The Bluebird Photoplays have many qualities: the glamour of the pretty – but too young to be diva – actresses, independent heroines embroiled in good storylines and, while set within a reoccurring schema, situations of surprising originality. Between the actresses, actors and directors working for this short-lived affiliate of Universal Studios, there was a notable concentration of people on the verge of stardom or celebrity, such as Carmel Myers, Mae Murray, Rodolfo Valentino and Rex Ingram. Notable too for its female directors, such as Elsie Jane Wilson, who shot ten Bluebird films from 1917 to 1919, and Lois Weber. The selection includes the presentation of the restored version of Lois Weber’s Dumb Girl of Portici, the only feature film to star the greatest ballerina of the last century, Anna Pavlova.
Programme curated by Hiroshi Komatsu and Mariann Lewinsky

Gaumont turns 120 years old! Other companies from the same era are now just a memory, a topic for university research or part of a melancholy connected to the dawn of the 20th century. Gaumont instead is still alive today, more than ever. With distribution, production and its chain of theaters – some of which are legendary – it continues to thrive.

For sixteen consecutive years Il Cinema Ritrovato has premiered the restoration of one or more Charlie Chaplin films. Screened in Piazza Maggiore at every edition, his films have never failed to drag thousands of people into one, extraordinary oceanic laughter. Every year we have shared the significant discoveries that have surfaced from an in-depth exploration of the Chaplin Archive and took every opportunity to discuss the aesthetic, methodological and technical complexities of each restoration.

Il Cinema Ritrovato pays tribute to Albert Samama Chikly (1872-1934), pioneer of Tunisian Cinema, talented photographer, technophile, sailor, prince and nomad. The first African filmmaker and producer, Samama Chikly made films from the beginning of the 20th Century until the 1920s. He documented The Great War for the French Armed Forces and, in collaboration with his daughter Haydée, herself a screenwriter and actress, directed two full-length feature films. Thanks to newly rediscovered material and an exhibition in Sala Borsa, we can discover this multifaceted character and commentator on a changing society.
Programme curated by Aboubakar Sanogo, Cecilia Cenciarelli, Mariann Lewinsky and Ouissal Mejri

Aimed at children aged twelve and up, Il Cinema Ritrovato Young 2015 programme includes Giovani Filmmaker, a workshop to learn the filmmaking process by putting into practise each stage of production, and Musica per immagini, an open laboratory for young musicians and composers who, together with Maestro Daniele Furlati, will set new music to a short film from the history of cinema. Aspiring film critics will have the chance to participate in Parole e voci dal festival: an editorial team coordinated by Roy Menarini that will provide daily coverage of the festival on the CinefiliaRitrovata.it blog, and recommend the most interesting screenings for young cinephiles at the Festival.

Il Cinema Ritrovato Kids is getting bigger every year. Progetto Schermi e Lavagne and Associazione Paper Moon have created a special programme for young cinephiles at the Cineteca’s Sala Cervi. Every afternoon, from June 24th until July 4th, children can watch a series of screenings organised by theme: from pioneers of cinema to travelling, from dreams to the magic of fairytales, discovering films of yesterday and today from all over Europe and beyond. Furthermore, the young spectators can then participate in laboratories and games inspired by the films they have seen in our ‘Spazio Cinnoteca’, a new and completely renovated didactic space for kids beside Sala Cervi.

The cinema as a crossroads of cultural and social history, past and present. Portraits/investigations into great figures of auteurship such as Orson Welles, Ousmane Sembène, Serge Daney and Jean-Luc Godard. The history of post-war Italian Cinema retraced through Giulio Andreotti and images shot in Afghanistan and India at the end of the 1930s by one of the great explorers of the 20th Century, Ella Maillart.
To complete the programme, two extraordinary documents about the Second World War. German Concentration Camp Factual Survey, an English film from 1945 intended to make Germany comprehend the perverse mechanisms of the extermination, but which was then forgotten about when the Cold War suddenly changed the balance of world power. The Memory of Justice (1978) by Marcel Ophüls, a lengthy documentary dealing with the Nuremberg war crime trials and a collage of forty or so interviews analysing totalitarianism.

