145,000 filmgoers celebrated the 40th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato festival (and Mel Brooks’s 100th birthday). The festival, organised by Cineteca di Bologna, brought its 40th edition (20–28 June) to a close with 75,000 filmgoers in cinemas and 70,000 attending the evening screenings in Piazza Maggiore: and it was in Piazza Maggiore that Il Cinema Ritrovato drew to a close with a magical evening featuring a screening of Young Frankenstein and a video message from Mel Brooks, who turned 100 yesterday, Sunday 28 June.

Il Cinema Ritrovato, whose main programme ran from 20 to 28 June, but whose extended programme began on 16 June and will continue with screenings and guest appearances at the Cinema Modernissimo and in Piazza Maggiore until 5 July.

An unprecedented edition to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a festival that has brought the history of cinema back to the forefront of international cultural interest (with over 5,000 festival pass holders from 78 countries worldwide) and has ‘forced’ the organisers to increase the number of cinemas and screenings during the festival, given the demand that has seen cinemas reach 85% of their capacity.

The cinemas, as we were saying, welcomed 75,000 cinema-goers (5,000 more than last year), to which must be added the 70,000 spectators in Piazza Maggiore, from 16 June with Carlo Verdone and his Bianco, Rosso e Verdone to yesterday, Sunday 28 June, with Young Frankenstein.

But the good wishes from the whole of Piazza Maggiore to Mel Brooks and the farewell to Bologna were just some of the great moments of a festival that gave us unique experiences, just as unique as the 35mm film print (never screened before) of Ken Russell’s The Devils, which lit up the Cinema Modernissimo; just as unique as the moment when Wim Wenders watched his (almost invisible) graduation film, Summer in the City, for the first time alongside the audience; just as unique as the poetry of the images by Artavazd Pelechian, the 90-year-old Armenian master, who has created just a few hundred minutes of cinema throughout his career, and which enchanted the audience in Piazza Maggiore.

An audience undoubtedly drawn by the presence of Italian and international filmmakers such as Wim Wenders, Irène Jacob, Amos Gitai, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Arnaud Desplechin, Lav Diaz, Bill Morrison, Carlo Verdone, Francesca Comencini, Isabella Rossellini, Marco Bellocchio, Pietro Marcello, Francesco Sossai and Alice Rohrwacher, who at Cinema Ritrovato engage in a dialogue with timeless classics, on a journey through the history of cinema.

A history of cinema that has now found a home in the new ARZ – the Renato Zangheri Archive at the Cineteca di Bologna, inaugurated to mark the 40th edition of Cinema Ritrovato, a cutting-edge facility for the preservation of film heritage.

And it is precisely the history of cinema that is the object of desire for those who come to Bologna for Il Cinema Ritrovato: whether it be a silent classic such as F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise (the restoration of which was presented in a world premiere accompanied by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna) or, at the other end of the spectrum, a recently made film that playfully evokes the past, such as Bérenger Thouin’s L’âge d’or, Japanese jidai-geki or films featuring divas rediscovered this year, such as Barbara Stanwyck and Joséphine Baker, cinema enthusiasts’ passion was, once again, satisfied by the 540 films on the programme.