Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Marina Cicogna, Italy’s first major female film producer who shepherded films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Zeffirelli and Elio Petri, including Petri’s Oscar-winning “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” has died.
She was 89. Cicogna died on Nov. 4 in her Rome home after a long battle with an unspecified form of cancer, according to Italian news agency ANSA.
The Venice Biennale foundation is a statement, praised her as “the first female film producer in Europe” and noted that she was always deeply linked to the Venice Film Festival that was founded by her grandfather, Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata.
Born in Rome on May 29, 1934, to Count Cesare Cicogna Mozzoni and Countess Annamaria Volpi di Misurata, Cicogna attended high school in Italy and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she struck up a friendship with Jack Warner’s daughter Barbara Warner and established a connection with Hollywood.
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