Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023

One of the premier Festivals for fans of early cinema in its original format, 35mm. This year the Festival runs from Saturday June 24th until Sunday July 2nd. And there are a several programmes featuring films from the first decades of cinema – The Time Machine. The majority of these will be screened in the Sala Mastroianni at the Cineteca.

For several years Il Cinema Ritrovato has featured a selection of titles from one hundred years ago, here 1923. Every day there will be at least one episode from a serial in ten parts, La Maison du mystère. The film features two Russian émigrés, Alexandre Volkoff and Ivan Mozzhukhin. The drama runs eighteen years and the mystery involves murder, blackmail but also romance. There is a Jean Epstein drama,  L’Auberge rouge / The Red Inn. The film is adapted from a Honoré de Balzac short story. And there is Schatten, eine nächtliche Halluzination / Warning Shadows, directed by Arthur Robinson, which is one of the outstanding dramas of the Expressionist movement.

Another programme, 1903, features a Mêlées film, Le Royaume des fées. There is a selection of early films from Britain, including Alice in Wonderland from Cecil Hepworth, There are early historical dramas from Pathé frères and some restored hand-coloured prints.

The most intriguing programme is Russian Divas in Italy; and early film is Vittoria o Morte, (1913), a spy drama starring Berta Nelson.

The star event for Silents will be the screenings in the Piazzetta Pasolini, the courtyard at the Cineteca; late in the evening and with the prints projected by a 1930s carbon arc projector. There will be La souriante Madame Beudet, directed by Germaine Dulac.

And in the centenary year of 16mm, presented in 1923 by Kodak, there are a number of events with the this alternative ‘reel’ film to 35mm.