Author: Giada Sartori

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022 is coming!

Stefania Sandrelli will inaugurate the 36th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Saturday 25 June in Piazza Maggiore, Bologna, with the screening of the new restoration of Il Conformista by Bernardo Bertolucci. In 1970, the director wanted her on screen with Dominique Sanda and Jean-Louis Trintignant for one of his most visually beautiful films. The restoration has been carried out with the support of ‘A Season of Classic Films‘, an initiative of ACE within the Creative Europe MEDIA programme of the European Commission and thanks to support by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

The magic of the big screen in Piazza Maggiore is the most highly anticipated moment for an entire community: a community of cinephiles from all over the world who come to Bologna every year for a festival bejewelled by masterpieces: once more, Il Cinema Ritrovato will open for us the doors of Cinephile Heaven, with 500 films to be screened from dawn to dusk in 7 citywide theatres, until the much-awaited screening every evening in Piazza Maggiore. This 36th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato, promoted by Cineteca di Bologna, will take place from 25 June to 3 July, marking a return, after two years in which the festival was nonetheless held with audiences present, to its traditional calendar date of late June-early July.

Cineteca di Bologna reveals the names of some of the restored masterpieces, all making their world or Italian première, that we will see in Piazza Maggiore during the evenings of the festival: we will celebrate 100 years since the birth of Francesco Rosi with his cinematic version of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, 70 years of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s quintessential musical Singin’ in the Rain (two musical evenings to add to the previously announced ciné-concerts of Nosferatu and Foolish Wives and the screening of The Blues Brothers presented by John Landis); and then, Francis Ford Coppola’s recent director’s cut of The Godfather Part III, or Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.

And also an homage to an Italian diva of international fame. Here are the titles that will make up our homage to Sophia Loren: we will take a trip through her unparalleled career, from the first important successes in the Fifties with Alessandro Blasetti (Peccato che sia una canaglia) and Dino Risi (Pane, amore e…) to her consecration with Vittorio De Sica (La ciociara, Ieri oggi e domani); we will meet Stanley Donen again, who wanted her together with Gregory Peck in Arabesque; and again Francesco Rosi, with the less known C’era una volta, based on the works of Giovan Battista Basile. Finally, the Festival will end with the umpteenth proof of her greatness in Ettore Scola’s Una giornata particolare, alongside Marcello Mastroianni.

ACE will also have two events during the festival:

28 JUNE 2022
10.00–13.00, 14.00–17.00 MAMbo (via Don Minzoni, 14)

THE PRESERVATION OF KNOWLEDGE – ACE Workshop

The aim of the workshop is to find common ways to ensure safeguarding of knowledge and methodologies related to analogue film heritage.

29 JUNE 2022
14.00–17.00 MAMbo (via Don Minzoni, 14)

General Assembly of ACE

Riservato agli associati / Only members admitted

New films on Eye Film Player available worldwide

Right now on the streaming platform Eye Film Player, you can find two new films that are available to watch world wide.

Written and directed by Mostafa Derkaoui, About Some Meaningless Events was conceived as an independent and collective effort of militant filmmakers, actors, musicians, poets and journalists at a time of heightened repression on freedom of expression in Morocco and was funded by the sale of paintings by several contemporary painters. The film was first screened in Paris in 1975 but was immediately taxed with censorship and forbidden from exhibition and export.

About Some Meaningless Events was forgotten until a negative print was found in the archives of the Filmoteca de Catalunya in 2016 and restored there in collaboration with L’Observatoire in Casablanca. Forty-five years after its completion, the film is finally released.

https://player.eyefilm.nl/en/films/about-some-meaningless-events

For four decades, Albania was Eastern Europe’s most secretive regime. For millions of Albanians living within its sealed borders, daily life was far from the socialist paradise lensed by the state-run New Albania film studio. Albania’s first post-communist film, The Death of a Horse (1992), vividly captures the Balkan nation’s traumatic past while reflecting on the tremendous social and economic challenges to come. Crafted months after the dictatorship’s fall, the low-budget film was shot on Kodak and developed on AGFA. This fateful choice caused Cannes to remove it from competition for not meeting the festival’s technical standards. The film was restored in 2018.

https://player.eyefilm.nl/en/films/the-death-of-a-horse

Report of ACE regional meeting (April 27th 2022)

Yesterday at the ACE Regional Meeting at the Grand Cinema Urania in Budapest for the FIAF Congress, more than 50 colleagues from film archives from all over Europe were present.

