Il Cinema Ritrovato

Every year in late June, Bologna hosts one of the premier cinema events in Europe. Il Cinema Ritrovato, translated literally "The Found Cinema", is a festival in which showcases old films which have been recovered and/or restored to their original states. Restoration companies from around the world take films which few alive today have seen and completely refurbish them. For a week each year, over one hundred restored prints are shown in four different locations from dawn until dusk, when thousands then gather in Bologna's famed Piazza Maggiore for an outdoor screening on a grand scale. Over a thousand people come from around the world to witness these lost masterpieces, directed by artists who many have only heard of. The Cineteca Bologna acts as the base of film operations in Italy, sort of like a miniature Hollywood. Cineteca director Gian Luca Farinelli and company, with funding from the city, construct this celebration of old, focusing on two figures: this year, American director Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep, His Girl Friday, Rio Bravo) and German actor Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Casablanca, The Thief of Bagdad). Included with rare early works of Neorealists like Rossellini and Visconti, the festival is perfect for students of film.

Howard Hawks 

Conrad Veidt

After a long day of screenings, every night is capped with an outdoor screening in the Piazza. The films are of an epic scale, physically and contextually, and they draw close to 2,000 people each time. The festival was kicked off with restored prints of Melies' A Trip to the Moon and Murnau's Nosferatu, accompanied by a full orchestra. The stone walls of the Basilica di San Petronio and the Palazzo di Podesta which form the Piazza Maggiore give the square excellent acoustics. There's nothing like watching a cinema masterpiece teamed with the reverberation of a live score! And to top it off, all the lights are shut out, and the square is lit only by the moon and the stars. It's a magical feeling!

Other films screened were:


The Phantom of the Opera  d. Rupert Julian
The Conformist  d. Bernardo Bertolucci
The Thief of Bagdad  d. Ludwig Berger
America America  d. Elia Kazan
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes  d. Howard Hawks
Infants of Paradise  d. Marcel Carne
Taxi Driver  d. Martin Scorsese