"There appears to be a consensus that this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna was exceptionally rich —so much so that I concluded that my next column in these pages could be devoted to some of its riches, most of which are already available on DVD or Blu-ray in one form or another.

"Hollywood’s studio era remains a continual goldmine for film historians and cinephiles looking for hidden gems, and Il Cinema Ritrovato has made a habit of yearly rediscoveries of long-forgotten directors whose turn it is be elevated to auteur status. Blunt and direct as the tactic may be — bound to raise even Andrew Sarris’ eyebrows when it comes to framing films exclusively through auteurism — there’s no denying that it’s been successful in the past. This year, the title of the great rediscovered auteur goes to Hugo Fregonese, an Argentina-born director who only made films in Hollywood for a few years amidst a 30-year career.

"When they unscrewed the heavy and majestic La Nonna (our carbon arc projector) from the pedestal in Piazzetta Pasolini and the ice cream vendor packed his stuff and went home it was clear that Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVI was over. We had a ball. More than 400 films were shown during 8 and a half days. Cinema could be found in every corner of the city.

After the last year's round-up – seen and read by many – I asked colleagues, curators, film historians, silent film accompanists, scholars and the attendees to pick the title of the two films from the festival, one as their favourite film and the other of their major discovery at this year's edition. You can read them below.

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Con la proiezione di ieri sera in Piazza Maggiore di The Last Waltz di Martin Scorsese, la 36ª edizione del festival della Cineteca di Bologna si è chiusa con un balzo in avanti rispetto all’edizione pre-Covid del 2019 4.230 accreditati provenienti da 55 Paesi da tutti i continenti del mondo 7 sale sempre piene da mattina a sera: dal Cinema Ritrovato un dato importante per riflettere sull’esperienza della visione collettiva in sala

After two COVID-struck years in which Il Cinema Ritrovato scrabbled on in restrictive and restricted capacities, the festival came back in full fashion this year. Set in Bologna, home to one of the oldest universities in the world, it’s appropriate that this festival should be so focused on film history itself – on reframing, re-shaping and rediscovering the canon of cinema. As a result, the crowd is appropriately cinephiliac, bringing together critics, curators, archivists, scholars and just plain old enthusiasts.

Even if Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022 has officially closed on July, 3rd on the musics of The Blues Brothers, the festival actually continues: from 4th to 10th of July, we will be able to watch some of the festival films in the most beautiful cinema theatre in the world... Piazza Maggiore!

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Sabato 2 luglio in Piazza Maggiore "under the stars" cineconcerto con il capolavoro horror di Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.

Il Cinema Ritrovato celebrates cinema and the magic of (re) discovering masterpieces of the past and present all together, sitting on the armchairs of a theater, on outdoor chairs and even on the steps of the city.

But the festival also celebrates all of you, our audience, who fill the halls and squares with the magic of your looks and your smiles, who come from near or far and who, with a good dose of patience, immerse yourself in this collective warm - as only Bologna can be in summer - and welcoming whirlwind.

Thanks!

Saturday, July 2nd at the Auditorium DAMSLab the award ceremony of Premio Vittorio Boarini, honoring Cineteca founder, took place. The awards, starting from this year, will be assigned every year to international personalities who distinguished themselves in the preservation and enhancement of cinema heritage.

«Tonight only, the fabulous Blues Brothers. Rhythm and Blues review. The Palace Hotel Ballroom. Route 16. Lake Wazzapamani. The fabulous Blues Brothers show band and review”»

Actually, tonight we won't find the Blues Brothers at Lake Wapazzami, but in Piazza Maggiore at 9.45 PM. For the occasion, John Landis himself, the director of this miracle of visual and sonic energy, will introduce his film to the audience in Piazza Maggiore. It is a unique and irrepressible spectacle, which the giant screen of Piazza Maggiore will allow to explode in all of its catastrophic power. To be prepared we have just two things left to do. The first: remember to bring with us a pair of sunglasses. The second: review the coreographies! 

What a better way to prepare ourself for the Nosferatu cineconcert (tonight in Piazza Maggiore) than (re)watching the conference on vampire cinema held yesterday by Christopher Frayling? Il Cinema Ritrovato is a cinephile’s paradise because it’s the only festival in the world where more than 300 masterpieces are shown on screens in front of a true international audience in one week. But it is also an extraordinary meeting place, where you can attend Cinema Lessons by great directors, actors and producers and meeting about the complex restoration process of many cinema masterpieces.