Sandra Den Hamer has opened the meeting by inviting all the colleagues to briefly introduce themselves, then proceeded to give an update on the Season of Classics and Ellen Harrington presented the Artekino Classics platform.

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The recipients of the ACE scolarship for the 2022 FIAF Film Restoration Summer School

We are proud to announce the recipients of the ACE scolarship for the 2022 FIAF Film Restoration Summer School. Their names are:
Paulo Cartaxo (Portugal) – 750 Euro
Saara Kruus (Estonia) – 750 Euro
Marko Turkus (Slovenia) – 750 Euro
Anri Vartanov (U.S.A.) – 750 Euro
Sasan Tofighian (Iran) – 1000 Euro
Donart Zymberi (Kosovo) – 1000 Euro
To find out more, click the following link: http://www.immagineritrovata.it/it/summer-school/ 

Call for the 2nd Summer School Digital Archive

Photo by Manuela Clemens

The Filmuni Summer School is organising the Digital Archive Summer School in cooperation with FIAF Cataloguing & Documentation Commission, the Bundesarchiv and the Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin. The summer school “Digital Archives. Data Literacy and Presentation Strategies in Audiovisual Archives” is a 5-day, practice-oriented course aimed at people working in audiovisual archives as well as at everyone else who is interested in enhancing their knowledge about digital environments and processes related to digital archives. This year’s edition focuses on the subject of digital curation.

Date: 5-9 September 2022

Location: Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF

Cost: 1030,- EUR (Early Bird 930,- EUR before 30 April 2022)

Registration deadline: 10 July 2022

More information

There is also the possibility to apply for a scholarship, sponsored by The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF),  that covers full or partial participation fees. The application deadline for the FIAF scholarship is May 29, 2022.

Out-of-commerce Works Portal Datathon event

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), through the European Observatory on Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights (the Observatory), in collaboration with Europeana, is organising the Out-of-commerce Works Portal Datathon event.

The main objective of the Datathon event is to raise awareness of the existence of the new out-of-commerce works solution available under the Directive (EU) 2019/790 with the aim to facilitate the digitisation of out-of-commerce works. The event also aims to bring together leaders among the cultural heritage institutions, in order to increase visibility and further attractivity of the out-of-commerce works system.

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Swedish Film Institute is seeking a digital film restorer

The Swedish Film Institute Foundation plays a leading role in Swedish film. The Film Institute’s aim is to support the production, distribution, and screening of valuable film, to preserve Sweden’s film heritage and make it available, and to represent Swedish film internationally. The Film Institute also has a national mandate to enhance film knowledge in Sweden, and to provide the people with a range of film characterised by a wide diversity of stories.

 

The Film Institute is digitizing and restoring the Swedish film heritage, as well as making it available. Since 2013, approximately 500 films have been restored. The purpose is to create digital material that mimics the original analogue premiere as much as possible. Every year, around 50 films are restored, and most of the films are taken into distribution either via the rightsholders themselves or through the Film Institute’s own theatrical distribution.

 

As a digital film restorer, you are doing manual and semiautomated restoration to digitally remove scratches, dust, dirt, damage, shaking, etc. You will be working in the Digitization unit together with eleven other staff members.

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ACE Actions to Support Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine is in its 4th week, we continue to seek ways that we can support our colleagues from the Oleksandr Dvozhenko Centre in Kyiv.

FIAF reports that a frequent contact with our brave colleagues of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre in Kyiv is kept to try and provide advice or put them in touch with other organizations that can help them protect their institution and collection.

