On Saturday, 27 June, the Boarini Award was presented at the Festival to Mariann Lewinsky, distinguished curator, film historian, and one of the directors of Il Cinema Ritrovato.

Independent researcher, film historian, scholar of Japanese cinema, researcher at the University of Zurich, multilingual traveller who conceals her maiden name, Strauli, behind that of her first husband, Lewinsky, she first discovered the Cineteca di Bologna thanks to the conferences organised by Eric de Kuyper at the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. She has curated research and restoration projects, retrospectives, exhibitions and publishing initiatives on behalf of numerous European cinematheques and cultural institutions. Her interests range from early cinema to Japanese cinema and women’s cinema (exploring the work of figures such as Lois Weber, Ol’ga Preobraženskaja, Musidora, Colette, Marie Epstein, Delphine Seyrig, Elfi Mikesch and Coline Serreau, among others). Together with Antonio Bigini, she co-directed the montage film Ella Maillart – Double Journey. She has curated or co-curated approximately sixty programmes for Il Cinema Ritrovato, with a particular focus on silent cinema; until two years ago, she also coordinated the live musical accompaniments at the screenings. Her work for Edizioni Cineteca di Bologna as a curator includes the volume Albert Samama Chikli. Fotografo, cineasta, navigatore; the collection of writings by Frieda Grafe entitled Luce negli occhi colori nella mente; the DVD box sets Cento anni fa. Il cinema europeo del 1909, Cento anni fa. Attrici comiche e suffragette 1910-1914, Albert Capellani. Un cinema di grandeur 1905-1911 and I colori ritrovati. Kinemacolor e altre magie; as well as the restoration of Sangue Bleu, Ma l’amor mio non muore and Assunta Spina. She has served as co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato from 2016 until this year – the festival’s fortieth edition.

Mariann possesses all the hallmarks of a freelance scholar: she is independent, immensely curious, deeply cultured and fascinated by a myriad of worlds which, at various stages of her life, she has studied and come to know profoundly. She burns with a passionate fire when a subject captures her interest, just as she can quite literally fall asleep within minutes when faced with a topic or a person that fails to spark her imagination.
Always fiercely independent, she left academia early on and found in Il Cinema Ritrovato a landscape where her numerous talents could flourish: unearthing forgotten stories and figures, and forging relationships across a broad community of archivists, restorers and researchers from various generations. In doing so, she helped ensure the festival’s prodigious capacity for breaking new ground and experimenting with fresh approaches, rendering her sections exemplary models of a living dialogue between the history of cinema and the works themselves.
In 2003 she began a more continuous collaboration with Il Cinema Ritrovato by curating the A Hundred Years Ago section, to which she later added the Century of Cinema section, which significantly enriched the festival by systematically exploring the era of silent cinema, and early cinema in particular – a period never before approached, even internationally – with a sustained focus on individual cinematic years. This exploration, spanning twenty-four editions of the festival, has been a milestone experience for many reasons: it has showcased the vital work of film archives which, thanks in part to the continuity of this project, have restored a significant portion of the surviving heritage from those years; for two decades, it has brought to light and nurtured new scholars and archivists, while drawing international attention to male and female directors whom we now know to have played important roles in the history of cinema; finally, it has offered new solutions and concrete ideas for the programming of silent-era films.

For all these exemplary reasons, we are proud to present the
VITTORIO BOARINI AWARD 2026
– established in 2022 in honour of the founder of the Cineteca di Bologna and presented annually during Il Cinema Ritrovato to international figures who have distinguished themselves in the preservation and dissemination of cinematographic heritage – to Mariann Strauli Lewinsky