Marina Piperno, first woman in Italy to work as a film producer, tells us the reasons of her choice and how she experienced her condition of a childfree woman. Her story is also a very precious window open on the story of Italian cinema.

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MARINA: «I don’t have children. I had two chances to have them, but after about a month and a half into the pregnancy, I had two miscarriages. Having kids has never been a major issue for me.
I’ve never focused my life on the decision to have children. It wasn’t that important, it has never been that important for me. If I had kids, I would have welcomed them and I might have been happy to have them. Having no children has never bothered me at all because I felt fulfilled thanks to the things I did, like my job, my life, my relationships.
I’ve never seen kids as a need, unlike many women, like some friends of mine, who have this urge which I never felt. Maybe because, as it is for everyone, of psychological reasons.
I was born in a time period, I was born in 1935 and when I was 20 you needed to get married and have kids. I’ve always thought that this issue, this utmost need for the female world, for women who belonged to the middle class, the fact that you should have a kid to feel fulfilled was an outrageous limitation. It terrified me. Let’s brutally say I didn’t want to be like my mum.
It’s always like that. I think my mum reflected the ideals of her time, something I understood years later, We’ve always had a conflictual relationship but only after several years, actually, pretty recently and a little bit late, I’ve realised that, also thanks to Luigi’s help as we talked about it several times, she reflected the ideals of her time. She was born in 1912, she got married at 20 years old to a man who was 13 years her senior, He must have been her mentor, her master, the one who guided her. She went to high school, and it was a lot for that time. She didn’t go to university as my grandfather didn’t want his daughters to go to university because it was dangerous for them to go there alone. Getting married and having children was natural for her. I don’t know how much she actually wanted it. We’ve never talked about it, so I don’t know. She never told me. My mother was very… maybe she was very shy, but this characteristic made her seem arrogant. She seemed like she was arrogant.
She was called the princess. She was detached from everything, and we had a conflictual relationship, but it wasn’t that serious, like I had curly hair and maybe she wanted it to be straight. I’ve mentioned it in a movie that’s about me called “Storie di una donna amata e di un assassino gentile”.
I’ve always connected to her the issue of becoming a mum, and also to the figures of my aunts and my closest relatives, seeing this condition like a prison, like something that limited my chance to move.
Now it’s different. Today, a 20-year-old girl can have kids and do something else, but in the ‘50s one thing excluded the other, and having children… It has never been a problem for me.
When I started working, at the beginning I was a journalist, I was a winter sports correspondent, then I worked in the editorial office of the newspaper Il Paese and I’ve worked with the critic Aldo Scagnetti.
I interviewed people who worked for the cinema industry and directors. That job completed me, so I found the idea of getting married or having children interesting because of the relationship with another person.
I’ve always felt the need and I’ve always wanted to bond with another person, with a man, with someone I was in tune with. But having children was something else, I’m not saying it was something that bothered me… Then, something that I’ve realized over the years was that it was a sort of sexophobic topic. If you have a baby, it means you’ve slept with a man, back then your husband, as you couldn’t have intercourses outside of your marriage. And I felt like everybody would have known that, because if you are pregnant it means you had sex.
Probably because my mom was very critical on this subject, and she would never talk about it. I really felt guilty. I did a psychological analysis on this topic and these two things are probably related.
On one hand, I felt ashamed to show that I was pregnant and that I had sex, even if it was with my husband, and on the other hand, I thought having kids as an obstacle towards my freedom, towards what I wanted to do and how I wanted to move. I was quite rebel, independent and… There was something else. I was really scared of physical pain, of what could have happened. I’ve never talked about this with my mum.
When I got married the first time I was 23, I was no longer a teenager, but my mother had never given me any advice, and that led to… I’ve never done… not having children has never made me think: “I don’t have children, I’m not a complete woman”. I didn’t really care.
I produced films, I’ve started this job in the ‘60s and I was really pleased with my job. For a while, I used to say that my documentaries and my films were like my kids. It was true. Because through my job I felt totally fulfilled.
