Cine-Concerts in Piazza Maggiore

Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin will be lighting up the big screen in Piazza Maggiore in two cine-concerts at the upcoming festival. Released in 1928 within a few months of each other, The Cameraman and The Circus are the perfect expression of silent film’s last season and of an art that reached the height of its artistic power right before succumbing to the revolution of sound. Tuesday 25 June will be the night of The Cameraman, perhaps the last of the Keatonian wonders and a brilliant depiction of the relationship between cinema and reality and of the fragility of the artist. A newly restored version of the film will be presented with a live performance by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna of an original score composed by Timothy Brock, who will also be conducting. On Thursday 27 June the whirlwind, tightrope-walking genius of Charlie Chaplin will light up the screen with The Circus, an amazing demonstration of a confident filmmaker using his creative powers to make a comedy about being funny, unintentionally. The dazzling new restored version will be accompanied by Chaplin’s original score, meticulously reconstructed by Timothy Brock using archive materials and also performed by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

Cine-Concerts in Piazzetta

Pasolini Carbon arc projector screenings return to Piazzetta Pasolini re-creating the light and ambience of vintage films. One evening will be devoted to the legendary Musidora, with a ‘Ledecky print’ of Soleil et ombre and live music by Gabriel Thibaudeau. In honour of Enno Patalas (1929–2018) we will screen a masterpiece of silent cinema, Lupu Pick’s Sylvester, using a print from the National Film Archive of Japan’s Komiya Collection with live music by Frank Bockius. The third evening is dedicated to a programme entitled Short, Coloured, Criminal.

Piazza Maggiore Screenings

Our evening screenings in Piazza Maggiore have become the stuff of legend, with thousands of eyes transfixed on a gigantic screen, surrounded by majestic architecture and boundless love for the cinema. The images that come to mind, in describing the intensity of the Piazza experience, are the last scene of Miracle in Milan where the people of the slums rise into the sky in joy, or the wind blowing through the long hair of the hippy rebels in Easy Rider. The slum as a place for going beyond realism is also the setting for Luis Buñuel’s harrowing Mexican masterpiece Los olvidados. Other hypnotic cinematic journeys will take you through Rome (Fellini’s Roma) and into the heart of darkness (Francis Ford Coppola’s new version of Apocalypse Now). These will be screened in the Piazza, along with some other absolute classics of the canon. We often welcome exquisite guests to the festival too, including people closely involved with making these films, introducing their gems for us.

Cinephile Nights at Cinema Arlecchino

This comfortable blue cinema has become the centre for screening the best new restorations, cult films, vintage Technicolor prints and films from the canon revisited in enviably good prints. If you’re a young cinephile and want to catch up with film history, Arlecchino is the place!

There will be much more happening during the festival: Legendary filmmakers, film restoration experts and prominent historians sharing their stories with you. A most tempting collection of film books, DVDs and posters will be offered inside the Renzo Renzi Library as part of our Book Fair, while an international jury will select the best DVD releases of the year for the Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards. Other events include Europe Cinemas’ international seminar for film exhibitors, the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes’ general assembly, lectures dedicated to film restoration (organised with the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata) and special book launches.