From March 27 to July 26, 2026, the Palazzo del Governatore in Parma will host the exhibition Bernardo Bertolucci. The Twentieth Century, an exhibition project marking the 50th anniversary of Novecento, the film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and premiered at the 29th Cannes Film Festival in May 1976, with theatrical distribution starting in September of the same year. The exhibition is curated by Gabriele Pedullà and is promoted by the City of Parma and the Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation, with the collaboration of the Electa publishing house, the participation of the Emilia-Romagna Region and the support of Iren, Smeg and Barilla.
Since its presentation at Cannes, the film was welcomed as a contemporary classic, but also as a work capable of stirring controversy, debate, interpretation and critical disputes that consolidated its reputation as one of the most discussed and acclaimed works of the 1970s, in Italy and abroad. The exhibition places the film’s productive and cultural events in the context of the decade in which it was born, restoring the intellectual atmosphere of those years and the ideal tensions that crossed the so-called short century.
The exhibition is divided into four macro-sections that guide the visitor through the genesis of Novecento and its artistic legacy, through unpublished materials, period testimonies and pictorial works. The aim is to restore the complexity of a work that has profoundly affected the history of modern cinema and is still considered a key to Italian social and political history. In parallel, the exhibition is configured as a survey of the twentieth century understood as a century, but also as a tribute to the Parma area and its genius loci, linked to the Bertolucci family: the poet Attilio and his sons Giuseppe and Bernardo.
Running 317 minutes in the original version, Novecento ranks among the longest films ever made. The film spans half a century of Italian history, following the parallel destinies of Olmo Dalcò and Alfredo Berlinghieri, born in the same court in the Lower Po Valley on the first day of 1900, one the son of sharecroppers and the other the heir to the landed estate, until April 25, 1945, Liberation Day. The epic dimension of the tale is accompanied by an international production that involved leading performers and technicians. The cast included Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Alida Valli, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Laura Betti, Stefania Casini, and Sterling Hayden, among others. Vittorio Storaro worked on the photography, the soundtrack was composed by Ennio Morricone, and the editing was entrusted to Kim Arcalli.
Alongside the exhibition is an articulated program of initiatives conceived and implemented by Fondamenta, the publishing house’s Foundation for Arts and Culture, made possible thanks to the contribution of Fondazione Cariparma. The calendar includes meetings, lectures, theatrical performances, book presentations, concerts, round tables and workshops for children, with guest speakers called to discuss the director’s work, thought and world. On the occasion of the exhibition and collateral activities, Fondazione Cariparma is also supporting the Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation in a three-year path of growth through the Sostegno Resistente call. Completing the project is a catalog published by Electa and edited by Gabriele Pedullà, which brings together contributions from historians, storytellers, poets, philosophers and filmmakers. The volume aims to offer an articulate reading of the film and its first fifty years of life.
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| Bertolucci and the Twentieth Century: exhibition in Parma for the 50th anniversary of the film |
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