Jolanda Benvenuti
1908 – 1981
Jolanda Benvenuti was an Italian editor who worked on more than one hundred and fifty productions during her career. In 1945 she started working with Roberto Rossellini on Rome, Open City and for the next thirty years edited almost all his films, including Stromboli, Journey to Italy, Paisan, We the Women, and Germany, Year Zero as well as his last film, Il Messia, in 1975.
“In the credits for Rome, Open City, the director substituted for Benvenuti’s name that of her well-known male counterpart, Eraldo Da Roma. Many years later, in an interview released in the early 1990’s, Benvenuti recalled her exclusion: ‘I didn’t care. . . .But now, see . . . they didn’t put me [in the credits] because they didn’t put women’s names . . . they didn’t let me put it even in Paisan . . . but who wasn’t aware that I’d worked on Rome, Open City? Everyone knew that, I was the only one left. They put everyone else’s names, they left out just me.’”
—“Titillating Cuts: Genealogies of Women Editors in Italian Cinema” by Dalila Missero. The full article can be found in the Appendix.
