A film festival with a difference has opened in the Italian city of Bologna.

Instead of new films, the festival will be screening restored copies of some of the world's most famous silent movies.

Some of the films, which were in danger of being lost, have been reassembled from random fragments surviving in various countries.

The highlight of what's called the Bologna Lost Films Festival will be the showing of an Italian film the Last Days of Pompeii from the twenties, with full symphony orchestra playing a two-and-a-half hour-long score especially written for the occasion.