The Centro sperimentale di Cinematographia presents, at Cinema Ritrovato 1996, a significant selection composed of ten brief films realised at the dawn of the history of cinema by Leopoldo Fregoli, chameleon-like actor and pioneer of cinematography in Italy.

The original materials of these films, a total of 23 titles (in the majority of cases positive prints on original Lumière round hole film, identified within the ambit of a larger set of 28 originally attributed), were (re)discovered in the stores of the Cineteca Nazionale in the course of identification work carried out for the Proiecto Lumière in some world cinema archives and successively restored, with the financial support of the latter and edited by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematographia and the Centre National de la Cinématographie – Les Archives du film. The restoration was made in the laboratory of the CNC, the only one in the world possessing technical equipment for the restoration of round hole Lumière film.

As is known, Fregoli, fascinated by the potential of the Cinématographe recently perfected by the Lumière brothers, succeeded in obtaining from the latter the necessary equipment for the realisation of the films which were to complete and multiply, in the course of his theatrical performances, via tricks and irresistible gags, his extraordinary talents as an actor and quick-change artist.