Dear friends of Il Cinema Ritrovato,

Il Cinema Ritrovato returns as your ‘bridge over troubled waters’ of our time. The majestic Piazza Maggiore and multiple venues across the city will host this year’s nine-day celebration of cinema, with more than 400 screenings, lectures, panels and exhibitions. It will be an extended Technicolor dream in which not only will you watch and rewatch some of the greatest works of cinema, but also you’ll be able to share this experience with friends and colleagues who have travelled from all over the world.

From the origins of cinema to the cinema of originality, we embrace the Seventh Art is in all forms and shapes, from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Americas. We cover the evolution of the art form from 1903 to 1923 and from there, glide over a century of wonders. The festival completes its mission by showing some of the most recent documentaries made about the history of cinema as well a programme specifically designed for younger audiences.

The titles selected by our international team of curators will be screened from brand-new digital restorations, newly struck 35mm prints, but also vintage archive prints and small-gauge film. As usual, our legendary carbon arc projector will light up Piazzetta Pasolini with a unique synesthetic experience. All silent films will be accompanied by live music and two silent masterpieces in the Piazza by a full orchestra.

Joyful and exhilarating as the festival experience can be, our engagement with the issues of our time through films made in the past remains intact. Perhaps no other strand will reveal how in cinema the visible laughter and invisible tears can go hand in hand as that devoted to films made by German exile directors in central Europe – they made high-quality entertainment as they experienced displacement. The career retrospectives of the Hollywood giant of Armenian origins, Rouben Mamoulian, next to one of the lesser-studied masters of Japanese cinema, Teinosuke Kinugasa, will reveal an astounding level of experimentation with visual storytelling, sound and colour from the silent era to CinemaScope. Tributes to screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Italian goddess Anna Magnani, and cinematographer and filmmaker Elfi Mikesch will continue our on-going investigation of women in front of and behind the camera.

The rules for attending are very simple: get yourself a festival pass and watch any film you wish in the six cinemas, which screen films from 9am to late at night, in addition to the two outdoor screenings every evening.

After the success of last year’s edition, which marked a return to both our regular June dates but also a much-awaited departure from the restrictions of the pandemic, the festival attendees can enjoy unlimited access to screenings and enjoy the many delights that the city of Bologna can offer, including the world-famous cuisine, art scene and museums.

If you have attended the festival in the past three years, you must be familiar with our newly introduced booking system. For more details, please look out for our future newsletters, which will reveal further information about the festival, including the full line-up of films, the names of the guests of honour and the last-minute additions to an already rich edition of the festival.

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Anna Magnani, the One and Only

Perhaps the greatest, certainly the most admired and imitated – not only was Anna Magnani unique, she was also a model of acting style and an Italian icon. After first presenting herself as a brilliant actress – thanks to the triumph of Rome, Open City – she subsequently diversified from the many incarnations of her popular Roman character to play very different roles, such as those in Jean Renoir’s The Golden Coach or the monodrama The Human Voice (an episode in Roberto Rossellini’s L’Amore), to finally arriving in Hollywood and winning an Oscar for The Rose Tattoo. Her image was somewhat eccentric, amid the glamour of the 1950s and her golden moment lasted just over ten years, but an actress such as Magnani is unimaginable today. The legacy and unattainable model of Anna Magnani continue to inspire actresses in Italy and beyond.

Curated by Emiliano Morreale

Photo: Risate di gioia by Mario Monicelli (The Passionate Thief, 1960)

Rouben Mamoulian: A Touch of Desire

Known for his ability to encode his vision in light, movement, and later in colour, the Tbilisi-born Armenian Rouben Mamoulian had one of the most consistent bodies of work in American cinema. Rightly celebrated for his invaluable contribution to Hollywood’s transition to sound, he both unchained the camera and used dialogue like a work of musical accompaniment. His mobile camera was envied and imitated, and his style is instantly recognisable for its sophistication, humour and erotic undertone. Mamoulian was equally efficient in more sombre types of cinema, serving as a pioneering figure in both gangster and horror genres. This career retrospective showcases Mamoulian’s work from his only silent film, to the early sound period, to his final musical, in colour and CinemaScope. Aside from a new digital restoration of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, everything else will be screened in 35mm.

Curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht

Photo: Queen Christina by Rouben Mamoulian (1933) 

Tribute to Suso Cecchi D’Amico

Over the course of a career that began at the time of the birth of neorealism and lasted more than 60 years, Suso Cecchi d’Amico worked on the screenplays of more than 120 films (mainly, but not exclusively, Italian) directed by both newcomers and established directors. Her aim was never to impose her own ideas, but to understand and support the projects and poetics of the authors with whom she worked. On the other hand, like any artist, she clearly possessed her own voice and personality, which this section proposes to trace through films that are very different in tone, genre and language. It is certainly a partial but undoubtedly fascinating selection, presenting significant works chosen from a rich and heterogeneous filmography that few other screenwriters can boast.

