Lorenza Mazzetti

Lorenza Mazzetti (born 1928 in Florence, Italy) is the author of "Il Cielo Cade" "(The Sky Falls)" published in 1961 and based on her tragic childhood. She was orphaned at a very young age and brought up by her aunt and uncle, along with their two daughters. On 3 August 1944, the SS killed her aunt and two cousins. Her uncle committed suicide a year later.

In the early 1950s, Mazzetti moved to London where she studied at the Slade School of Art. On the strength of a short film she made at Slade, an adaptation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" in 1954 with an exceptional intuition for not falling on the usually artificial clichés, the British Film Institute Experimental Film Fund awarded her the opportunity to make "Together", a film about two deaf-mutes in the East End of London. After being screened as part of the first Free cinema screening alongside Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson's "Momma Don't Allow" and Lindsay Anderson's "O Dreamland" in February 1956 at the National Film Theatre, all three went on to be screened at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.

Mazzetti moved to Rome in 1959, where continued to make TV programmes for RAI TV. She still lives in Rome.