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Seconda edizione dell'appuntamento cinematografico promosso dal Comune di Vergato, dall'Unione dei Comuni dell'Appennino bolognese in collaborazione con la Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Dal 5 luglio per cinque settimane presso l'arena estiva del Cinema Nuovo di Vergato in programma cinque classici della storia del cinema.

“"It was during that terrible time and I had seen enough to feel profoundly upset and distraught; [...] I thought: 'now children really are watching us!' It was children, the shoeshine boys, that helped me make sense of it all, to understand how profound the moral destruction of the country was." These are the words of Vittorio De Sica on the harsh reality of the post-war years he would portray in Sciuscià, a masterpiece that gave birth to neorealism. We will watch it today at the Arlecchino Cinema at 4 PM, while at 12 PM there will be a Cinema Lesson dedicated to its production history. At both appointments we will be able to meet Rinaldo Smordoni, who played one of the two shoeshine boys in the film. Of course, Sciuscià isn't the only film about children gaze, purity and unique point of view among the ones screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato this year.

Today is a pretty hot day at Il Cinema Ritrovato, and it does not depend on the weather! Tonight at 10.15 PM at the Europa Cinema we'll watch the restoration of Deep Throat (USA/1972), a film that, despite its infamous production history, had a huge cultural impact when it was first released. Erotism and pornography have always been part of the cinema scene. This year at the festival, we can find many different (and more sophisticated) examples of it. 

On Wednesday, July 29th in Piazzetta Pier Paolo Pasolini the winners of Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards 2022 have been announced. The competition was open to DVDs and Blu-rays released between February 2021 and March 2022 of critically acclaimed films made before 1992.

Tonight in Piazza Maggiore (with a cover set at Cinema Arlecchino in case of rain) we will watch Dans la nuit (France/1929), one of the last masterpieces of silent french cinema, accompanied by the music of the finnish band Cleaning Women. It was the first and only directing credits of Charles Vanel, who was mainly an actor - a quiet prolific one, actually. The passage from acting to directing is not such a strange phenomenon nowadays, but it's still pretty unusual. At Il Cinema Ritrovato this year, we can find also other cases.

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Dopo il successo del primo weekend, che ci ha permesso finalmente di riunirci tutti insieme in sala di fronte al grande schermo, Il Cinema Ritrovato apre le proprie porte ai non accreditati, mettendo a disposizione biglietti a pagamento per la maggior parte degli appuntamenti, e apre finalmente le prenotazioni per tutte le proiezioni serali.

This Year il Cinema Ritrovato dedicates two appointments to CAM Sugar, historical film music label that represents the richer source of music visuals in Italy. A selection of CAM Sugar artworks is at the centre of an exhibition that takes place in Biblioteca Renzo Renzi from June 25th to september 10th (closed in august). Besides, CAM Sugar catalogue will be presented in Piazzetta Pasolini during a dedicated event on Friday July 1st at 7PM.

Tonight in Piazza Maggiore, you can't miss the first cineconcert of this edition of the festival: the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna directed by Timothy Brock will accompany the screening of Foolish Wives (1920), by Erich Von Stroheim. As Dave Kehr remember in the festival catalogue, «Foolish Wives was promoted during production as the “first million dollar movie,” with its budget updated weekly on a billboard in Times Square, and the fan magazines stuffed with tales of Stroheim’s mad extravagance». But what kind of mad ectravagance?

The Cinderella Movies is the attempt made by an improvised film crew to make a film from the famous fairy tale Cinderella. Unfortunately, for reasons of funds, the crew is reduced to the essentials, and the director and production secretary find themselves having to do everything by themselves.

Tonight in Piazza Maggiore we will watch to astonishing female directed films: Alice Rohrwacher will present the italian première of her new short film Le pupille, followed by the restoration of Korotkie vstreči (Brief Encounters), first film by the moldavian director Kira Muratova. Rohrwacher and Muratova aren't the only female directors whose unique gaze enlighten this edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato.

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“Quando so che c’è Il Cinema Ritrovato, io corro a Bologna. Il Cinema Ritrovato è la cosa più calda, più intelligente, più dolce che abbiamo in Italia, forse in Europa”. Con un moto d’affetto incontenibile, Gianni Amelio ha inaugurato, oggi, sabato 25 giugno, la 36ª edizione del festival promosso fino 3 luglio dalla Cineteca di Bologna.

