I Cinema Ritrovato, now in its eighth edition, seems to have concluded a positive cycle with this year’s results. It was born as a film archive festival, following the renewed collaboration between La Cineteca Comunale and La Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero that had just been transfered to Bologna. This year, Il Cinema Ritrovato finally achieves the ambitious aim of taking place in its “natural” setting, i.e. during a FIAF Congress, the 50th to be exact, when Bologna will host the most important film libraries from all over the world. Thanks to the generous collaboration of many of them II Cinema Ritrovato has gained world-wide recognition.
But the festival in this its eighth year has achieved another fundamental conquest: the irreplaceable involvement, the largest ever, of all the Italian FIAF film libraries in organising the Congress.
As a result, Il Cinema Ritrovato can face the world assembly of archives with an edition that, in the rigorous comparison of themes that are strictly relevant to the archives themselves, significantly reflects the activity of the Italian film libraries.
Recognition is due to La Cineteca del Friuli for having contributed, with Le giomate del cinema muto, to the significant transformation of the attitude of historians and critics (not only Italian) towards the memory of cinema in general.
The meeting in Pordenone, where archives present rare and unedited materials, restored films and the results of their historical research, has roused debate among an international platform of specialists. This manifestation has given extraordinary stimulous to the renovation of consolidated historical and archivial conceptions. It would also be proper to remember how Il Museo del Cinema di Torino, firmly determined to give its own collection (one of the most important in Europe regarding pre-cinema) an adequate exhibition, has always taken into consideration the problems pertaining to the theoretical and methodological criteria offered by cinematographic museums and specific relations between archives and museums. As a consequence, Gian Piero Brunetta and Alberto Zotti’s project was organised into an exhibition on the Pre-cinema along with a symposium aptly entitled Memory of the Pre- cinema. Problems of conservation and exhibition, appropriately in this the year preceding the centenary Furthermore, we should not forget La Cineteca Italiana which is the oldest Italian archive and one of the oldest in the world, founded in Milano in 1938. With renewed vigour, this film library has initiated the valorisation of its own patrimony according to new principles. Thus, it has furnished precious support to Il Cinema Ritrovato thanks to its considerable collection of Italian cinema.
Last but not least, the C.S.C.- La Cineteca Nazionale, being the Italian state archive, was the most involved in backing the Bologna film library’s effort in organising the Congress. The work carried out by this archive in the last few years for the safeguarding of the national cinematographic patrimony has made it possible to gain access to its collections in a systematic way. This has consented to their influential participation in the preparation of Lost in the Darkness 2, not only by furnishing indispensable materials, but in sharing criteria and choices as well. Similarly, La Cineteca Nazionale has been one of the protagonists of the other section of the festival, Recovered and Restored.
The general agreement among Italian archives to contribute to the staging of II Cinema Ritrovato contemporaneously with the 50th FIAF Congress is not limited to the important fact of the manifestation being dedicated to the memory of cinema history, significantly, on the occasion when those who are responsible for the preservation of that memory assemble in order to dicuss how to defend and valorise it. The ambition is also to provide archivists, historians and scholars with substantial elements of considerations on fundamental matters just one year before the centenary of the seventh art. The questions relevant to the FIAF, but which are of interest to an even larger sphere of those working in the field, are closely linked with the three sections of the manifestation. The Italian cinema, in particular during the silent era, constitutes an exemplary case. It was a cinema industry of outstanding importance, at least until the end of the twenties (maybe the second in the world after the United States), allowed to waste away while Italian scholars remained for the most part indifferent and that the research and valorisation of which pose methodological problems of general interest. The Pre-cinema exhibition anticipates possible arrangements for exhibitive methods in a museum and, along with the theoretical backing of the symposium, takes up some of the decisive problems of cinema museums. Analogies and distinctions between film libraries and museums will also be discussed, especially in terms of operation.
Recovered and restored is the section in which international collaboration among archives achieves its highest expression. With the work of the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata Bologna has became one of the capitals of cinema restoration and is thus the ideal spot for a meeting among experts. In fact, La Cineteca di Bologna is the European seat of the Search for Lost Films Office, one of the activities of the Lumière Project. La Cineteca has also coordinated, together with the Professional Training Association of the Region of Emilia-Romagna (ECIPAR), the “Project Film”, also part of a CEE Plan. The encouraging results of these projects, especially in regard to restoration methodology, will be illustrated within the festival.
The presentation of the most important films recovered and restored by the FIAF archives, often with the contribution of the Projet Lumière which has cofinanced 12 of the restorations to be presented at the festival, is an opportunity not to be missed for keeping abreast with and critical delving into that restoration. theory to which we have just dedicated a volume for the occasion. This volume also represents a conclusion for Il Cinema Ritrova- to, one that invites us to reconsider it, prossibly with the active participation of all the FIAF archives, but necessarily with the support of the European archives, since we believe that the future of Il Cinema Ritrovato is in Europe, in its expansion in space and time to the point where it takes place throughout the year in as large as possible a series of European cities.