If you have always thought that cinema was born in France at the end of the 19th century by the Lumière brothers, then the time has come to think again. Mario Mucciarelli, film author, but above all passionately in love with the Seventh Art since time immemorial, offers us proven proof that it all began in Bologna, certainly not by chance the home of one of the most important Italian film archives.
He does so with his latest book, Lumière Lumière (Sagoma Editore, 2024, pp. 200), a concentration of stories full of humor and devotion to the cinema of times gone by. Stories that take place in a cinema in Bologna that showed only old films and where the seats were extremely uncomfortable. The projector was making sinister noises. And in the room there was a bustle of nuns, mimes, popcorn sellers, drunks, film buffs and more drunks. It was the old Lumière cinema, the place from which the Cineteca di Bologna later "sprouted".
We asked Mario Mucciarelli how the idea for such a particular book was born?
«Over the years I have written several humorous stories, but they have remained in the drawer. I wanted to do something with it, before it became a fossil record: humor gets old quickly. I made my partner read them, and she especially enjoyed two stories that were set at the Lumière, the arthouse cinema linked to the Cineteca di Bologna, which I frequented as a boy in the 1980s. The old Lumière, because in the meantime the cinema has changed location. In short, those two had aged well. I wondered if they couldn't be the nucleus of a collection of stories about those years, about Bologna, about the world of cinephiles. I said yes, I wrote the stories, then Carlo Amatetti from Sagoma Editore also said yes. Then we contacted the Cineteca di Bologna, and anxiously awaited a response. Or rather, I was anxious. Amatetti was calm."
How much is true, autobiographical and invented in the stories?
«It's all true, except what I made up! No, they are all fictional stories. For example, the cinema director in these stories is not modeled on either the director of the time or the director of today. The summer reviews did not start in the way I described. And, despite what I wrote in the book, I am almost certain that there have never been any erotomaniac mimes around the Lumière (who knows, speak up). However, there are some elements that are more than true: the simultaneous translations of films into the original language were truly a bizarre experience. But it was also the only way to watch a Swedish film and have a vague idea of what it was about, I mean, other than death."
What is your connection with the Cineteca di Bologna?
«Affectionate, of devout gratitude, but I left Bologna in 2001, only to return a few years ago. I didn't know anyone in the Cineteca. In fact, I was terrified by the idea that the director Gian Luca Farinelli would find the book out of place. Instead he appreciated the operation."
What does cinema represent for you?
«I have worked and work there, in the world of cinema, but for me cinema is above all the old films that I used to watch at home or in the cinema library. The old Lumière was perhaps the only place where I felt comfortable. I hate going into clothes shops, for example, but I always go to the cinema without any problems. I don't know, maybe because at the cinema I don't have to take off my trousers once the curtain is closed. I mean, it's not mandatory."
But is cinema still the seventh art or is it now an aged medium?
«He's aged, yes! But there's nothing wrong with getting old. But more than a decrepit old man, the cinema seems to me to be a forty-year-old in a mid-life crisis, you know, like those who buy a motorbike, take drugs randomly, hit on barmaids. Since the arts almost never die, but most of the time just remain convalescent indefinitely, I would say it could be a long phase. But that's okay. As long as there are arthouse theaters."