circuits impacted the Italian social system, promoting the reformation of laws against sexual violence. Even today, after forty years, Processo per stupro represents one of the most successful encounters between art and activism.