ABSTRACT

“The Image Speaks”: Silence, Noise and Estrangement in Lorenza Mazzetti’s Together.

Lorenza Mazzetti’s Together (1956) occupies a distinctive position between Italian Neorealism, experimental filmmaking and British Free Cinema. Filmed in the bomb-damaged East End, it follows two deaf dockworkers, played by artists Eduardo Paolozzi and Michael Andrews, whose marginal perspective reflects Mazzetti’s own experience of exclusion and solitude.

This talk examines silence not simply as a theme but as a fundamental organising principle. Together’s soundtrack moves between insistent dockland noise and sudden passages of silence that draw spectators into the protagonists’ cocoon-like world. When sound abruptly returns, the effect is one of estrangement: the familiar environment becomes intrusive, unstable and potentially threatening. Silence, however, does not have a single meaning. It sustains companionship and mutual dependence but also exposes the men’s separation from a society that responds to difference with ridicule and violence. While one character appears to retreat willingly into isolation, the other seeks contact with the world around him, a desire that makes him increasingly vulnerable. Through this shifting relationship between silence, noise and perspective, Mazzetti transforms sensory disconnection into a poetic exploration of marginality, intimacy and the dangers of participation.

The talk will be followed by a screening of Together.