At the Bologna and La Rochelle festivals, Hollywood told through its actresses

Repertory cinema is a dynamic sector, as proven every year by Il Cinema ritrovato in Bologna (Italy) and the La Rochelle Cinema Festival (FEMA), feasts of classics that traditionally launch the summer season at the turn of June and July, bringing together large audiences. Here and there, it's not exactly the same atmosphere: a burning maze of red bricks for the former, whose ^39th edition will end on June 29; a port resort and oceanic feeling for the latter, which takes over until July 5 for its ^53rd tour.

If Bologna emanates from the local Cineteca and is supported by a renowned laboratory (L'Immagine ritrovata), La Rochelle defends a film program mixing the present and the past, both commonly shining through the variety of their retrospectives.

This year, the events, which overlap for a weekend, have in common the fact that they pay tribute to two major American actresses: Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) and Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) , whom this happy conjecture invites us to mirror. From the same generation, these two stars have lived through 20th ^- century Hollywood since the beginnings of talkies, and even survived the studio system by retraining in television, over the course of decades-long careers.

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