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once,” said Nietsche. We took him at his word and at Cinema Ritrovato this year you will come across films which will make you laugh, make you cry, move you and entertain you... but above all, films that will make you want to dance!

Making movies you're not trying to capture reality; you're trying to capture a photograph of reality. Stanley Kubrik

In the program of the 36th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato, across the sections, we can identify a common thread dedicated to photography: on the one hand, we propose films involving great names of the photographic art; on the other hand, we point out in this article some titles that have become famous for the care or the uniqueness in the choices of the direction of photography.

We know that very well: at Il Cinema Ritrovato festival watching the programmed films is the occasion to discover a great variety of rare screening formats and technologies, that make the experience of the theatre even more magical and astonishing. It is not by chance that every year the festival dedicates a section to the films that are presented in less classical formats, a section that this year will allow us to rediscover, among other things, the 9.5 mm Pathé Baby format.

"At a time when Italy was headed towards World War I and later fascism, and women's rights were hardly discussed (universal suffrage would come much later), a few female figures dominated the screen, overshadowing their male counterparts. They became the stars of visual culture. They were divine, and, in fact, the term "diva" was created for them. But they were also real and, we'd say today, inspirational women. With their strenghts and determination, they instantly became role models and produced legions od imitators, in the history of fashion and international entertainment". Gian Luca Farinelli

Il Cinema Ritrovato is back, and all in person. Cinema may be the child of the era of technical reproduction, but a festival is an irreproducible experience and Il Cinema Ritrovato is back live between the end of June and the beginning of July, in the company of and thanks to the many people who will be present at the screenings. There are only a few days left before the official opening on Saturday 25 June, but from yesterday, Sunday 19 June, we already started to rediscover the pleasure and enjoyment of watching film in the company of others, with the first of a series of screenings that will take place in Piazza Maggiore and at Lumière and Arlecchino cinemas.

This year, the usual appointment with Il Cinema Ritrovato book presentations will be back from 26th to 29th June, every day in Piazzetta Pasolini at 7 PM. We will present recently published books from authors, curators and festival guests. An unmissable daily event realized in collaboration with librerie.coop.

Not only pass holders: starting from today, all the screenings of the section Documents and Documentaries programmed at the Auditorium DAMSLab are open to the public. Even who didn't purchase a festival pass will be able to attend the screenings buying a 5 euros ticket.

The "cinephiles' paradise" is a space-time bubble where one can enjoy the wonders and the thousand faces of cinema, from the aesthetic to the socio-cultural, to the technical. At the same time, a place to discover those (not so) rare cases in which cinema reveals its secrets and places them at the centre of the scene. When cinema takes a moment to reflect on itself, to play with its characteristics and limitations.

Il Cinema Ritrovato guides us every year to the re-discovery of the origins of cinema, but in this edition it also makes us rediscover its origins as a Festival, bringing us back to the theater where it was born 36 years ago.

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397 film in 9 giorni: sono i giorni in cui si apriranno le porte del Paradiso dei cinefili. La 36ª edizione del festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, promosso dalla Cineteca di Bologna, si svolgerà a Bologna dal 25 giugno al 3 luglio. 9 giorni di proiezioni da mattina sera, in 7 sale coinvolte in città (Sala Scorsese e Sala Mastroianni al Cinema Lumière, Auditorium – DAMSLAB, Cinema Jolly, Cinema Arlecchino, Cinema Europa, Sala Cervi), e il gran finale, tutte le sere, in Piazza Maggiore e due serate speciali, sempre all’aperto, in Piazzetta Pasolini. E alla Biblioteca Renzo Renzi si rinnova l’appuntamento con la Book Fair, la fiera dell’editoria dedicata alle pubblicazioni cinematografiche, che quest’anno raccoglie 70 editori. E poi gli incontri al Teatro Arena del Sole e al MAST.

Nowadays Marvel Studios surprising box-office results ratified the success of the concept of Cinematic Universe. But the MCU did not invent anything new: the idea of a narrative that proceeds film after film, with characters meeting and fighting each other is not a Disney innovation. On the contrary, it goes way back to the first years of Cinema, thanks to the genius of a man named Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset.

The monster of Dusseldorf for Fritz Lang, the man who knew too much for Hitchcock, and Raskolnikov for Josef von Sternberg. This year Il Cinema Ritrovato has decided to dedicate a section to the talent of Peter Lorre: Peter Lorre, a foreigner in a foreign land. As a means of celebrating this magnificent actor, whilst waiting to see him on the big screens of the festival, let's explore the lesser known side of him ... the cartoons!