When you don’t have children, you think of many other things: you wonder about your inheritance, not just your material goods, but also your psychological and moral legacy. I’ve never really thought about it.
I’ve always thought that the outside world, I have thought about it but I thought that the world around me, and the people I’ve met, also through my work, did receive something from me, If it was helpful, I was happy.
I think that’s what happened because a lot of people confirmed it. I know it’s not the main inheritance.
I see many people of my generation who have kids and I say: “Poor things”. They have all sorts of problems, they’re forced to be grandmas, looking after their grandchildren if their own children work. They don’t really want to, maybe they’d rather go to a concert… and I see there’s something really sad, like terrible relationships because of the material inheritance, conflicts over material interests, huge inheritance issues, huge arguments among siblings because of who got the most. I frankly find it quite miserable and sad. It’s a reality I know because I talk about it with friends.
My first husband, whom I married when I was 23, we’ve been married for 14 years, wasn’t really interested in having children.
It has never been a problem because we worked together. He was a director, he still is, and our job was totally fulfilling. It completed our relationship.
I got pregnant once, but I had a miscarriage, but that was it. We didn’t brood over it, we weren’t desperate. It just happened.
It was more painful when I got pregnant at 43 by Luigi we had been together for a year. It was painful but it was like an act of revenge. I need to be honest. It was like a revenge on my relatives and friends: “I can get pregnant too. I’m able to have a baby too”.
Somehow, this topic, also for religion, being called dead branches, seeing a woman who doesn’t have children as sterile, as having an handicap or something negative, I clearly felt that, it influenced me even if I rejected it on a rational level.
Most probably, on an emotional level, there was something that bothered me, like people’s judgement, as if I was missing something according to the logic of our world. People get married…
Or according to the religious logic, because every religion, starting with Judaism is based on the need to have children. It’s something crucial.
Nowadays, fewer births would be better, as we are almost 10 billion people. I don’t know what will happen to our old world, there’s no more room. We’ll have to find other planets.
Not in my immediate family. All my mum’s sisters, and my dad’s sisters and his brother all had children. During my adolescence, when I was about 18 years old, one of my cousins got pregnant without being married. It was a tragedy for my family.
And that episode was something that gave me… It was kind of shameful, they got married and then divorced.
I felt it like a heavy burden, I felt like I was responsible for that. We were close… Same age, we’re just six months apart and we were friends. I had the feeling to be as guilty as her. But in my immediate family everyone has children.
I can tell you something, I’m also an elementary school teacher. But it really never crossed my mind to go and teach children. I mean, I took a Teaching Diploma, after middle school. I didn’t really want to continue, so I chose Teaching School, which was supposedly easier, probably easier than Classical Lyceum.
When I finished that school, I’ve never thought I would have been a teacher because I’ve always loved going around, meeting new people. I didn’t want to be just around children.
There was a sort of maternal episode around 1991 when we produced the movie called “Notte di stelle”. We were auditioning girls, the film was set in the suburbs, with young people who lived in the Tor Bella Monaca’s suburb. We had organised the auditions and suddenly a girl came who was really messed up. Her face was really funny… We chose her because she was amazing, but then she disappeared… And throughout the months she was around in our office, she came from Bari, her mother committed suicide, she had a messed up background. She came to Rome because she wanted to become a singer. She was nothing before we hired her. She used to sleep at someone’s home, I don’t know if she paid any rent, she came to the office, a production company, with her wet clothes inside some bags. I said: “What are you doing?” and she replied: “She kicked me out.
The lady where I was staying kicked me out”. So, this young girl, she was about 19 years old, with a funny face, she was amazing in the film, she was very talented.
Luigi works very well with actors. She was really good and throughout the film production, I somehow bonded with her. She slept over at my house, I offered her a place to sleep at our company Reiac, and she would come with her clothes, she would shower. I mean, the most… I tried to guide her. I bonded with her, with this desperate girl who was… Then I had an experience with something different than a human being.
