Footage from the set of 1900 and a home movie from the early 1960s. Announcement at the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna: The Death of a Pig, shot in 1956 by 15-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci, found by the Bertolucci Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna.

Bernardo Bertolucci’s early works draw deeply from his rural heritage and hint at the cinematic
brilliance he would later achieve with films like The Conformist and 1900. Recent research by the Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna has led to an extraordinary find: The Death of a Pig, a film shot in 1956 by a 15-year-old Bertolucci, which had remained unreleased and unknown until now.

This remarkable discovery will be showcased at the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna on Friday, 28 June, at 4:45 pm at Cinema Modernissimo. Presenting the film will be Valentina Ricciardelli and Fabien Gerard from the Bertolucci Foundation, alongside Gian Luca Farinelli and Cecilia Cenciarelli from the Cineteca di Bologna.

The Death of a Pig was long thought lost except for Adriano Aprà’s memory of it: “I met Bernardo when he was 16 years old, in 1957, at the house of Cesare Zavattini (a friend of my father), where Bertolucci, with his friend Romano Costa (who had a bit part in Agony and The Conformist), screened two 16mm short films: The Cable, a fiction film, and The Death of a Pig, a documentary. Despite being just four months older than Bertolucci, I critiqued the films: too many low-angle shots in the first, the second one was good. I believe I am one of the very few to have seen these films (now lost), but I still remember them.”

The theme of the death of the pig resurfaced in Bertolucci’s later works, including the incomplete project I porci (1965) based on Anna Banti’s story of the same name, as well as in 1900 and Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man. The memory of the animal soaked in blood fleeing in the snow seems to have inspired the gruesome murder of Professor Quadri’s wife in The Conformist. Bernardo Bertolucci recollected: “With the pig slaughter sequence [in 1900] I was attempting to remake that old 16mm film, which includes children watching and covering their ears to block out the screaming.”

In addition to this significant find, another discovery will be presented for the first time on Friday at Il Cinema Ritrovato: extraordinary footage shot by Bertolucci’s wife, Clare Peploe, on the set of 1900 (including the dramatic killing of the character Attila, played by Donald Sutherland). Also, a home movie from the early 1960s, likely shot during a holiday in Forte dei Marmi, will be shown.

The Bertolucci Archive

The Bertolucci family holds a unique position in Italian cultural history. Bernardo Bertolucci once spoke of imprinting and the poetic work of his father Attilio Bertolucci, one of the most significant poets of the last century: “The imprinting is that poetry is something that’s around the house, you just have to look and it’s there.”

The Bertolucci Archive stands out not only for its extraordinary richness and diversity but also because no other family, perhaps worldwide, has engaged in such an open, individual and multifaceted way with the arts of the past two centuries. This engagement spans poetry, photography, theatre, narrative cinema, documentary and theatrical videos. In addition, the Bertolucci family cultivated intense and vibrant relationships with the intellectuals who shaped twentieth-century Italy. Exploring the Bertolucci Family Archive provides essential insights and tools for a deep understanding of the history of twentieth-century Italy.

The project follows two main tracks. It considers the profound and unique relationship that Attilio, Giuseppe and Bernardo’s work has with their local territory and its inherent international appeal. The dual objectives are: first, to preserve, digitize and make the archive accessible through a modern, transparent system that connects seamlessly with other existing archives (such as the Pasolini Archive of the Cineteca di Bologna); second, to continue the restoration of Giuseppe and Bernardo Bertolucci’s films, a process that began in 2017 with 1900.

BernardoBertolucci.org is both a resource for studying the works of Bernardo, Giuseppe and Attilio Bertolucci, as well as a virtual portal for consulting this extraordinary archive.

The Bertolucci Archive project is promoted and supported by the Cineteca di Bologna Foundation, the City of Parma, the Solares Foundation and the Monteparma Foundation.