One of Il Cinema Ritrovato's guardian angels has left us. David Bordwell, film historian, teacher, and writer, passed away on February 29, leaving us with a legacy suffused with illumination, intellectual sobriety, precision, and a scientific approach to film that never lacked passion and conviction.

His books are the standard texts on film history, film style, and film criticism all over the world. They have been translated into numerous languages, from Persian to Chinese, from Greek to Hungarian and Italian, leaving their mark in every classroom that cinema was ever taught, in the quiet moment of any cinephile who delved deeper into the brilliance of this art form.

2024 FIAF FILM RESTORATION SUMMER SCHOOL

Film restoration online course:  Distance learning - May 2nd to June 13th, 2024 (on Wednesdays)

Welcome meeting: Bologna, Cineteca facilities - June 22nd, 2024

With another edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato done and dusted, we look at the musicians who made numerous screenings and events more than special. Each artist brought their talent and creativity to the stage, enriching the screenings with their extraordinary musical performances.

They accompanied the silent films of the 1903 and 1923 sections, and not only in the cinemas, musicians took to the stage in Piazza Maggiore and Auditorium Manzoni in front of thousands of spectators with the screenings of Stella Dallas by Henry King and Lady Windermere's Fan by Ernst Lubitsch.

The 37th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato festival has come to an end and we can rightly say that the art of cinema is not dead. With a 12% increase in spectators across the festival venues – almost always sold out – and approximately 5,000 festival pass holders prevailing from 51 countries worldwide, Il Cinema Ritrovato and the Cineteca di Bologna bring to a close another special edition of the festival. On the ninth day, the final screening to see out the festival was David Lynch’s A Straight Story, shown on Piazza Maggiore’s big screen. A post-festival programme of restored classics will be shown in the coming days in Piazza Maggiore, including the poster film of the festival Quién sabe? on Tuesday 4th July at 9.45 pm.

The Straight Story closes Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023 in Piazza Maggiore. The film will be introduced by Mary Sweeney, the film’s producer and screenwriter and long-time David Lynch collaborator. The screening in Piazza Maggiore will close the 37th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato; however, the last day of the festival (Sunday, July 2nd) will also feature repeats of some of this year’s most important titles, at Cinema Arlecchino: Macario, Rysopis, One Way Passage, Love Me Tonight, Quién sabe? and Fear and Desire.

The second edition of the award named after the founder and long-time director of Cineteca di Bologna, Vittorio Boarini, a pioneer in the field of restoration, a scholar of contemporary cinema and art, an educator, critic and infectiously energetic disseminator of culture who passed away in 2021. The award is given to international figures who, like Vittorio, have distinguished themselves in the safeguarding and diffusion of cinema heritage.

On Thursday, July 29th in Piazzetta Pier Paolo Pasolini the winners of Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards 2023 were announced. The competition was open to DVDs and Blu-rays released between February 2022 and March 2023 of critically acclaimed films made before 1992.

The jury, composed by Lorenzo Codelli, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Philippe Garnier, Pamela Hutchinson, Miguel Marías and Paolo Mereghetti (president) assigned the following awards.

At Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023 a page of film history is about to be rewritten, a page relating to the world-renowned diva, Gina Lollobrigida. From the depths of a hidden suitcase, much like in a fairy tale, have emerged what we could call the mythical Lollo's debut as a protagonist: three song-films of which there is no written trace in filmographies, an assortment of vintage video-clips, shot by Pietro Francisci between 1947 and 1948.

Due to the bad weather on the evening of Friday 30 June, the screening of Lady Windermere's Fan, which will be accompanied by the Teatro Comunale orchestra, will be moved to the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni, start time at 9.45 pm.

A second screening of Lady Windermere's Fan, accompanied on piano by Daniel Sosin, will be shown at Cinema Arlecchino with the start time of 10.15 pm. 

The 37th edition of the festival promoted by the Cineteca di Bologna dedicates a retrospective to the director Jonathan Nossiter: after the world premiere at the Cinema Ritrovato in 2020, Last Words returns to Il Cinema Ritrovato on Saturday 1 July, at 9 pm. 30 at Cinema Lumière, the final event of the tribute to Jonathan Nossiter that will open today, Thursday 29 June, again at 9.30 p.m. at Cinema Lumière, with the screening of the film Sunday, directed by Nossiter in 1997, presented by the director himself and by a special guest: the actor Matt Dillon.