1ST WOMAN NOMINATED FOR DIRECTING OSCAR DIES

Italy’s provocative filmmaker Lina Wertmueller, whose potent mix of sex and politics in “Swept Away” and “Seven Beauties” made her the first woman nominated for an Academy Award for directing and a cult figure on the New York film scene, has died, the Culture Ministry said Thursday. She was 93.

Wertmueller, who won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019, died overnight in Rome surrounded by her family, the LaPresse news agency reported, quoting her relatives.

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini paid tribute to Wertmueller Thursday, saying her “class and unmistakable style” had left its mark on Italian and world cinema. “Grazie Lina,” he said in a statement.

Political, controversial and often erotic, her films were filled with social commentary and satirical anti-establishment messages. Wertmueller, who also wrote the scripts for her films, described them as Marxist comedies.

“I refuse to make films without social themes,” said the woman once dubbed “five feet of film controversy,” a nod to her height.

Wertmueller’s series of hits began with the “Seduction of Mimi” (1972), whose title was abbreviated from “Mimi the Metal Worker Wounded in his Honor” — Wertmueller told the AP that long titles amused her. Other box-office success included “Love and Anarchy” (1973), “Swept Away” (1974) and “Seven Beauties” (1976), which earned her one Oscar nomination for directing, one for best original screenplay and another for her leading man, Giancarlo Giannini.

She didn’t win then, but the Academy acknowledged the milestone in awarding her a lifetime achievement more than four decades later, in 2019.