From 12th September to 31st December 2025, on the occasion of Risò – Festival of Rice, the National Museum of Cinema presents The Women of Riso Amaro in Vercelli, at the Benefactors’ Gallery, on the first floor of the Dugentesco, that is a photographic tribute dedicated to the masterpiece of neorealism filmed in 1948 by Giuseppe De Santis in the rice fields of Vercelli and to the women who inspired it.
A section of the exhibition is dedicated to the ‘mondine’ (female rice weeders) portrayed by the photographers of the Vercelli-based agency Fotocronisti Baita: frescoes of rice fields and young women at work, posing proudly for the camera. The photographs interplay with behind-the-scenes images from the film set and portraits of the cinema’s most iconic mondina, interpreted by Silvana Mangano. The Turin portrait photographer Elirio Invernizzi, commissioned by the production company Lux Film, helped transform the young Miss Rome into a diva: the close-ups with their daring framing cuts, so far from the usual promotional photos, translated into images the words of Italo Calvino, sent to the set as a reporter for L’Unità:
“Silvana Mangano will be one of the great reasons for the film’s success … She’s eighteen years old, with the face and hair of Botticelli’s Venus, but a prouder expression, sweet and proud at the same time … shoulders unfolding with a cameo-like grace … no photograph is enough to give an idea of her.”
The prints of the photographs and screenplay of Riso Amaro are taken from the original ones preserved at the National Cinema Museum’s Photo Library and Historical Archive. The prints of the historical photographs of the mondine are reproduced from the originals held in the Luciano Giachetti Photographic Archive – Fotocronisti Baita (Town of Vercelli – Istorbive).
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