New traineeship program at EYE Filmmuseum

In September 2021 Eye will start a new traineeship program for young film conservators and collection specialists, that will last ten months providing the participants with insights in both theory and practice. This training has been made possible thanks to the Gieskes-Strijbis Fund and the Hendrik Muller’s Vaderlandsch Fund.

The program, starting in September 2021, will be supervised by Giovanna Fossati, Eye‘s Chief Curator and Professor of Film Heritage and Digital Film Culture at the UvA. The traineeship, set up in collaboration with Haghefilm Digital, offers accommodation for three years to two starting restorers and collection specialists (annually changing).

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A Season of Classic Films: free worldwide screening of ‘Sanz and the secret of his art’

Sanz and the secret of his art, an unusual hybrid between documentary and fiction displaying animated human-like dolls, will be screened on Friday 5 February at 18:00 CET with live music, in the frame of the 2020-2021 edition of ‘A Season of Classic Films’.

The screening will be freely accessible worldwide with English subtitles via the YouTube channel of the Institut Valencià de Cultura, and at the same time a limited audience will have the opportunity to attend the event at the Filmoteca’s cinema in Valencia.

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6th (online) FIAF Winter School

This spring, for the 6th FIAF Winter School, FIAF offers a short training course aimed at professionals in FIAF archives and beyond, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque française and the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. The theme of the course, taught by experienced professionals from the sector, is “Programming Film Heritage“. This edition will take place as an online even over the course of four half days, on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 February, Monday 1 and Tuesday 2 March 2020, right before the start of the 2021 edition of “Toute la mémoire du monde“, the international festival of restored film hosted by the Cinémathèque française.

The programme of this edition of the FIAF Winter School is available in English and in French. Every participant will be asked to take an active part in the event by submitting programmes as part of the FIAF programming game before the Winter School.

FIAF has decided not to charge any fee for this online edition. The number of participants have however been limited to 50, as in previous years. The selection will be made on the basis of the online form the participants have to submit.

The deadline for validating the online form is Friday 5 February. Selected candidates will be notified by email by Thursday 11 February at the latest.

For more information, visit this page.

A George Méliès program on ARTE in collaboration with the Cinémathèque française

To celebrate the soon to be opened Méliès Museum, ARTE, in partnership with the Cinémathèque française, offers a series of short films by George Méliès and the premiere of the documentary Le mystère Georges Méliès directed by Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange.

The shorts featured on arte.tv are:

  • Le Royaume des fées(1903, 16 min.), Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (1904, 22 min.), Le Locataire diabolique (1909, 6 min.), Le Palais des mille et une nuits (1905, 21 min.), La Sirène (1904, 4 min.), Les Affiches en goguette (1906, 3 min.) until March 9th
  • Le voyage dans la Lune (1902, 15 min.) until January 15th
  • Les Cartes vivantes(1904), Excelsior! (1901), The Man with the Rubber Head (1901, 3 min.), The Fly Man (1902, 2 min.), The Devil’s Four Hundred Farces (1906, 17 min.), The Infernal Cauldron (1903, 3 min.) until May 31st

The documentary Le mystère George Méliès, a co-production by ARTE, Steamboat Films, Lobster Films and Blackhawk Films, will be available for streaming on arte.tv until March 9th. Enriched by interviews with Costa-Gravas, Michel Gondry and film history experts, the film retraces the life and work of Méliès.

To find out more on the program, click here.

Murnau’s Tabu and Deutsche Kinemathek’s work on the outtakes

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s last film Tabu (USA 1931) is a particularly interesting case study for what concerns the protection of audiovisual cultural assets due to its unique history. In addition to the different versions of the film, there is a stock of around 17,500 meters of film material: alternative or unused takes of the film, the so-called outtakes.

The KUR Programme for the Conservation of Moveable Cultural Assets – initiated by the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Cultural Foundation of German States – made it possible for the Deutsche Kinemathek, in cooperation with the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation and the Österreichisches Filmmuseum, to produce these nitrate films, which are threatened by decay in the long term, safeguard materials by copying them and publish them in digital form. In addition, the script for Tabu as well as the daily reports of the shooting have been published on the Deutsche Kinemathek’s website.

