Our evening screenings in Piazza Maggiore have become the stuff of legend, with thousands of eyes transfixed on a gigantic screen, surrounded by majestic architecture and boundless love for the cinema. Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin will be lighting up the big screen in Piazza Maggiore in two cine-concerts. Released in 1928 within a few months of each other, The Cameraman and The Circus are the perfect expression of silent film’s last season and of an art that reached the height of its artistic power right before succumbing to the revolution of sound. Both films will be presented with a live performance by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna conducted by Timothy Brock. There are many masterpieces selected for Piazza this year, including Miracle in Milan, Easy Rider and Luis Buñuel’s harrowing Mexican masterpiece Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned). Other hypnotic cinematic journeys will take you through Rome (Fellini’s Roma) and into the heart of darkness (Francis Ford Coppola’s new version of Apocalypse Now). These will be screened in the Piazza, along with some other absolute classics of the canon. We will welcome some exquisite guests, who have been closely involved with making or restoring these films, introducing their gems for us.