Curated by Masolino, Silvia e Caterina d’Amico

Photo: Suso Cecchi d’Amico

Teinosuke Kinugasa: From Shadow to Light

The distinguished director Teinosuke Kinugasa (1896-1982) stands in a paradoxical relationship to international cinephilia. While Crossroads (1928) and Gate of Hell (1953) were shown in Europe at an early stage, and while Page of Madness (1926) is recognised as an avant-garde classic, Kinugasa’s wider oeuvre is still barely known abroad. This retrospective will showcase a rich and diverse selection of films, ranging from high-quality literary adaptations, to films about the performing arts, to unusual period dramas, which largely eschew violent action in favour of sophisticated historical analysis and intense personal drama. Drawing on recent restorations as well as vintage prints, the programme will highlight Kinugasa’s considerable abilities as a director of actors and the stylistic variety of his art, which ranges with facility from monochrome expressionism to colour pictorialism. It is time that this significant body of work emerged from the shadows.

Curated by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström. Co-organizer: National Film Archive of Japan

Photo: Daibutsu kaigen (Dedication of the Great Buddha, 1952)

Cinemalibero

One of the festival’s continuing strands, once again Cinemalibero will travel down the unpaved roads of cinema history to light up the powerful and unique work of maverick filmmakers unjustly denied admission to the canon of the greats; rediscovering films which, even when successful in their national cinemas, were barely recognised as masterworks outside the borders of their country of production. Cinemalibero is also a story of banned films, censorship and masterpieces lost to regressive forces of their time, now finally brought back to life through painstaking but rewarding restorations. This year, through nine programmes, we’ll fork into three geographical areas: Central Asia, post-1967 Pan-Arab cinema from Lebanon and Syria, and Western Africa – each revolving around several world-premiere restorations, including, respectively, The Fall of Otrar (Gibel Otrara, Ardak Amirkulov, Kazakhstan, 1991); The Dupes (Al-Makhdo’un, Tewfik Saleh, Syria 1972); and Ceddo (Ousmane Sembène, Senegal, 1977), the latter part of a centennial tribute to the Senegalese maestro. 

Curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

Photo: Ousmane Sembène on set of Ceddo (1977) – Fonds d Archives Africaine pour la Sauvegarde des Mémoires

The Very Last Laugh: German Exile Comedies, 1933-37

Last year we presented a series on German musical comedies, 1930-32. Now we follow up on the fate and the continuing creativity of the talents involved during their exile years, by screening five German-language musical comedies produced in Austria and Hungary. The Nazi takeover in January 1933 resulted in the end of the Jewish influence on popular German filmmaking. It also marked, for a great many Jewish filmmakers (including directors, actors, screenwriters and producers), the beginning of life and work in exile. In the film studios of Vienna and Budapest, they kept the vision of another kind of German-language cinema alive, a cinema less polished yet much more free-spirited, irreverent and adventurous than the one dominating Nazi screens. Like the musical comedies of the late Weimar Republic, these films are filled with catchy tunes, light-hearted romances, bumbling hucksters and at times a sense of melancholia that speaks of displacement and an uncertain future.

Curated by Lukas Foerster

Photo: Ball im Savoy by Stefan (István) Székely (Ball at the Savoy, 1935)

One Hundred Years Ago: 1923

Now in its 20th anniversary year, the One Hundred Years Ago section continues its annual exploration of a single year in cinema’s rich and varied history with a selection of enduring classics and archival rarities as well as thought-provoking documentaries from 1923. This year we turn our attention to the exiled Russian filmmakers working at the studio Films Albatros in France, the birth of the western as a serious genre in Hollywood, the pinnacle of expressionist cinema in Germany, and the last embers of the diva film genre in Italy. Newsreel footage of the time, meanwhile, preserves major events for posterity on film, such as the Great Kantō earthquake devastating Tokyo or the discovery of Tut-Ankh-Amun’s tomb. The majority of the films in the programme will be screened on 35mm, but we will also present a handful of new digital restorations.

Curated by Oliver Hanley

Photo: Le Brasier ardent by Ivan Mosjoukine (1923)

Century of Cinema: 1903

In 1903 Méliès was at the peak of his art, creating wonderful gems such as Le Royaume des fées, a film destined to be the centrepiece of a programme made up of several genres, always with its fair share of short comedies and visual tricks. While British pioneers were contributing to cinema with their innovative spirit, in the US – see Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery – violence and plot-driven films were already happening. In the same year, Pathé frères ambitiously rivalled the grand féeries with spectacular productions by Lucien Nonguet about historical figures (Napoléon, Marie Antoinette). Several Pathé titles – part of the Corricks (itinerant showmen) collection – will be presented in restored versions originating from gorgeously hand-coloured prints found in Australia. But there was more to cinema than just these international productions: local cinematographers have documented their 1903 in unique moving images. Prepare yourself to be charmed by the talented Herr Mohr, a bank employee from Kronberg, dancing in drag!

Curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko

Photo: Types de Français (1903)

The Samama Chikli Project

After multiple viewings of  Albert Samama Chikli’s work in recent editions, we are ready to share some (spectacular) findings that have surfaced from the archives of this remarkable personality, now entrusted to the Cineteca di Bologna by his family. The study of letters, invoices, handwritten notes and photographs revealed the workings of a career behind the camera spanning from 1905 to 1924, allowing us to establish, for the first time, a filmography of over 100 titles. All in all, Albert Samama can no longer be considered a marginal note in the history of cinema, an ephemeral and exotic presence: he was a pioneer, a leading figure of the early days of cinema and the first filmmaker of the African continent. Il Cinema Ritrovato is set to reveal, over the next few years, the extent and articulations of his legacy. We begin with a first selection of restorations – actuality films and newsreels – from the original negatives preserved by Gaumont Pathé Archives and a spectacular find from La Cinémathèque française. 

Curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Cecilia Cenciarelli

Photo: Albert Samama Chikli

Great Small Gauges

After celebrating 100 years of the 9.5mm format in the last year’s programme, we continue this year with another anniversary. 100 years ago, Eastman Kodak introduced the 16mm format as a less expensive alternative to 35mm film. The areas in which the 16mm format was and is used are very diverse. For this reason, we decided to join forces with the independent film institution Cinémathèque16 from Paris and jointly present a selection from its eclectic collection of vintage prints, which covers many aspects of this format: tinted silent films, early advertisments, scopitones, home-movie versions of famous horror features, trailers of lost silent films and artistic gems in fiction and nonfiction filmmaking. The second chapter of this year’s programme is dedicated to experimental filmmaking from Québec and the whole of Canada. The selection offers, among other delights, the opportunity to (re)discover the experimental works of filmmakers such as Joyce Wieland and Etienne O’Leary, who are represented each with an individual programme.

Curated by Karl Wratschko in collaboration with Cinémathèque16 and André Habib

Photo: Lucretia Lombard by Jack Conway (1923)

Elfi Mikesch: Filming is Devotion

Born in 1940 in Austria and working in Berlin since the 1960s, Elfi Mikesch is one of the most distinguished cinematographers in German cinema. Originally coming from the world of photography, she has worked in the  cinema since the early 1970s. Besides shooting her own films, she worked as director of photography on more than 50 films by other directors, among them Werner Schroeter, Rosa von Praunheim, Monika Treut, Friederike Pezold, Heinz Emigholz, Cynthia Beatt and Teresa Villaverde. She has received the German Camera Award three times, including the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. Mikesch’s two dozen directorial works, of which she is usually also the writer/producer, stroll freely between genres. Many of her films are documentaries, but their free form tends to break out into poetic experimentation, and they stand out especially because of the exquisite lighting and camerawork. This programme selects five films from the 1980s that exemplify her style of genre-bending filmmaking. These titles were inaccessible for years except in banged-up 16mm prints until Deutsche Kinemathek undertook the restorations.
Curated by Martin Koerber

Photo: Die blaue Distanz by Elfi Mikesch (1984)  

Not Only Films

Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards

The international jury will pick the best home-video releases of the year.

Book Fair
The most tempting collection of film books, DVDs, Blu-rays and posters offered inside the Renzo Renzi Library. Leave some empty room in your luggage!

Il Cinema Ritrovato Board 2023

Directors: Cecilia Cenciarelli, Gian Luca Farinelli, Ehsan Khoshbakht, Mariann Lewinsky

Artistic Committee: Richard Abel, Peter Bagrov, Peter Becker, Janet Bergstrom, Kevin Brownlow, Gian Piero Brunetta, Ian Christie, Lorenzo Codelli, Eric de Kuyper, Bryony Dixon, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Bernard Eisenschitz, Alexander Horwath, Aki Kaurismäki, Dave Kehr, Martin Koerber, Hiroshi Komatsu, Miguel Marías, Nicola Mazzanti, Mark McElhatten, Olaf Möller, Alexander Payne, Chema Prado, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese, Jon Wengström, Karl Wratschko

Programming Committee: Guy Borlée, Roberto Chiesi, Anna Fiaccarini, Goffredo Fofi, Andrea Meneghelli, Paolo Mereghetti, Emiliano Morreale, Davide Pozzi, Elena Tammaccaro

Coordinator: Guy Borlée

Promoted by: Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna

Supporters: Gaumont, The Film Foundation, Pathé

With the support of: Comune di Bologna, Ministero della Cultura – Direzione generale Cinema e audiovisivo, Regione Emilia-Romagna – Assessorato alla Cultura

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Info and contacts
Cineteca di Bologna
Via Riva di Reno, 72 – 40122 Bologna – Italia
Tel +39 0512194814/4211
ilcinemaritrovato@cineteca.bologna.it