A fundraising campaign to help the Dovzhenko Centre has been set up by British achitect and camera historian Richard Bossons, who has close links with the Dovzhenko Centre. FIAF will be donating to the Fund, and it encourage its affiliates – both institutionally and individually, to do the same if they can. The fundraising campaign can be found here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/vufku-100-helping-the-dovzhenko-centre-in-kyiv

ACE would also like to develop a list of current offers being made, or actions being taken, by our Member institutions. We would then share this feedback with all of you, which might serve as inspiration for many of us to take further action.

Examples we have learned of so far include: possible employment/housing or other support offers for affected colleagues, technical advice about protecting collections, fundraising events, public statements of support, providing educational materials or other resources to refugee centers, and free entry to museums and cinemas for refugee populations (from all countries affected by crises). Please email us with your updates at ace@ace-film.eu which is ACE’s new contact email address.

First news from Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022

Il Cinema Ritrovato will return at the beginning of the summer in Bologna in its full glory. The festival returns to its usual dates: from June 25th to July 3rd, 2022. The restrictions will be lifted by then and that means full access to the regular venues of the festival. The return to its original form will change the online version of Il Cinema Ritrovato, which has served festivals well during the last two years: for this edition, only masterclasses and panel discussions will be streamed live. The festival will retain the booking system, to ensure a smooth experience for all audiences. This year’s festival attendees will have the opportunity to visit Folgorazioni figurative, an exhibition devoted to Pier Paolo Pasolini, born 100 years ago in Bologna.

Further information will be revealed in future newsletters, but in the meantime, we bring you the first news from this edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato.

This year, the Bologna Opera House Orchestra, conducted by Timothy Brock, will be back to Piazza Maggiore to accompany two masterpieces turning 100: the magnificent Foolish Wives by Erich von Stroheim will be the first cine concert on June 27th, while on July 2nd one of the cornerstones of horror and expressionist cinema, Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau, will likely hypnotize Piazza Maggiore audience.
As usual, Il Cinema Ritrovato will welcome guests, friends, directors, film historians, actors: the festival is thrilled to confirm the presence of John Landis who, in addition to holding a masterclass, will be in Piazza Maggiore on July 3rd.

