Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part II)

Mudar de Vida

My favourite things: Personal recommendations and favourite discoveries from among the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. Part one here. – EK

11

Anémic cinéma

Dir: Marcel Duchamp | France, 1926

The only film directed by Marcel Duchamp – the early Dadaist, later Surrealist, and, much later, solitary painter and chess player – this classic of the weird consists of two alternating sets of images: one of rotating and interlocking geometric forms, amounting to a kind of cinematic pop art avant la lettre; the other of words and sentences inscribed on spinning discs. The film offers an opportunity to confront one of cinema’s most fundamental questions: what are space and time in film? The restored 35mm print may contain the answer.

The Walls Came Tumbling Down (Lothar Mendes, 1946)

The biblical title ("When the people heard the sound of the trumpet, they raised a great shout and the wall fell down." Joshua 6:20) has actually very little to do with the story of this drab and cut-rate mystery film, except its ending.