Programme curated by Alina Marazzi

In 1947, thanks to legendary producer Pierre Braunberger, Vedrès, assisted by Alain Resnais, made one of the first found footage films, Paris 1900. The reason why Il Cinema Ritrovato is the perfect festival for Nicole Vedrès, filmmaker, writer and television pioneer, is explained by what Bazin wrote about her first film: “Nicole Vedrès and her small crew created something of monstrous beauty, and its appearance on the screen upset cinema’s aesthetic standards with the same radicalism that Proust had upset those of the novel. […] Proust’s reward with In Search of Lost Time was the ineffable joy of sinking into the depths of memory. Instead here, the aesthetic joy stems from a rift because those memories are not our own. […] Paris 1900 marks the birth of cinema-specific Tragedy, the tragedy of Time”.

Programme curated by Émilie Cauquy e Bernard Eisenschitz

Schermi e Lavagne will have a special programme for the festival’s littlest filmlovers at the Cineteca’s Sala Cervi: each afternoon kids can watch a series of screenings organized by theme. The main focus this year is a tribute to Giulio Gianini and Emanuele Luzzati. These two italian maestros of animation made amazing works inspired by operas and traditional fairy tales. Other themes include animated films from Eastern Europe from the 1950s and 60s and experimental cinema. After each screening, kids can participate in a workshop or games inspired by the movies they saw.

2017 marks the tenth anniversary of this special programme launched by Martin Scorsese to support the restoration and dissemination of the most fragile film patrimony around the world: free, resistant filmmakers, forgotten, unknown, endangered works of art stuck on the sidelines of distribution. We will present the restored versions of Soleil Ô, the cutting and autobiographical debut film of the Mauritanian Med Hondo, and Humberto Solás’ epic Lucía, of one hundred years of Cuban history through the eyes and stories of three women. West Indies, and extraordinary Technicolor musical set on a slave ship, and Sarraounia, the story of a young warrior queen will complete our small tribute to Med Hondo, opened by Afrique sur Seine by another pioneer (and early theorist) of African cinema Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. Finally, two masterpieces by Tomás Gutiérrez Aléa: a virtual ‘reverse shot’ to last year’s pre-revolutionary Cuba: Los sobrevivientes and Una pelea cubana contra los demonios, as well as a short selection of the ICAIC Noticieros from 1960-1969.

Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

In 1933, just over a decade after the Mexican Revolution had ended, Fernando de Fuentes made El Compadre Mendoza, part of a trilogy of work that dealt with the armed uprising. The film sets the tone for this programme, which explores in depth the widespread disenchantment – political, social and economical – that the Revolution left in its wake, and the varied and exuberant artistic responses that it provoked. From the unique gothic thriller Dos monjes by Juan Bustillo Oro, to the more traditional, rural work of Emilio “El Indio” Fernández (Maclovia), or the urban melodrama Una familia de tantas by Alejandro Galindo, from the exuberance of the Caberet film, to the sophisticated, urban cinema of directors like Julio Bracho and Roberto Gavaldón, who experimented with film noir and the thriller, the selection aims to offer a broad and exciting showcase of the most important moments in the history of Mexico and Mexican cinema: a time of revolution and adventure.

Programme curated by Daniela Michel and Chlöe Roddick

For several years, Il Cinema Ritrovato programme has included a new section bringing together recent documentaries with forgotten historic ones. Among these is Salesman, a classic in the history of the documentary and direct cinema, which follows a group of door-to-door bible salesmen. Among the new documentaries is Becoming Cary Grant, a fascinating reconstruction of the private and professional life of the movie star who had more charm than any other in the history of film.

Programme curated by Gian Luca Farinelli

In the enclosed setting of a backyard, two families detest each other, two young people love each other, divided by a fence. An intimate, captivating Keatonesque retelling of Romeo and Juliet, Neighbors is the first, chronologically speaking, of three newly restored films to be premiered by the Keaton Project. No less enticing, the tour de force of misunderstandings, mistaken identity and escapes in The Goat (1921), the first official collaboration with Mal St. Clair. The sensational boxer-Keaton in Battling Butler is at the center of the last feature film made for MGM. A special programme will be dedicated to the long, pioneering television presence of Keaton between the 1940s and 1950s. The Keaton Project, started in 2015, is promoted by Cineteca di Bologna and by the Cohen Film Collection.

Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli 

2016 was the year of Lumière for Il Cinema Ritrovato. But Lumière will be with us for many more to come…The bad news of the fire in the Bazar de la Charité was eclipsed by the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and Cinematography came in many shapes and technologies in 1897. Lumière opérateur Constant Girel spent the year in Japan, Alexandre Promio travelled from Tunisia via Egypt and Palestine to Constantinople. Unscreened prints from the legendary Laboratory Boyer of Promio’s vues, an original programme of Joly-Normandin films as screened in 1897 and a sneak preview of the newest restorations of large format films are among the highlights of the section.

