Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin

>>www.museocinema.it Unique in Italy and among the most important worldwide, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema (or National Cinema Museum) is hosted within the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, the symbol of the city. Inaugurated in July 2000, it has seen over 6,500,000 visitors (568,000 only in 2012) in 13 years, becoming one of the most visited museums in Turin and in Piedmont and garnering much acclaim at an international level; a remarkable goal for a very particular museum, which proposes to charm its visitors by drawing them into the enchanting world of the Seventh Art.
 
What really makes the National Cinema Museum unique is the invaluable asset of its collections and the peculiarity of its layout, developed spiral-wise upwards and structured over several display levels, illustrating the history of cinema by alternating spectacular and evocative posters, objects, film fragments and set-staging, covering an overall surface of about 3,200 square metres. In planning the museum layout, François Confino did not only take into account the characteristics of the building housing it, but, as he followed Antonelli’s crescendo, he overlaid different levels of perception, combining the need for rigorous scientific foundations with the need for a spectacular presentation which aimed to reproduce and play with those fascination mechanisms at the basis of cinematographic depiction.
 
The Museum preserves a considerable fund of rare and precious material, holding over 1,700,000 items, in many cases one-off pieces worldwide: its collections number 930,000 photographs, 532,000 posters, advertising material and film memorabilia, 25,000 devices and artistic artefacts, 36,000 silent and sound films, 38,000 volumes, 102,000 brochures and magazines, 12,200 archive files, 32,000 titles in its videotheque and 4,800 film audio recordings.
 
For several years now, the National Cinema Museum has further increased its commitment in the salvage and restoration of films which were deemed irretrievably lost. Many initiatives, organised in collaboration with prestigious institutions all over the world, thus garnered wide appreciation on the part of public and press when presented at major international film festivals. In particular, many of the implemented restorations are part of a project carried out by the National Cinema Museum for enhancing Italian silent cinema, especially from Turin, which has made this institution in Turin a pivotal reference within the international cinematographic panorama.
 
Thanks to the multitude of its scientific and divulgation activities, the National Cinema Museum has become a hub for cultural initiatives ranking amongst the most important ones at a national and international level, carrying out breakthrough research on the conservation of materials and on the history of cinema, a vast programme featuring restorations, publishing initiatives, film showcases, meetings with film authors and protagonists and education programmes.