The Thaw is a period of Soviet Cinema often evoked but rarely examined in-depth. The five-six years immediately following the death of Stalin brought with them the cautious promise of a new phase in which the hope and dreams matured in the traumatic, yet liberating collective experience of the Great Patriotic War and its victorious conclusion could come true. The films offered in this programme, allow us to see an almost forgotten side of the Cinema of the Thaw: its lively beginnings, when a different aesthetic to Soviet Cinema developed thanks to experiments with popular genres (comedy, adventure, etc.) and the inspiration of Neorealism – a cinema basically unknown outside the USSR.
Programme curated by Peter Bagrov and Olaf Möller, in collaboration with Gosfilmofond

At the end of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran found itself – in many way unexpectedly – marginalised. Many Iranian films from the Sixties and Seventies were condemned to obscurity and/or inaccessibility. Today, certain shifts in the cultural climate have open the doors to the National Film Archive of Iran: we propose four of the most important films made between 1965 and 1973, a period later defined as the Iranian New Wave. The selection highlights the traits of the profound renewal occurring in Iranian cinema and also forewarns of the political and social upheavals which ten years later would reshape the country.
Programme curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, in collaboration with the National Film Archive of Iran

The exploration of uniquely personal, yet universal voices, continues with new restorations from the World Cinema Project, created by Martin Scorsese within The Film Foundation and dedicated to the preservation and restoration of forgotten cinematic works from all around the world. Ousmane Sembène’s bitter reflection on neocolonialism and cultural subordination in his seminal début La Noire de…, the sober portrait of a dying rural Morocco in Ahmed El Maanouni’s Alyam Alyam and the life of the teeming slums of Manila in Lino Brocka’s Insiang, all speak of the annihilation of the human being and the loss of dignity.
Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

Valentina Frascaroli (1890-1955) was signed up by Itala in 1909 and subsequently appeared in numerous Cretinetti comedies. Effervescent and pretty, wise and clever, cunning and mischievous, she outshines her male counterpart. Due to her versatility, she was used both as a comic actress (alongside André Deed, and by herself in the Gribouillette series) and also as a jeune ingénue in dramas such as Sacrificata! (1910), Jane Eyre (1917) and Il delitto della piccina (1920). Unfortunately, very little remains of her approximately one hundred films, but every fragment we have is pure gold.
Programme curated by Mariann Lewinsky

The son of an illusionist and an illusionist himself, Gaston Velle made féeries and trick films for Pathé and Cines. A prominent figure in the development of early cinema, he was unjustly overshadowed by his contemporaries Méliès and de Chomón. In the 1920s, Gaston’s son, Maurice Velle, a talented camera operator, worked in French Cinema. Maurice’s partner, British woman Mary Murillo (real name Mary O’Connor), was herself a leading scenarist in the United States during the 1910s, scripting films for Norma Talmadge and other divas. The Velle story embraces three decades of filmmaking in France, Italy, Britain and the United States. This brief overview illustrates the variety of their work.
Programme curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Luke McKernan

The diva film, war and emigration are just some of the key themes of our journey into the cinema of one hundred years ago. The golden age of stunning Italian divas (Francesca Bertini, Lyda Borelli, Pina Menichelli), in restored masterpieces such as Assunta Spina, Fuoco and Rapsodia satanica. The Great War tears apart the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, devastates Europe, ruins the cinema industry and its international markets. Alfred Machin, documentaries made for the French Army, and that’s not all; there is so much more to be discovered, from fantastic shorts to the brilliant talent of Reginald Barker.
Programme curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Giovanni Lasi

When Jigokumon (Gate of Hell) reached the United States in 1954, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther hailed “the harmonious richness of colour” that brought to light hues worthy “of the masterpieces of Japanese art”. The success of the film, a winner of awards in Cannes and at the Oscars, was in large part due to the sumptuous use of the Eastmancolor process from American. However, Japanese Cinema’s passage to colour was a varied and complex experience. After the colouration techniques used in silent cinema and pre-war experimentations, the first Japanese colour success, Karumen kokyo ni kaeru (Carmen Comes Home), was produced by Studio Shochiku using the FujiColor process. In the early 1950s, all the major Japanese studios began to explore the possibilities of the new technique, both to bring to life Japan’s historical past and to document its rapidly transforming present.
Programme curated by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström, in collaboration with the National Film Center, Tokyo

Il Cinema Ritrovato resumes its journey, rediscovering the original colours of films that show Technicolor off in all its glory. In 2015, Technicolor celebrates 100 years, even if the system only asserted itself in the 1930s, when its bright colours would become the ultimate expression of fabulous Hollywood. Its evolution was inexorably linked to cinematic print film: for this reason, and in order to let its magic radiate, we will be screening vintage 35mm prints in Technicolor belonging to the BFI, Cinémathèque Française, Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique and Fox collections, up until the last film shot in Technicolor, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998). A special event will be the screening of the digitally restored 3D version of The Wizard of Oz – 3D (1939) by Victor Fleming; the ‘impossible’ task of restoring a film not originally conceived for 3D.
Programme curated by Gian Luca Farinelli