Programme curated by Mariann Lewinsky

During the 1950s, Helmut Käutner (1908-1980) was the internationally most widely admired director working in postwar Germany: starting with Unter den Brücken, his films often screened at international film festivals, winning awards, garnering considerable critical acclaim, and getting sold abroad. That said: few ever truly knew what to really make of him – no political spectrum, no aesthetic tendency or group ever felt represented by a humanism that defied taking any of the sides officially on offer, as witnessed by Himmel ohne Sterne or Schwarzer Kies; also, the fact that Käutner’s career started during the Nazi dictatorship made many feel uneasy about him – even if the first to have serious problems with masterpieces like Große Freiheit Nr. 7 had been the German fascists. Käutner is a radical of modesty and moderation, an ironic modernist of melancholia, an inventor of cinematic forms, an avant-gardist of the popular.

Programme curated by Olaf Möller

One of the most anticipated events and a haven for those looking for wonder and visual adventure on the screen. Sought out and found in archives around the world, the precious vintage Technicolor films this year will bring pure and fearless melodrama (three magnificent Sirk films) to the screen at the Arlecchino cinema, the sunset colors of a fantastic Dietrich mastered by Lang (Rancho Notorious), and the colors of the dawn of the American nation in Drums Along the Mohawk, the greatest film on the American war of independence and one of the least watched of John Ford’s films. The section started last year on Kinemacolor shorts continues. The two-filter system produced a series of wonderful films between 1908 and 1914 that can now be seen thanks to digital restoration. The Academy Film Archive will present a new selection of reference reels, the reels used to print copies according to the original colors chosen by the directors.

Programme curated by Gian Luca Farinelli

It took his formative years in America working as a drifting laborer, prison and a nose broken in the ring, but also a poet’s sensitivity, to give him that air of sublime indifference, worldly-wise, and the ability to wear madness like the cynical elegance of failure. Described by the directors he worked with as one of the best movie actors in the world, Robert Mitchum, was the most charismatic loser in American cinema, and one of its greatest natural actors, he carefully hid his talent behind a couldn’t-care-less attitude and a display of self-deprecatory humor. Our selection, covering over three decades of his heyday, will show the actor behind the masks, the characters behind the star, ranging from the nonchalant adventurer to the grassroots American pursuing a quest he cannot define. Mitchum’s two faces will be illustrated by two almost simultaneous films: Richard Fleischer’s Bandido! and Robert Parrish’s The Wonderful Country, probably his most revealing incarnation, as well as films by Wellman, Tourneur, Wise, Preminger,  Minnelli, Pollack, Yates.

Programme curated by Bernard Eisenschitz and Philippe Garnier

Two years ago we celebrated 120 years of Gaumont. This year Gaumont Film Company brings to Bologna the restoration that we’ve all been waiting for: the work of Jean Vigo. Curated by Bernard Eisenschitz using a philologist’s approach, we will be able to read much more accurately into what Vigo wanted to say. Starting from the new restored version of the original print of L’Atalante, which offers viewers a chance to rediscover its stark clarity and truly as an ode to sexual desire. Other recent discoveries include a first cut of Zéro de conduite that is longer and more ‘censurable’ than the version most are familiar with as well as dailies of the film; or all the out-takes and dailies from L’Atalante, about which Henri Langlois said, “I saw such beautiful things that Vigo eliminated in his pursuit of pure simplicity.”

Programme curated by Bernard Eisenschitz, thanks to Gaumont

The more traditional section of Il Cinema Ritrovato brings to Bologna the best restored films from around the world, in 35mm and digital. From the 1917 of Caligula to the 1977 of Annie Hall, this year’s selection spans sixty years of cinema, through classic films impossible to resist (Lubitsch and Truffaut, Ray and Laurel&Hardy…) and rarities not to be missed (one for everyone Secrets, by Frank Borzage).

Following last year’s revelatory Universal Pictures programme, here is another selection of newly restored or rediscovered films released during the tenure of Carl Laemmle Junior as the studio’s head of production. New restorations from Universal include Tod Browning’s scathing crime film Outside the Law, featuring Edward G. Robinson, and Sensation Seekers, a “flaming youth” melodrama directed and written by the premiere female filmmaker of the silent era, Lois Weber. And also the long unavailable original release version of James Whale’s The Road Back, Universal’s sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. To be presented in 35mm prints newly struck by Universal from the original camera negatives are five more rarely seen films, including Tay Garnett’s Destination Unknown and E.A. Dupont’s Ladies Must Love.

