25th Edition of
Il Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival
Saturday, June 25 to Saturday July 2, 2011
Latest about the 2011 festival from Bologna:
Howard Hawks After Frank Capra and John Ford, this year’s big retrospective offers up spectacular editions of early works and later masterpieces by Howard Hawks, the genuine auteur of American film, the “great craftsman” whose stature as a maestro was affirmed by Cahiersin the 50s and a person who influenced the creation of the Hollywood myth as much as the same Ford and Hitchcock. Hawks who challenged and transcended every production condition, Hawks friend to Hemingway, Hawks narrator of the most memorable and ambiguous male relationships in film history, Hawks inventor of a powerful new American female archetype, Hawks relentless creator of his own legend, Hawks who in fifty years covered every genre of film without losing his grip on his incomparable style.
We will show all Hawks’s silent films available today (Fig Leaves, The Cradle Snatchers, Paid to Love, A Girl in Every Port, Fazil, Trent’s Last Case) and many sound films from the 30s, starting with his first The Dawn Patrol from 1930 to Barbary Coast from 1935, rare flicks such as Criminal Code, The Crowd Roars, Tiger Shark and milestones of gangster movie and screwball comedy genres such as Scarface, Shame of a Nation and Twentieth Century.
And that’s not all; we are working on showing a few Hawks classics that are the height of their genre and continue to be a thrilling visual adventure, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondesor The Big Sleep. “The evidence on the screen is the proof of Hawks’s genius,” wrote Jacques Rivette in 1953. Watch it, and watch it again.
| Conrad Veidt, from Caligari to Casablanca After years of research, this year’s festival will be the one which finally pays tribute to Conrad Veidt, the great actor of silent German film, the sublime mask of expressionism. The “strange creature” of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari lent his long face with throbbing veins to Wiene, Oswald, Pabst and Leni in various films of the 20s (we will be showing Orlacs Hände and The Man Who Laughs to name a few), before leaving Nazi Germany in 1934 and starting an English career that reached its apex with director Michael Powell (The Thief of Baghdad). Veidt’s career and life came to an end in America, where he acted in a few militant anti-Nazi films but is best known for his role as Major Heinrich Strasser, shot dead in the final scene of Casablanca. |
Recovered & Restored, Searching fot Colour in Films, 100 Years ago
Each year films that were considered lost make their return to the world, and your input is always welcome. Two silent films by Hawks, for example, are still missing: his debut film The Road to Glory from 1926 (not to be confused with the film of the same name made in 1936!) and The Air Circus from 1928. We are also still on the lookout for a film directed by Conrad Veidt in 1919, Wahnssin. Our search continues.
New Cineteca di Bologna Publications
Take a look at the most recent works of Edizioni Cineteca di Bologna: Charlie Chaplin. Le comiche Keystone (4 DVD + booklet), Italianamerican by Martin Scorsese (book + DVD), Rupi del vino by Ermanno Olmi (DVD + booklet) and Labirinto Fellini (2 DVD + booklet). All items can be purchased online, even outside Italy.
Labirinto Fellini Exhibition in Rome
This exhibition produced by the Cineteca will be open in Rome until January 30, 2011. Two sections: La grande parata, curated by Sam Stourdzé, and Invenzioni by Dante Feretti and Francesca Loschiavo.
Watch for more details in the coming months. LINK
