On 16 May 2024, at 9.00 pm, at the Luigi Pirandello Theater in Agrigento, the national preview of “Finding Marta. A film about Pirandello’s Muse”, by director Lorenzo Daniele, produced by Fine Art Produzioni srl, with the support of the Sicilian Region – Sicilia film Commission, written by Alessandra Cilio.
The special event, organized with the collaboration of the DMO Valle dei Templi Tourist District and the Luigi Pirandello Theater Foundation, will see the participation of the director, the leading actress Margherita Peluso and the film’s artistic crew who will introduce the screening of the film with a talk moderated by Marco Gallo, artistic director of Sicilymovie – Agrigento Film Festival.
The film traces the life of Martha Abba, actress of Milanese origins, born in 1900, who in 1925 came into contact with the then already famous playwright Luigi Pirandello who appreciated Marta’s great artistic talent, but also her extraordinary beauty. Thus began a professional relationship between the two, an artistic partnership, which would end at the end of 1936, with the death of the Nobel Prize winner. In over a decade Marta Abba and her “Master” exchanged more than 800 letters, preserved partly in Rome, at the Institute of Pirandellian Studies, partly at the library of Princeton University, in New Jersey, to which the actress, now eighty years old, donated all the correspondence, revealing to the world her tormented relationship with Pirandello.
“The film is not a classic biopic” – states the director Lorenzo Daniele – “it is a work of creation in which three narrative levels are mixed: that of the protagonist, a modern-day actress, Margherita Peluso; that of Marta Abba; that of the experts who succeed one another and who, with their testimony, help the public to understand the true essence of Marta, dispelling that cliché according to which she was Pirandello’s lover. This film is an attempt to give voice to the woman who played a fundamental role in the great playwright’s theatrical production. And at the same time she wants to shine the spotlight on a stubborn and in some ways rebellious woman who inaugurated, together with her mentor, a renewed theatre, different from the stereotypes of the time. An actress who founded her own company, and was probably the first woman to do so in Europe, facing head on the world of men, who in that historical period occupied the positions of power and prestige”.
Various experts intervene in the film, which has a duration of 72 minutes, each with their own skills: Annamaria Andreoli(president of the Institute of Pirandellian Studies in Rome) e Pietro Frassica (professor of Italian Literature at Princeton University) are among the leading experts who have studied the correspondence between Abba and Pirandello since the mid-1980s; David J. Diamond he is an actor coach of “La MaMa theatre” in New York who will accompany Margherita’s research with his advice; The Sicilian actress Lucia Sardoa well-known face in cinema, who will address the delicate topic of the relationship between Marta Abba and the world of theater contemporary to her.
“The Municipality of Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples Tourist District” – he claims Fabrizio La Gaipadirector of the DMO Valley of the Temples Tourist District – “followed the filming of the film in 2023, when the crew filmed in the city, on the very day in which Agrigento was elected Italian Capital of Culture 2025. We could not fail to accept the director’s and production’s proposal to launch the docu-film in the city birthplace of Luigi Pirandello, offering logistical support to the important event, with the hope that this documentary can travel the world and be a promotional tool to enhance the Agrigento area”.
The making of the docu-film lasted almost two years, including bibliographic research, writing the text, inspections, shooting and editing, with an industrial cost of around 95 thousand euros, being a low budget film. The filming locations were Sicily, Rome and the USA. In addition to the Milanese actress Margherita Pelusothe Australian director appears in the film Laurence Strangio and the Sicilian actors Davide Sbrogiò And Mauro Italy. After the preview in Agrigento, the film will find space in numerous national and international festivals, and will also enjoy distribution in cinemas with targeted events. Finally it will be included in platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The Production does not exclude the possibility of television broadcasting.