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Initiatives by ACE members during the second lockdown

Back in March film archives from all over Europe closed their door because of the pandemic but continued to offer a digital program to stay connected with audiences at home. The second wave of the virus in the winter months has brought to a second lockdown and ACE members are once again serving as a strong reminder of the importance of cinema. This article offers a rundown of what ACE members from all over Europe are offering right now:

  • Cinematek highlights its collection treasures available on Youtube. Check out the dedicated playlist.
  • Cinémathèque Suisse is pleased to offer its audience four feature films until January 24th. In the program: La Vocation d’André Carel (Jean Choux, 1924), Quatre d’entre elles (Claude Champion, Francis Reusser, Jacques Sandoz and Yves Yersin, 1968), Maine Océan (Jacques Rozier, 1968), Go Go Tales (2007, Abel Ferrara). From January 6th, this offer will be completed by two documentaries: Jour de marché (2002, Jacqueline Veuve) and Imatra (2007, Corso Salani). Click here for more information.
  • Cineteca di Bologna is bringing the Cinema Ritrovato experience in everyone’s home with Cinema Ritrovato | Fuori Sala. Every 30 days a whole new program with at least 15 films available to watch on streaming on the MYmovies website for just 15 euros. Every movie will be presented by critics, directors and witnesses in its best version and silent films will be accompanied by a curated soundtrack. Click here for more information.
  • Deutsche Kinemathek is offering access to online exhibitions (with themed tours) and their digital collection. Click here for more information.
  • Deutsches Filminstitut Filmmuseum offers the digital program accompanying the current special exhibition The Sound of Disney. 1928-1967, that gives the audience an opportunity to study the world of sound in Disney movies online. Click here for more information.
  • Film Archiv Austria is offering an online retrospective dedicated to Hans Moser, the epitome of Viennese humor. It will be available until January 14th. Click here for more information.
  • Filmmuseum München offers an online program with restorations by the Filmmuseum as well as retrospectives by filmmakers such as Werner Schroeter. Click here for more information.
  • Cinémathèque de Toulouse offers a chance to watch some unknown animated feature films. Visit the Cinémathèque’s website to discover more.
  • Lichtspiel Bern, after a successful advent calendar, continues to offer its digital program. Visit its Vimeo page for more information.
  • Tainiothiki tis Ellados offers an online festive program running until January 10th. Click here to find out more.

 

 

Yuletide drinks meeting

The ACE Executive Committee invited members to a Zoom drink on 17 December. More than 20 members took part, some for longer, some for a shoter time, meeting virtually one last time this year. We reported to our colleagues how life in isolation is going in each our country, and sent best wishes for the holidays and the new year.

The meeting was quite gleeful regardless, and reminded all of us that we have a strong and positive community which can offer support during these hard times.

Thanks to all participants and, one more time, have a very happy Christmas and a properous New Year!

Mikko

ViCTOR-E Virtual Event at the Visibile Evidence Conference

As the Annual Visible Evidence Conference got postponed to late 2021 the organisers scheduled a smaller virtual event instead as a “teaser” to the actual conference.

Among other presentation the virtual event also hosts a joint presentation of the international research project “ViCTOR-E – Visual Culture of Trauma, Obliteration and Reconstruction in Post-WW II Europe” in which ACE is acts as associated partner. ViCTOR-E is part of the HERA research programme “Public Spaces: Culture and Integration in Europe”. The virtual presentation  on Friday, December 18th , at 18:30 CET titled “Accessing the Visual Archives of Post War Europe: Trauma, Obliteration and Reconstruction” addresses the major shift in the accessibility of the European (documentary) film heritage and the resulting challenges for archival research projects such as ViCTOR-E and gives a first inside into the research results of the project.

VICTOR-E is a collaborative research project of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Germany), Università degli Studi di Udine (Italy), Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Czech Republic), and Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne (France), in cooperation with the Deutsches Filminstitut und Filmmuseum (Frankfurt), the Centre National de la Cinématographie (Paris), the National Film Archive (Prague), the Archivio Nazionale Cinema Impresa (Ivrea), and the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE).

The project explores non-fiction films about the rebuilding of local, national and transnational communities across Europe in the period from 1945-1956 and investigates the question how audiovisual representations of public spaces – and particularly the documentation of war damage and of reconstruction efforts –, have shaped the politics, policies and polities of post-WW II Europe.

Click here for more info about the event and how to register for the Zoom panel.

Click here to learn more about the HERA-project ViCTOR-E.

European Classic Documentary Film Meetings

Seeking for new restorations of documentary films for distribution:

The 2nd edition of the European Classic Documentary Film Meetings will take place on March 19th 2021 as part of ParisDOC, the professional section of Cinéma du réel, France’s oldest creative documentary film festival.

A complete one-day program had been put together for the 1st edition last March, which unfortunately had to be cancelled because of the first lockdown in France. We are now very determined to prepare the 2nd edition for our next festival in March 2021 (adapting to the evolution of the pandemic, naturally).

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The online retrospectives of Filmarchiv Austria

Ever since the first lockdown, the Filmarchiv Austria responded with the offer of a curated online program. A concept with a future, as it turned out, because the digital Home theater has meanwhile established itself as an opportunity for broad access to Austria’s film heritage and has since regularly accompanied the retrospectives shown in the METRO Kinokulturhaus.

There are still a few days left to watch the retrospective celebrating the 25 years of Amour Fou, available free of charge. The production company, while being relatively young, has a portfolio of over 100 works (as of September 2020) that showcases a special passion and great artistic visions.

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