I always talk about how in 1995 we were looking for a puppy for my mother-in-law who wanted a dog. In Tuscany, where we have a house in the Upper Maremma, we got a 50-day-old poodle. He was so beautiful, but I made the mistake, I don’t know if it was a mistake, I took him ten days before bringing him to my mother-in-law. We took him home. He was 50 days old, a champagne colour fluffy ball, with those little eyes… and that was a huge mistake, because ten days later we came here in the eastern Liguria area, to bring him to my mother-in-law. He was in a backpack with his head out. But when she saw him, she was unsure, so my husband, Luigi, said: “Ok mum, we’re still going to keep him for a few days” so we decided to keep him with us for a few days. Then we went for dinner in a village, we went for lunch in a nearby village called Bagnone and while my husband was with his mum, he asked me to go and look for a restaurant. I went holding always the dog was in my arms. When I got back, he said : “Mum said she wants the dog.” The expression on my face got extremely serious and I said: “What an awful place. I hate everyone”. Luigi understood he had to choose between me and his mom. I kept the dog.
We’ve had a symbiotic relationship for 13 years. I really loved this sweet tiny dog, and he loved me and Luigi as well. When he died two years ago, he died a month before my mother-in-law, it was extremely painful. Back then, there was, I said something like: “I’ve never had something that little”. It was about something I had missed in life.
My brother and my sister-in-law used to say: “You treat him like a baby.” I didn’t see the problem. I think everybody treats small dogs like that. I see older people here in Lerici who have small dogs and they treat them like this, as children or grandchildren. They behave like… Most of us dog owners make a mistake, as we tend to humanise our dogs. A dog is a dog. We often treat them like kids or grandchildren. So, I felt judged.
None of my relatives have a dog, especially not at home. They really didn’t understand my behaviour. They found it strange. “A dog”? We took our dog with us everywhere. He also came to the cinema during a presentation for the directors of photography of the first movie I produced, Sierra Maestra. He came to the cinema with us, and he was quiet.
He was with me during the last feature film I’ve produced, a fiction called Giamaica, and this little dog, we only filmed during night-time for eight weeks every night, so we would go to the theatre at three in the afternoon and we would finish at five in the morning.
The dog was always with me, partly because it was necessary as he couldn’t stay at home alone.
There were things we had to do, like feeding him at a certain time, preparing his food. These are things you can also do for a baby.
When we took our dog, a friend of ours said: “Don’t do it. A dog is like a 9-month-old baby, but all life long”. That’s totally true. They can be 20 years old, but they always depend on you, You must take them out… and they don’t annoy you as kids do. I mean, they’re not that annoying.
I honestly don’t know how to answer, as the relations I had with people in the film crews, and they were a lot, have always been very open and peaceful and I don’t think anyone has ever judged me for my decision. I honestly don’t think so. I had some… Some people have started to work with me and today they have, you certainly know, you can cut this part or not, the Palomar company, that produced the movie of… Carlo Degli Esposti began working with me as a movie producer.
Roberto Cicutto, President of Cinecittà film studio, worked with me for three years. Therefore… I’ve worked with different collaborators, they were younger than me, and we may have built a relationship where, as I was saying before, I gave some things as if they were, if not children, they were younger people with whom I shared my knowledge. But then again, I don’t think that in these working relationships, especially with the men, I’d say women are most likely to think: “She doesn’t have children so she uses work as…”
Women could have thought that. I don’t think men have ever thought about it in these terms. I don’t know, I’m giving you a really open answer. I’ve never really gave it too much thought.
I am not much involved in this environment, I don’t have the opportunity, as those young women with their children could be my nieces.
I have a 30-year-old niece who is not married yet, she might have a baby in the future…I don’t have the inclination to deal with those things. I can only listen to that, but I get bored. Something I’ve always blamed myself for, it didn’t just depend on me, it’s also Luigi’s fault, is that when this niece was born, now she’s about 31, I’ve never had towards her… she has reproached me that, and rightly so. Now that we’re both grown up women, even if we are several years apart, we’ve a mature relationship, we call each other, we hang out in Rome, we chat and talk, but when she was a baby, and she was lovely, I didn’t spend time or the afternoons with her. I didn’t play with her. I don’t know how to play with children. If I find myself among people who just talk about baby food or other, I wouldn’t be interested in the least.
