You Wish You’d Gone To Il Cinema Ritrovato

In a world of film festivals whose prices are ever-increasing, whose screenings are becoming more difficult to access and whose programming is pivoting towards buzzy “world premieres” over interesting new voices, Il Cinema Ritrovato (June 22-30; Bologna, Italy) is the perfect antidote. The Cineteca Bologna-organized festival, now in its 38th edition, has one central goal: to showcase restored and rediscovered films, from the medium’s beginning until the present day. The ironic thing: the festival, despite its consistently sold-out screenings and its grand lineup of 480 films, still feels largely undiscovered.

In my five days at the festival and in Italy’s 7th largest city as a whole—I’ve learned that the word “undiscovered” is central in the Bolognese vernacular. Almost every local I spoke with used this adjective to describe their city, citing it as a place that still manages to stay hidden from the swaths of tourists that invade the larger Italian cities—like Rome or Milan—during the summer months. Even that is paradoxical. Bologna is one of the most accessible, well-connected Italian cities, and it boasts the honor of being the “food capital of the world.” But, walking down nearly empty, comfortably quiet streets in the city center, you do feel a sense of intimacy, of tranquility, that almost feels unnatural in a place of this size—like Bologna has let you in on a secret that no one else knows about.

The ironic part is, during Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna fits into the perception of the “idealized, dreamlike Italian city” more than any of its peers. The festival’s largest, most recognized screening venue is right in the center of the city’s main square, Piazza Maggiore. There, a giant screen wedges between the main Basilica and a giant palazzo from the 8th century. In front of it, the festival splays out 2,150 seats, creating a real-life Cinema Paradiso, an open-air theater where all you can see is the screen in front of you, the giant crowd and hulking buildings around you and the stars above you.

Despite this grandeur, watching one of the festival’s selections in this setting—whether that be a 1950s Italian comedy, a silent film with a live orchestra soundtrack, or a long-awaited restoration of a French musical—is the most intimate moviegoing experience. The sounds of a town square at capacity are in the foreground. Once the lights dim, everyone instantly becomes silent—and for the length of a given film’s runtime, no one’s eyes leave the screen. Phone checking is non-existent; muttering is rare.

It’s the most unorthodox film setting—when the film quiets, the distant noises of the city’s main street always remind you exactly where you are. Even so, it functions better than almost any movie theater you’ll find. This redefined, dreamlike version of movie theater amplifies cinema’s illusive power. Even hours into a film, adults or children visiting the town square would rush to sit on the ground between seating areas, look up at the screen and watch the film like they’d been there from the opening credits, invested in the story just as much as the rest of us.

The Piazza Maggiore screenings’ reinforcement of cinema as the center of art, and life, is beyond refreshing in a time where pundits and financial records suggest that cinema and movie theaters may be dying. It’s that same spirit that drives much of Il Cinema Ritrovato’s programming as a whole, whose efforts to simultaneously save lost works of the past and highlight some of the medium’s most acclaimed works create a dazzling and dizzying group of films, spread across the festival’s eight venues. The sheer amount of choice is overwhelming, and choosing a lineup is a process of sacrifice, since many of the selected films are unavailable on both streaming services and on physical media. At the same time, the amount of available options and the elevated quality of the programming almost guarantee that, whatever film you select, it will reward your decision.

A great example is one of the 2024 festival’s centerpiece programs, dedicated to the works of 20th Century Japanese filmmaker Kozaburo Yoshimura (shown almost entirely on 35mm film). Since Yoshimura’s works are so undiscovered and unfindable, the ability to even watch them was a reward in itself—an opinion reinforced by the constantly sold-0ut screenings of his films.

Sure, Piazza Maggiore screenings might be what set apart Il Cinema Ritrovato at first glance, but it is this respect and re-discovery of cinema that make the festival worth it. Each rare screening serves as a reminder that—despite the fact that these films only have a certain amount of negatives left (even just one in some cases)—there are people that care enough about the medium to do everything they can to save it and show it to new audiences. Many of the curators’ introductions to the film center entirely on this idea. By sharing the stories of how they recovered a given film, they often reinforce the feeling of luck (and perhaps even destiny) associated with saving a work from oblivion, with bringing it from lost to found. Being present in a space with so many films that were so close to simply becoming extinct, it’s impossible not to think about the films that did disappear, and the fact that with each lost film, you lose a little piece of history as well.

But, at the same time, as many of the programmers shared in their introductions, the circumstances in which a film is recovered can be so beyond belief—with their testimonials almost feeling like movie plots themselves—that its hard not to feel a sense of hope moving from one screening to another, of participating in an audience that respects and cares for cinema just as much as you do. In an industry that constantly feels entrapped by the fears of its eventual demise, Il Cinema Ritrovato is a powerful reminder that film will never die, despite what happens in the meantime. There’s always going to be another film to uncover, discover and fall in love with. For that, the Piazza awaits.

(photos: Kaveh Jalinous)