Elvira Notari: The regained world of a pioneer of cinema – An Interview with Valerio Ruiz

In this interview, which was conducted in January 2025, Valerio Ruiz reflects on Elvira Notari’s pioneering role in silent Italian cinema. Ruiz’s new documentary film, Elvira Notari (2024), celebrates Italy’s first woman director, as well as her Neapolitan social–cultural scene. Notari (1875–1946) founded Dora Film as a family enterprise and produced, wrote and acted in over one hundred films embedded in Naples’s urban landscape. Her realist melodramas and documentary shorts evoke the everyday life of the plebeian characters of the city’s vicoli (‘alleyways’) and of Italian immigrants in New York. Ruiz’s docu-film, which premiered on RAI Storia on 4 October 2024 in the series ‘Donne di Campania’ (‘Women of Campania’), formally resembles archaeological restoration, relying on interviews intercut with the surviving clips to reconstruct Elvira’s career. A number of individuals lead us through a journey of discovery of Notari’s cinematic Neapolitan realm. Most central are actress Iaia Forte and film critic Giuliana Bruno.