The 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is now in full swing, with a rich program of highly anticipated previews, renowned international guests and important recovered images from the past. We are pleased to confirm that this year, several of the Cannes titles will be shown on the big screen in Bologna during Il Cinema Ritrovato.

For a few precious years, a decidedly light-hearted, sensual and frivolous spirit swept through German movie theatres. The musical comedies of the late Weimar Republic are some of the hidden gems of that era, presented at this year’s festival. Even more than other genres of German cinema of the Weimar Republic, the Tonfilmlustspiel is inextricably linked to the work of Jewish directors, screenwriters, producers, composers and actors, who had found the blossoming cultural metropolis Berlin to be a welcoming place during the 1920s. Their fate mirrors the fate of German Jewry in general. Some managed to escape, others, tragically, did not make it out of Europe in time and were killed in the concentration camps. Here are the stories of some of the artists whose work we will be able to admire during the festival.

Waiting for the 36th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna, 25th june - 3rd july 2022), we're happy to announce a first list of films that will be scheduled during the festival!

As swiftly as some directors changed studios, the Argentinian Hugo Fregonese (1908-87),  to whom this year's festival dedicates the section The Drifter's Escape: Hugo Fregonese, changed countries. His rootlessness and restlessness is frequently reflected in his protagonists – isolated individuals who are either voluntarily on the move or who have been forced into exile and eternal wandering.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Martedì 10 maggio al cinema Lumière torna il quiz cinefilo! È l'occasione per mettere alla prova la propria cultura cinematografica scoprendo contemporaneamente alcune succose anticipazioni sulla prossima edizione del Cinema Ritrovato, in programma a Bologna dal 25 giugno al 3 luglio 2022. In palio, come da tradizione, 10 accrediti per il festival.

Il quiz cinefilo è a ingresso libero. Appuntamento alle ore 20 in Sala Scorsese per una serata dedicata all'amore per il cinema, all'esperienza della sala... e al fair play! 

Vai alla scheda dell'evento sul sito della Cineteca

France, 1902. Thanks to the decisive contribution of Ferdinand Zecca, Pathé Frères established a name for itself as one of the most important film production houses, with an ever increasing annual revenue and fictional films, each one longer than the next, being added to the catalogue. It was in this year that, as a means to promote a film directed by Zecca, an unprecedented marketing tool was brought forth: the film poster.

Among the most anticipated events of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022 is certainly the cinema concert of Nosferatu, an expressionist masterpiece directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau that will be screened in Piazza Maggiore in the year of its centenary (first shown in Berlin on March 4, 1922). The film owes its fame not only to Murnau's dreamlike direction but also to the extraordinary interpretation of Max Schreck, who was so credible in his role as Count Orlok that many rumours soon began to spread about him. The most captivating? Max Schreck could not have been a simple actor, instead, he must have been a real vampire hired by Murnau himself during his trip to the Carpathian mountains.

This year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato will celebrate the genius and talent of Kenji Misumi (1921-1975), a prolific filmmaker specialised in historical films to whom the Kenji Misumi: an instinctive author section is dedicated. What is meant by the term historical film, what is the difference between jidai-geki and chanbara, and when exactly is the Edo period? Here is a quick glossary that will guide even the less experienced to understand Misumi’s works.

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JOHN LANDIS OSPITE AL FESTIVAL IL CINEMA RITROVATO

IL REGISTA SARÀ IL 3 LUGLIO IN PIAZZA MAGGIORE A BOLOGNA CON IL SUO FILM CULT THE BLUES BROTHERS

IL FESTIVAL DELLA CINETECA DI BOLOGNA TORNA ALLE SUE DATE TRADIZIONALI E SI SVOLGERÀ IN PRESENZA DAL 25 GIUGNO AL 3 LUGLIO

Annunciate le prime sezioni della 36ª edizione del Cinema Ritrovato. Tra queste, gli omaggi a Sophia Loren, Peter Lorre (“il più grande attore vivente”, secondo Charlie Chaplin) e alla commedia musicale tedesca dei primi anni Trenta. I cine-concerti in Piazza Maggiore con l’Orchestra del Teatro Comunale per festeggiare i centenari di due capolavori dell’epoca muta: Nosferatu di F. W. Murnau e Femmine folli di Erich von Stroheim.