Lucrezia Zaina Bequest Lecture 2024 – Eva Nera 1954: The life of a lost film

Dr Liliana Ellena will be delivering the latest in the series of annual lectures on subjects of Italian interest, made possible by a generous bequest from alumna, and former lecturer in French and Italian, Professor Lucrezia Zaina.

The lecture features traces, images and memories of Eva Nera [Black Eve], an Italian movie shot in Eritrea in the early 50’s and missing from the Italian archives. Eva Nera is both a lost film and an ‘archive in the making’ activated by contemporary transmediterrranean mobility. By retracing the life of this lost film, Dr Liliana Ellena sheds light on the rearticulation of colonial tropes of race, sexuality and gender in Italy as well as on voices and transimperial circuits whitewashed from the history of Italian cinema.

Dr Liliana Ellena is a cultural historian and independent researcher, formerly Research associate at the European University Institute (EUI, Fiesole, Italy) and Lecturer in Cultural History and Women’s and Gender History at the University of Turin, Italy.

Her current research on the coloniality of memory in Italy brings together the study of post-imperial cinema, Italian decolonization and anticolonial networks, focusing on the Italian movie Eva Nera [Black Eve] (Tomei, 1954) as an archive in the making.

Register now

Following the lecture, there will be an Italian themed drinks reception. To register for this free event please visit Eventbrite.