Very few people had any idea of the enormous quantity and the exact nature of Peter von Bagh’s cinema (approximately sixty films of various length, ranging from one minute to over ten hours). Peter von Bagh was obsessed by the idea of montage, the creative juxtapositions of meaning. He was also fascinated by the idea of cinema as a time machine: an art that preserves memories, brings the dead back to life, gifts us second chances which perhaps we do not even deserve. Images and sounds were his world, his soul. From them he created his home, in a place where he knew he belonged: his Finland. This selection of films allows the public a deeper appreciation of a figure who, for so many years, was the heart and mind of Il Cinema Ritrovato.
Programme curated by Olaf Möller

A lively jam session between reality and invention, this programme explores the life of jazz in film, bringing to the screen both its interpreters and its audience in a series of documentaries and feature films. In addition to outstanding documentaries such as Jammin’ the Blues and Jazz on a Summer’s Day, the programme features films in which celebrated jazz musicians play themselves (Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck in All Night Long), and in which listening to jazz music plays an important role (Howard Hawks’ Ball of Fire and Charles Burnett’s When it Rains). We also present recent restorations of two Gianni Amico films and some early sound era jazz films (Dudley Murphy’s Black and Tan Fantasy), as well as rare ‘soundies’ (short musical films) from the 1940s.
Programme curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht and Jonathan Rosenbaum

‘Rarity’ is a word loaded with potential meaning. This section explores four possibilities of the term. Works by important names in cinema (Zurlini, Blasetti, Maselli, Manfredi…), not seen for years. Films, previously released, but screened here in versions that audiences have never before been able to see (such as the reconstruction of Raffaele Andreassi’s magnificent L’amore povero, previously butchered and released in 1963 under the title I piaceri proibiti). Works by individuals not to be found in any book on cinema history (astonishing Super8 footage shot in a psychiatric hospital in Turin by Professor Gustavo Gamna in the 1960s). Screenings of original prints of spectacular experiments (documentaries from the 1950s shot in CinemaScope and Ferraniacolor, and four magnetic tracks from Gian Luigi Polidoro).
Programme curated by Andrea Meneghelli.

Renato Castellani made his début at a very young age with perhaps the most radical works of what is known in Italy as ‘cinema calligrafico’, or calligraphic cinema. His exquisite style explores contemporary and working class post-war realities, and Castellani becomes the voice of a new youth, of an innocence almost beyond good and evil. Too often identified with cinema calligrafico or pink neorealism, Castellani is one of the most intriguing directors of the 1940s and ’50s, and one who has aged the best.
Programme curated by Emiliano Morreale (CSC – Cineteca Nazionale)

After devoting many years to restoring Charlie Chaplin’s films, Cineteca di Bologna and L’Immagine Ritrovata are glad to announce a new, multi-year project to restore the works of another great master of the silent era: Buster Keaton. The Keaton Project, carried out in partnership with Cohen Film Col- lection, will be officially launched at this year’s festival with two brand new restorations: 1920 short One Week – a perfect representation (and sublimation) of the all-American ready-made house – and Sherlock Jr. (1924), an early example of film within a film and an impeccable silent comedy showcasing all of Buster Keaton virtues: his deadpan humor, his innovative technical accomplishments, his outstanding stunts and a great wealth of perfect gags.
Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

Ever since the 1920s, when he honed his skills at the Hal Roach Studios working with Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase, Leo McCarey always focused on that which, in conservation with Peter Bogdanovich, he called “the inevitability of accidents”. In his films, the slightest of hitches transform themselves into insurmountable obstacles, while the eccentricities and foibles of his ‘all too human’ characters clash with each other to create unstoppable ripple effects. Throughout his thirty-year career, McCarey worked across genres with glittering success, from silent slapstick to screwball comedy, from romantic comedy to sentimental melodrama and even uplifting religious films, managing in his own uniquely personal way to derail each of these genres.
Programme curated by Steve Massa, in collaboration with Lobster Films

Who doesn’t know the films of Ingrid Bergman? But who has seen her early, pre-Hollywood, beginnings, films from the mid-1930s (some directed by the great, sophisticated Gustaf Molander) in which Bergman was already revealing her extraordinary on-screen presence combined with an intense and sensitive acting talent? To celebrate the centenary of her birth, in addition to four Swedish films and her only Germany film, we will also see the wonderful Ingrid in Casablanca, the film that consecrated the myth, in Europa ’51, perhaps the most beautiful work in which she was directed by Roberto Rossellini, and in Stig Björkman’s far more recent documentary Jag är Ingrid ( Ingrid Bergman – In Her Own Words, 2015). Our meeting with Isabella Rossellini is shaping up to be one of the highlights of the Festival.
Programme curated by Jon Wengström (Svenska Filminstitutet)