Cabiria, Italy's first silent film colossal, revives after 110 years with new technologies

Cabiria Experience is an innovative and immersive project created by Rai Cinema in collaboration with the National Cinema Museum of Turin, Spazio Koch and Cubia. The project aims to offer a unique cinematic experience, revitalizing the film Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone, considered the first kolossal of Italian silent cinema. The goal is to also introduce this masterpiece to younger people, making it more accessible and engaging through the use of new technologies.

Made in 1914 and enriched with literary captions by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the film had its world premiere at Teatro Regio during the pre-opening of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. It was later officially screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, in the presence of Martin Scorsese, in a version restored by the National Cinema Museum. 110 years after its creation, Cabiria is being revived through Cabiria Experience, a multiplatform project that takes advantage of the latest technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, the Metaverse and especially the Unreal Engine. This powerful 3D graphics engine, developed by Epic Games and known primarily for video games, is also increasingly used in the field of film. Thanks to these technologies, Cabiria is now presented in a new guise, offering an innovative and immersive cinematic experience that allows new generations to rediscover this masterpiece of Italian silent cinema.

The initiative aims to fuse the great cinematic tradition with modern technological innovations in order to capture the interest of new generations and guide them to the rediscovery of a fundamental historical content. The plot of the original film is full of twists and turns. The protagonist of the story is the young Cabiria, who is kidnapped by Phoenician pirates and sold to the Carthaginians. The latter intend to immolate her to the god Moloch. However, the Roman Fulvio Axilia, with the help of the mighty Maciste, manages to rescue her, all set against the backdrop of the Second Punic War.

The Cabiria Experience project includes a series of innovative content, developed by Rai Cinema’s Strategic Marketing and Digital sector in collaboration with a team of experts. Here are the main elements of the project:

- an immersive short film and a linear short film: created through the Unreal Engine 3D graphics engine and a combination of artificial intelligence tools in which the first two chapters of the original work are treated, specifically The Eruption of Etna and The Sacrifice and the Rescue. The VR short will be screened at the National Cinema Museum and usable on the Rai Cinema Channel VR App through VR viewers; while the linear short will be available on RaiPlay.

- agaming experience: an opportunity for users to embody Maciste, one of the film’s protagonists, and participate, through his avatar, in some adventurous missions in Rai Cinema’s Metaverse and that of the National Cinema Museum on the entertainment platform offering innovative virtual reality experiences The Nemesis. The experience will be available from both mobile and desktop.

The entire project, in its various forms, will be presented in its entirety at the 76th Prix Italia, scheduled to be held in Turin, Italy, from October 1 to 4, 2024. On this occasion, the audience will also be able to attend the screening of the original restored version of Cabiria at the Cinema Massimo in Turin. Cabiria Experience is a project of Rai Cinema and the National Cinema Museum of Turin with Spazio Koch and Cubia.

“Rai Cinema continues its path of innovation, research and experimentation of languages,” comments Paolo Del Brocco, managing director of Rai Cinema, "with the aim of presiding over and managing change without losing our cultural roots. And Cabiria Experience is a project that perfectly marries, in this field, our public service mandate: it allows us to reach new types of viewers, especially young people, and to make digital culture by guaranteeing a presidency of innovative media. In this project, cinematic tradition is intertwined with the most advanced technologies, creating an environment where the past and the future are intertwined, and the cinematic experience is expanded in all its forms. This fusion of languages allows us to bring a masterpiece of classic cinema back to life and make it accessible in a modern key. A cultural operation to bring new generations closer to those films that belong to the heritage of our cinema, and at the same time try to offer new stimuli for the development of our industry."

“With a view to enhancing its collections and promoting the history of cinema, the National Cinema Museum always proposes innovative ways to make its film heritage accessible to the widest possible audience, developing high-profile projects that move between the past and the future,” stresses Enzo Ghigo, president of the National Cinema Museum."Cabiria Experience celebrates 110 years since the first screening of Giovanni Pastrone’s masterpiece, the first colossal that gave so much luster to Italian cinema at the turn of the century."

"How to propose Cabiria, the Museum’s cult film, to the younger generation? How to succeed in making young people today relive the spectacular and enthralling experience that the adventures of the superhero Maciste aroused in spectators at the turn of the century? These are some of the questions to which the Museum seeks new answers," concludes Domenico De Gaetano, director of the National Cinema Museum. “Together with Rai Cinema and the University of Turin we have been engaged for several years in studying and evaluating the impact of the most innovative technologies and tools with the museum dimension. This multiplatform project ranks among the first experiments in the world of contemporary transposition and reinterpretation of a silent film using virtual reality, unreal engine, metaverse and artificial intelligence.”

Cabiria, Italy's first silent film colossal, revives after 110 years with new technologies

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.