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.

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.

Twice Palme d’Or winner at Cannes in only five years, currently President of the jury on the Croisette: Swedish director Ruben Östlund is one of the guests at the 37th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival.

Östlund will be both a guest and a teacher during his stay in Bologna, with the International Filmmaking Academy, in a long stage on the set involving 20 young directors from all over the world, who will shoot short films under the guidance of Östlund himself. During Il Cinema Ritrovato, Östlund will hold a Cinema Lesson (Thursday 29, 7 pm - Auditorium - DAMSLab, in collaboration with the International Filmmaking Academy of Bologna and MAST) and will present his film The Square (Monday 3 July, 9.45 pm) in Piazza Maggiore; on 2 July at 8.45 pm the director will be onstage at the Arena Puccini to present Triangle of Sadness.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Da lunedì 26 a venerdì 30 giugno, ogni giorno alle 19.00, Hollywood Party - la storica trasmissione di Rai Radio3 dedicata al cinema - racconterà la trentasettesima edizione del Cinema Ritrovato. Anche quest'anno i grandi film del passato torneranno alla luce nella maestosa sala all'aperto allestita in Piazza Maggiore e in diverse sedi della città con oltre 400 proiezioni, conferenze, dibattiti e mostre. La trasmissione, con la conduzione di Steve Della Casa da Bologna e di Efisio Mulas dagli studi Rai di Roma, sarà aperta al pubblico e andrà in onda dal Cortile della Biblioteca Renzo Renzi presso la piazzetta Pier Paolo Pasolini, uno dei cuori pulsanti del festival.

Wim Wenders, revolutionary director of New German Cinema, maker of atypical documentaries and great cinephile, will be a guest and a protagonist at this year’s festival Il Cinema Ritrovato for what are sure to be four captivating events.

African Archives: What Next? is the title of the conversation that will bring together representatives from a variety of institutes and film archives, as well as Alain Sembène, son of Ousmane. At the centre of the discussion, moderated by Cecilia Cenciarelli, will be the urgency for a profound recognition of African film heritage and the responsibilities for its conservation.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

6mila persone in Piazza Maggiore a Bologna per Io ti salverò di Hitchcock

4.500 le presenze nelle sale durante la giornata di sabato 24 giugno

La 37ª edizione del Cinema Ritrovato in corso a Bologna fino al 2 luglio

You can attend the festival by purchasing one of the existing types of Festival Passes. Although some passes come with certain privileges over others, any type of festival pass would give you access to festival venues and screenings for the entire duration of Il Cinema Ritrovato.

After purchasing the Pass, you’ll receive a unique code that will be needed for booking your seats in advance, subject to availability. The ticket booking system will be activated in early June. You should be able to book your favourite screenings in advance.

If you don’t have a festival pass but still want to attend some of the screenings, depending on availability, some tickets will go on sale (check the website for the list of the available events) which can be purchased online or at the Bologna Welcome, the tourist office located in Piazza Maggiore. Bologna Welcome’s opening hours are Monday to Saturday from 9:00 to 18:30 and Sundays and banks holidays from 10:00 to 16:30.

Access to the Piazza Maggiore screenings is free. However, subject to availability, the accredited festival attendees will have priority access to a reserved area in which they can claim a seat no later than 30 minutes before the start of the screening.

Il Cinema Ritrovato is a cinephile's paradise - matter of fact - and the festival offers, through its programme, screenings and events - starting from restored classics (but also from archives, rediscovered films, lectures, meetings with filmmakers and experts) - that celebrate and allow the public to refine their passion for the seventh art. An arduous task in itself, we have come up with a short list of must-see films and events for any serious cinephile:

Once again music takes centre stage (and centre screen) of Il Cinema Ritrovato festival. A programme full of musical events, spotted around the festival venues. 

This year, the sisters of cinema have a strong presence on both sides of the camera. We would like to draw your attention to an eye-opening retrospective: the tribute to Suso Cecchi d’Amico, lovingly curated by her children. It is a family insight into a professional career comprising contributions to over 120 screenplays that infinitely enriched the golden age of Italian cinema and beyond. As the only female screenwriter in Italian cinema, she was a master of field research, studying ordinary people, and coming up with lines, situations and character sketches that stemmed from the daily realities she persistently observed and turned into words. She showed an immaculate understanding of the different shades of life, its agonies and its joys.

The cinema, the cinema theatre, is a world of its own, a suspended universe where alternative realities come to life, one journeys uncumbered by space and time, often towards worlds similar to our own, many other times towards distant and unimaginable galaxies (or only imaginable due to their cinematic presence), towards heavenly or dystopian destinations.

“You have no reason to fear the dead. They sleep very soundly”. (Black Sunday)

Il Cinema Ritrovato paints its (cinema) doors black again, with a selection of the horror genre, from the depths of darkness to its greyer nuances. The choice on offer is rich and varied: from the nightmare tales of Black Sunday and The Tram (a look back at the birth of the Italian horror, with Mario Bava and Dario Argento) to the cults, such as The Wicker Man - The Final Cut and The House with Laughing Windows, even arriving at the aquatic visions of Revenge of the Creature and the dark comedy of Gremlins (act 1 and 2, the works of Joe Dante), to the noir-crime of I, The Jury. 

Get comfortable with Dante’s five hour work, The Movie Orgy, reminiscent of Ghezzi’s collage style, intertwining comic images with adverts and scenes of terror. Dream or nightmare, your choice. 

The horror thread travels through various sections of the festival programme and different locations, from Piazza Maggiore to Cinema Europa (the birthplace of Il Cinema Ritrovato 37 years ago), mainly found in the sections “Pratello Pop” and “Recovered and Restored”. 

Twice Palme d'Or winner at Cannes in only five years, currently President of the jury on the Croisette: the Swedish director Ruben Östlund will be a guest at the 37th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, organised by the Cineteca di Bologna from June 24th to July 2nd 2023.

Ruben Östlund will be both a guest and a teacher during his stay in Bologna, with the International Filmmaking Academy, in a long stage on the set involving 20 young directors from all over the world, who will shoot short films under the guidance of Östlund himself.

At Cinema Ritrovato, Östlund will hold a Lesson on Cinema open to the public and will present his film The Square in Piazza Maggiore.

What are the names of the three provocative actors in Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003)? Who was the voice over actress (future diva of Italian cinema) of the actress Dorian Gray in Antonioni's Il grido (1957)? What was the name of the Senegalese director who shot La Noire de... (1966)?

These and many other questions fuelled the Cinephile Quiz evening last Monday at the Lumière, which saw many cinema lovers being rewarded with a festival pass for Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023.

Il Cinema Ritrovato – DVD Awards is promoted by Cineteca di Bologna in the framework of Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival. The competition is open to all films released in DVD/Blu-Ray and will take place during the 37th edition of the festival.