Programme curated by Dave Kehr, in collaboration with The MoMA, New York and Universal Pictures

The section deals with one of the most horrible years in world history. The ongoing war and the revolutions in Russia reduced the quantity of movies produced, but not their quality. You can expect to discover among some fifty films, documentaries, fragments and animation films such masterful works like Protazanov’s Blood Need Not Be Spilled, starring Ivan Mosjoukine, amazing actresses like Maria Orska, Pola Negri and Pauline Starke and popular idols like Gunnar Tolnæs. Follow the sessions on Gender Bender in the French army, on Beauty and Set Design in Italian film and expressionistic visual research avant la lettre.

Programme curated by Karl Wratschko and Mariann Lewinsky

Under the militarist regime of the late 1930s, the Japanese period film, or jidai-geki, became a refuge for liberal filmmakers seeking to comment critically on the troubles of the time. The Narutaki-gumi, an informal group of filmmakers pledged to modernise Japanese cinema, were at the heart of a new breed of jidai-geki, which opted for realism instead of stylisation and for ironic pessimism rather than heroic optimism. This programme focuses mainly on the films made at Toho studios by members of the Narutaki-gumi, and starring the Zenshin-za progressive kabuki troupe. We include both the canonical masterpiece, Humanity and Paper Balloons, directed by doomed master Sadao Yamanaka, and lesser-known classics such as Hisatora Kumagai’s The Abe Clan, which have rarely if ever been shown in the West. Alongside these films, Tamizo Ishida’s masterpiece, Fallen Blossoms, offers a unique “women’s eye view” on Japan’s tumultuous history.

Programme curated by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström, in collaboration with the National Film Center, Tokyo

Colette was not only a writer, mime, actress and monumental figure of French literature. Her activities in the field of cinema were manifold and intense. The critics of Abel Gance’s Mater dolorosa and Itto by Marie Epstein and Jean Benoît-Lévy reveal the formidable eye of a film director. She admired Mae West in She Done Him Wrong, adapted Lac aux dames for Marc Allégret, wrote the French subtitles of Mädchen in Uniform, the screenplay Divine for Max Ophüls and the dialogues for the first film version of Gigi by Jacqueline Audry. The programme leads to the discovery of a French cinema written, shot or produced by women such as Simone Berriau, Solange Térac, Yannick Bellon and Musidora, Colette’s lifelong friend.

Programme curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Emilie Cauquy

Because of a career cut short by struggles with alcohol and authority, William K. Howard is barely remembered today. But for the legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe, Howard was “the most creative director I ever worked with”, a judgment borne out by the technologically advanced, feverishly innovative films that Howard directed in the late 20s and early 30s for the Fox Film Corporation. The centerpiece of this mini-retrospective is Howard’s elusive early sound masterpiece Transatlantic, now restored by the Museum of Modern Art to reveal the full power of Howard and Howe’s groundbreaking deep focus work. Among the other titles to be screened, The Trial of Vivienne Ware is a breathtakingly fast courtroom drama, with an inventive use of flashbacks that leads to the complex structure of Howard’s The Power and the Glory, an epic tale of a railroad magnate that had a clear influence on Citizen Kane.

Programme curated by Dave Kehr, in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Augusto Genina (1892-1957) is one of the most cosmopolitan directors of Italian film history. His work in cinema began in the early 1910s, and he worked in both France and Germany. Often creating portraits of mischievous women, Genina directed a landmark film in the transition from silent to sound (Prix de beauté, with Louise Brooks). In the 1930s he made fascist war films that combined exoticism and abstraction (Lo squadrone bianco). During the post-war period, Genina’s cinema reflects two sides of his personality: on the one hand, experiments with Catholic variants of Neorealism (Cielo sulla palude, which Bazin loved) and melodrama (Maddalena), and, on the other, the libertine spirit of the belle époque (Frou-Frou). A European director of myriad guises and seasons.

Programme curated by Emiliano Morreale

Femme fatales, private detectives, rainy nights in a concrete jungle, desperate men in trench coats… It all sounds like a film noir, and in fact, it is, but set in a time and place you would least expect: Tehran of the 1950s! This year, Il Cinema Ritrovato shifts its focus to the golden age of Iranian genre films, by unearthing four films directed by one of the most popular and influential figures in the history of Iranian cinema, Samuel Khachikian. The films, never screened outside Iran, show Khachikian working in his most familiar territories of film policier, thriller and film noir which both documented Iran on the point of modernisation and, through the myth of cinema, contributed to it. In the world of these delightfully stylish, low-key films an overlooked face of Iranian cinema is to be discovered.

Programme curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht and Behdad Amini, in collaboration with National Film Archive of Iran