It’s easier if I’m with mums who talk about their children with all their problems, who act strangely, or who don’t have a relationship.
In that respect, I can have a say, even if I don’t have experience with children, I speak my mind, not so much on the children, but on the mums’ behaviour, because quite often mums’ mistakes affect their children.
I speak up about mums’ behaviour, not about how their children, because after all, I don’t have any experience… I also know nothing about school issues.
I don’t know, she never told me about it, and neither has my sister-in-law, although we have a good relationship, even if we don’t speak every day, we don’t have an intense relationship.
When I go to Rome I stay at their place. She’s a very busy woman, with her job. She’s almost 70 years old but she still works, she is a consultant, she’s very active but she has never asked me: “Why don’t you have children?” We’ve never been that close.
My niece, I’ve found it out as she asked Luigi about that, she never asked me: “Why don’t you have children? Didn’t you want them? Can’t you have them? Did you try to have them”? I’ve never done anything. I’ve never thought to undergo any treatments. It has never crossed my mind.
Yes, maybe it’s a taboo or maybe there’s something else: I’ve always been considered different and I didn’t want to be like the others regarding this topic.
No one in my immediate family, not even my female cousins, has ever asked me about my decision. I’ve been distant for a long time.
With the years going by, when you get old, maybe you can reconnect because you say, or at least you think to yourself: “If I die tomorrow, in the last years we never even talked”. When you get older you often reconnect with people you know since you were a child.
There’s the central part of life, as far as I’m concerned, when these relationships even with my first cousins, with whom I was always together, but afterward we have cut ties. First because I had a job they knew nothing about.
Maybe they knew it from afar, they might have been proud, of the results I’ve achieved, but we haven’t met for several years. Cinema consumes you, it’s an all-consuming activity. Especially if you’re a filmmaker because you must search for funding, create projects, find collaborators, shoot, deal with promotion and festivals, and film distribution. It’s exhausting.
I’ve been the first woman with this job. Actually, there was also Marina Cicogna who worked for her family company called Euro International Film, an important distribution company. She was also a producer. But my background was different, as I had no one in my family who…
Well, I found myself, I’ve always loved cinema and since I was about 18 years old, back then, there were Film Societies that are not like the ones that exist today, there was the Roman Film Society, the Chaplin Film Society, which is the same thing.
Every Sunday morning we would gather and went to watch films and then discuss after the screening. These societies don’t exist anymore nowadays.
My first husband, Ansano Giannarelli, whose grandfather came from Tempio Pausania, he taught there, he was from Tuscany, he was a director and back then a documentary filmmaker. I’ve started working with him. I’ve started this job thanks to the relationship I had at that time too. I’ve always liked to organize the work I really like this field of the cinema, searching for funding.
I always get bored when I’m on set, I go there as little as possible. I mean I do go because there are always some problems you must solve. I’ve always went on set, I had to, being the production manager, you must deal with everyone. I was supposed to be an actress, and do many other things but at some point, I’ve realized that planning and producing fascinated me the most. I mean, creating the product and planning the project, carrying them out.
As we said before, films are my children, because, if you think about it, it’s all about creativity.
The projects we’ve produced have always been our creations. No one else has ever told us: “You must do this thing”.
That’s why I talk about creativity, maybe a different kind of creativity but it’s like raising a child.
I’ve started working with him and I’ve produced my first documentary in 1961. “16 ottobre 1943”, about the Roman Jews Deportation to Germany and it’s based on Giacomo De Benedetti’s book. It was very difficult, we borrowed money that we later returned. We struggled a lot, but it felt good to produce this. A documentary that after 50 years is still on the market. It was last year in Florence for 800 students in Palazzo Vecchio, also two years ago.
Then I started working with others because they heard there was a young girl who oversaw the organization.
I’ve worked with documentary filmmakers, as production manager, with Raffaele Viggiani,
I’ve also worked with Cesare Zavattini.
