Mostra internazionale del cinema libero

The initiative was born by the will of the writer Leonida Repaci, the journalist Bruno Grieco and the entrepreneur and politician Giampaolo Testa who immediately involved in the organization the most famous screenwriter of neorealism: Cesare Zavattini. 
The first edition of the festival took place in Porretta Terme in 1960 and was baptized by a jury made up of some of the most authoritative and committed men of the Italian cultural scene of those years, including: Michelangelo Antonioni, Alessandro Blasetti, Luigi Chiarini, Giacomo De Benedetti, Vittorio De Sica, Giuseppe De Santis, Federico Fellini, Francesco Flora, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Carlo Lizzani, Vasco Pratolini, Leonida Repaci, Roberto Rossellini, Mario Soldati, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Luchino Visconti and Cesare Zavattini.
The Porrettana exhibition was born in the years of the contested Lonero management of the Venice International Film Festival assuming, in fact, the character ofantifestival, freed from political mortgages, commercial and advertising interference, compromises and diplomatic concerns contemplating, among others, the declared intent to restore Venice to a level of expressive freedom appropriate to the most prestigious national film event. 
The declared objective of the exhibition was to make known what was unknown to the general public in cinema and to this end it engaged in the search for unreleased films outside the traditional circuits of the film and cultural industry.
Other permanent collaborators in the organization of the Festival were Luciano Pinelli and Carlo Maria Badini and some politicians from Porreto including Giampaolo Lorenzini and Oreste Zagnoni. Albeit indirectly, the Christian Democrat deputy and undersecretary Giovanni Elkan contributed to the realization of the exhibition.
During the first three editions ('60, '62, '64) the festival was characterized as a real competition of films, documentaries and cinematographic subjects. In 1965, in advance of the disputes that struck the festival institutions, it was decided to abolish all competitive forms by focusing attention on monographic cycles with the screening of films and documentaries always very attentive to the relationship of cinema to society.
The International Exhibition of Free Cinema in Porretta Terme, even without the necessary regularity, continued in the organization of events and conferences, between Porretta Terme and Bologna, until 1985. Since 1986, the Bologna film library with the collaboration of the Mostra del cinema free ONLUS, it organizes every year The cinema rediscovered, a well-known international festival of restored films.