Elvira Coda Notari, the first woman director in the history of Italian cinema.
Born in Salerno, on 10 February 1875, Elvira Notari was the first and most prolific female film author, director, and producer, with more than 60 feature films and hundreds of short films, of which only a few have survived and been recovered over time. In 1902 she began her working life as a dressmaker, a profession that later proved very useful on film sets.
Following her meeting with her husband, the painter Nicola Notari, and the birth of their three children, in 1906 they founded the historic Dora Film, which allowed them to produce and distribute their works independently, marked by a strong bond with Naples and with stories inspired by the archetypes of popular culture. Her real-life location shooting, carried out in the streets, helped make her cinema a forerunner of Italian neorealism.
Through her works, Elvira Notari offered a unique view of life and the alleyways of Naples, showing scenes strikingly similar to those of today. These representations convey the image of a city that, despite rapid technological progress, retained a strong and independent identity. Yet the chronicles of the time attributed the success of Dora Film to her husband Nicola rather than to Elvira’s creative genius, and she was gradually forgotten in a still deeply patriarchal context.
With the rise of the Fascist regime in 1922 and its aim of centralising the film industry in Rome, Neapolitan silent cinema suffered a severe blow. Her passionate, realistic stories, free of moralising intentions, populated by unconventional female characters, sensual and resistant to the rules of a male-dominated society, clashed with the imagery imposed by Fascist censorship.
Neapolitan cinema thus fell into a deep crisis. Many production companies closed, but Dora Film found an unexpected lifeline in distribution in the United States, where her works were enthusiastically received, especially among Italian emigrant communities, such as those in Little Italy in New York.
Elvira left Naples to retire to Cava dei Tirreni, where she lived with her family after the outbreak of the war. She died in 1946, at the age of 71.