This year’s edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato will take place from June 25th to July 3rd. Opening the festival is Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), as a call to peace.

Among the special guests of the 36th edition are Stefania Sandrelli, who will inaugurate the event and introduce the restored version of Il conformista / The Conformist (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970) – in which the actress plays the lead role, John Landis, who will be present at the screening of his film, The Blues Brother (1980), and Wes Anderson, invited to the screening of The Last Picture Show (1971), a tribute to director Peter Bogdanovich.

Music plays an important role at Il Cinema Ritrovato. Piazza Maggiore will host two cine-concerts by the Orchestra of Teatro Comunale di Bologna, featuring original scores composed and conducted by Timothy Brock. Their live music will accompany the screenings of Foolish Wives (dir. Erich von Stroheim, 1922) and Nosferatu (dir. F. W. Murnau, 1922). Charles Vanel’s Dans la nuit is also programmed in Piazza Maggiore with a musical accompaniment.

Nanook of the North (dir. Robert J. Flaherty, 1922) and Cainà (dir. Gennaro Righelli, 1922) will be screened in Piazzetta Pasolini, with live music by Stefano Pilia, Laura Agnusdei, Cecilia Stacchiotti, Tullia Benedicta and the Eduardo Raon & Frank Bockius ensemble. Moreover, celebrated duo Frank Bockius & Gabriel Thibaudeau will accompany the audience on a journey to the phantasmagorical moon of the “magician” Méliès, in an evening dedicated to the best of the cinema of 1902.

At the Lumière Cinema, Salomé (r. Charles Bryant, Alla Nazimova, 1922) will come to life on the rhythms of Valentina Magaletti’s drums.

Another celebration hosted by the festival is that of the musical masterpiece Singin’ in the Rain (dir. Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952), which celebrates 70 years since its release.

Besides the focus on musical productions, the festival program features a variety of sections, covering various areas of cinema, from the programme dedicated to Sophia Loren, an icon of the ’50s-’70s Italian cinema, to the ones showcasing the oeuvre of filmmakers such as Japanese director Kenji Misumi or multi-disciplinary artist Peter Weiss, one of the central figures of Svensk Experimentfilmstudio, founded in 1950 to produce and promote art and experimental film in Sweden.

Peter Lorre, a foreigner in a foreign land

This year Il Cinema Ritrovato dedicates a section to the talent of Peter Lorre, which comes in a special form: the programme does not focus on the many films starring the famous actor, but on the cartoons that feature either his distinctive voice or his expressive face, which give life to different characters. Both have been a source of inspiration for the animation industry, even after his death, from Warner Bros. productions such as Looney Tunes to Maggot, the character in Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2006).

Restored classics at Il Cinema Ritrovato

The festival hosts a great variety of film restorations, including:

Sciuscià / Shoeshine (dir. Vittorio De Sica, 1946) – The first film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1947 (the award was then known as the Honorary Award);

La Maman et la putain / The Mother and the Whore (dir. Jean Eustache, 1973) – “Ever since Jean Eustache, nobody has ever turned a camera on while feeling animated by the same level of directorial intensity, save for Philippe Garrel,” writes film critic Victor Morozov in his review of the masterpiece, which recently returned to the big screen, fifty years after its release;

The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978) – A rockumentary that recounts the farewell concert of the group called The Band before its dissolution, which combines interviews with musical performances and appearances by artists such as Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Ringo Starr;

Invaders from Mars (dir. William Cameron Menzies, 1986) – Shot from the child’s point of view, the film is a reflection upon the tensions during the Cold War and it conveys the “paranoid anxiety typical of many films made in the ’50s.”

Il Cinema Ritrovato takes place in Bologna between June 25 – July 3. For more details, visit the festival website.

Melissa Antonescu

Writer, photographer and videographer. For Films in Frame she writes news about the latest happenings in the film world and brings to the readers' attention the productions that can be seen at the cinema. When she's not writing articles, she's photographing people in a small studio or searching for new cake recipes.