When I planned the first newsreel in ‘62, at the time of he Bay of Pigs Invasion and it seemed like a nuclear war was about to break out, Zavattini issued an appeal to everyone who worked in the cinema, back then cinema was more popular than television, like directors, cinema workers, journalists, writers saying: “Let’s create something where each of us gives a speech on peace and war. An appeal”.
Mario Soldati produced this project, although it was actually produced by the Italian magazine Rinascita the Italian Communist Party might be involved, as it was a communist magazine. I was hired as production manager. I had just started working and we produced this newsreel about peace that I still have. It was very interesting with Pasolini, Mario Soldati… some documentary filmmakers, my ex-husband Ansano Giannarelli, Beppe Ferrara… A lot of people worked in this project, that’s how it started.
Then, I produced a film with a television director named Alberto Caldana produced by Ermanno Olmi’s film studio called “22 Dicembre”. The first two movies I’ve worked on, “16 ottobre 1943” and “Sierra Maestra”, both by Ansano Giannarelli, the latter was filmed in Venezuela and Sardinia. At that time Sardinia was seen as a rebellious island, it was 1968. We filmed in Oliena and Nuoro and… then in Venezuela among the Venezuelan soldiers.
I’ve produced several documentaries about Palestinian women and about the Black Panthers. I’ve produced some political films. At that time, it was called political cinema.
For me, “16 ottobre” and “Sierra Maestra” have been… “Sierra Maestra” was presented at the Venice Film Festival, and it obtained positive reviews by critics. It was a cult movie. These two movies are very important to me.
Then the first projects I’ve worked on with Luigi, it was a connection between our job and our relationship. So, after “Sierra Maestra”, the first films I’ve produced with Luigi Faccini, “Sassalbo provincia di Sydney” is the story of a town in the Upper Lunigiana where everyone emigrated to Australia. It’s an amazing film narrated by two amazing charcoal burners, two incredible characters, one of them was very talented, who had emigrated all over the world.
Then I worked on my first feature film, “Inganni”, based on Dino Campana’s life. It was produced by Luigi Faccini, and it won two of the Italian film awards Nastri d’argento and other awards, inspired by Dino Campana.
There are other films, I really like my last one “Notte di stelle”, the ones about suburbs. Then there’s “Donna d’ombra”… I’ve always liked to deal with this kind of topic, with social or justice issues. I’ve always been interested in these topics. That’s why I’ve never produced a comedy in the strict sense of the word. I’ve always produced quality films, arthouse cinema which over the years has become extremely important.
We’ve worked on different film styles and critics confirmed it. But when you distribute a film, it’s often difficult to get into the market, but we are aware of that, so we keep going on with our job.
I owe it to Luigi Faccini. Not just being comfortable in front of the cameras, but even talking itself.
I haven’t talked for a long time, I thought that for a female producer there was like an obstacle.
I would think: “What could I say?”. Since we met, I’ve learnt I had something to say.
Moreover, I moved to a new experience, since 2008 I started to be also in front of the camera, not just behind it.
I’ve produced two Faccini’s films one called “Storia di una donna amata e di un assassino gentile”
and another one we’ve just finished producing called “Rudolf Jacobs, l’uomo che nacque morendo”, where I’m the main protagonist because it’s the story of my life in seven chapters. It comes with a book that I’ll give you.
We didn’t write the book ourselves, but it was written by essayists, critics, festival directors who talk about this film. I’ve learnt to be in front of the camera. You suddenly become self-confident and it’s something I hadn’t experienced before. But now I have, and I enjoy it.
I’ll tell you a funny story, something I’ve never thought I would have done. I was at a supermarket in Pitigliano, we have a house in the Tuscan Maremma area, and my eyes fell upon a huge box with soft toys. I’ve never bought one in my life because I don’t have children, so I don’t own any of these soft toys. I looked again at the box and what do I see? A soft toy that looked exactly like Bubul. I couldn’t resist, so I bought and brought it home. I was really happy because when Luigi saw it, he said: “It’s Bubul”. It’s in our bedroom, I brought it from the countryside, and I must confess, sometimes I walk over and caress it. You get crazy once you get old.»

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