  • FOREVER SOPHIA: the retrospective curated by Emiliano Morreale and Gian Luca Farinelli will be the opportunity to see and enjoy some of Sophia Loren’s most notorious performances on the big screen.
  • THE DRIFTER’S ESCAPE: HUGO FREGONESE: a master of brisk and unsentimental westerns and crime thrillers, with a career spanning over four decades and numerous bases of production – from his home country Argentina, to America, Spain, Italy, the UK, and West Germany – Fregonese’s cinema is unjustly underappreciated to the point of obscurity. This program curated by Dave Kehr and Ehsan Khoshbakht will surely be one of the major revelations of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022.
  • THE LAST LAUGH: GERMAN MUSICAL COMEDIES, 1930-32: The selection, curated by Lukas Foerster, covers a wide variety of comedic and musical styles and especially focuses on the rich contributions of Jewish directors, screenwriters, producers, composers, and actors in the genre, almost all of whom were forbidden to work in Germany after 1933.
  • PETER LORRE: STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND: Lorre’s life, his films, his unrealized dreams, and his physical presence constitute one of the most honest representations of 20th-century man. Instead of wholeness and triumph, there is the half-full, half-empty result of traversing through Central European modernism and fascism, addiction and exile, the culture of money and fame, the mirror cabinet of faces and masks. The series curated by Alexander Horwath will showcase its career in its entirety.
  • “TELL THE TRUTH!”: A VIEW INTO YUGOSLAV CINEMA: This program curated by Mina Radović, featuring some fantastic new restorations along with archive prints, takes us from the classical post-war cinema to the New Wave and celebrates the works of master filmmakers of the era. What emerges are films that carry the power to speak the truth – awakening the mind and quickening the soul – in ways that can be said only for major chapters in the history of world cinema.
  • KENJI MISUMI: AN INSTINCTIVE AUTEUR: Kenji Misumi (1921-75), whose centenary was celebrated last year, is one of the unsung masters of the Japanese period film. He was a specialist above all in chambara (the action-packed variety of period film), which he imbued with remarkable Freudian undercurrents and imaginative widescreen imagery; but he also created convincing films focused on modern martial arts and the romantic experiences of women. The centerpiece of the retrospective, curated by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström, will be the so-called ‘sword trilogy’, recently restored in 4K by Kadokawa, which comprises some of Misumi’s outstanding visual and thematic achievements.
  • PETER WEISS – POETRY IN MOTION: German-born painter, poet, novelist, playwright, and filmmaker, Peter Weiss (1916-82) was a pioneering figure in the Swedish art and experimental film scene in the 1950s. The centerpiece of the program curated by Wengström, is Weiss’ feature-length Hägringen (1959), an extraordinary and very personal take on ‘city symphony’ about a young man’s 24-hour encounter with Stockholm and with society at large. The films, from the collection of the Swedish Film Institute, will be presented in vintage prints and DCPs of recent digital restorations.
  • THE CENTURY OF CINEMA: 1902: A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès, as well as his fantastic trick films and gorgeous fairy tale films, and the imitations by Gaston Velle (chez Lumière Bros) and Ferdinand Zecca (chez Pathé) are some of the highlights of the program curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko. The great variety of genres already on offer by Pathé frères is another remarkable aspect of that year’s production, pre-announcing the dramatic expansion and worldwide success of cinematography in the years to come.
  • ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO: 1922: If looking for masterpieces, this year there’ll be films by luminous figures such as Dreyer, Flaherty, Nazimova, Vertov, Delluc, Murnau, Dwan, and Stroheim. But if you want to go beyond the canon, there’ll be works of Zhang Shichuan, Teuvo Puro, and Warren A. Newcombe and a choice selection of short films, among them two newly restored silhouette films by animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger. A special celebration is due to Albert Samama Chikli and his daughter Haydée Tamzali who a hundred years ago made together Zohra, the first Tunisian fiction film. This program is curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko
  • THE POISONED FLOWERS OF VICTORIN-HIPPOLYTE JASSET: After a career as a costume designer and director of theatrical mass spectacles, Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset (1862-1913) created the first-ever crime and spy series featuring the detective Nick Carter, the cruel Genius of Evil Zigomar, and intrepid Protéa the spy-catcher. The program is curated byÉmilie Cauquy, Hiroshi Komatsu and Mariann Lewinsky
  • SUPER8, 9.5MM & 16 MM – GREAT SMALL GAUGES: this Il Cinema Ritrovato edition focuses on one hand on the collection of the University of Paderborn dedicated to small gauge films by female experimental filmmakers from the German-speaking countries made between 1964 and the 2000s, including directors like Ute Aurand, Elfi Mikesch, Christine Noll Brinckmann and many more. On the other hand, it will celebrate the anniversary of the 9.5mm format which came on the market in the year 1922, with presentations from the collections of Home Movies, Les Inedits, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé and Lichtspiel/Kinemathek Bern, to be projected with a vintage 9.5mm projector. The program is curated byAnnette Brauerhoch and Karl Wratschko.

NOT ONLY FILMS

Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards
Two international juries, one of the critics and one of the filmmakers, will pick the best home-video releases of the year.

Book Fair
The most tempting collection of film books, DVDs, Blu-rays, and posters is offered inside the Renzo Renzi Library. Leave some empty room in your luggage!

FIAF Film Restoration Summer School
The ninth edition of the summer school dedicated to film restoration, promoted by FIAF, ACE, Cineteca di Bologna and L’Immagine Ritrovata, will finally take place in Bologna, after the forced postponement of the 2020 edition.

Pier Paolo Pasolini. Folgorazioni Figurative
Bologna, Sottopasso di Piazza Re Enzo, until 16th October 2022
The exhibition explores the dialogue between the great works of art history and Pasolini’s cinematographic work.

 

BUY YOUR PASS ONLINE

Bologna Welcome will provide festivalgoers with complete information about accommodation in Bologna, as well as travel tips. Early birds will have better opportunities and benefit from special rates. Click here to discover more.

Toute la mémoire du monde 2022 – The festival dedicated to restored films

 

This year’s Toute la mémoire du monde, the ninth edition of the festival dedicated to restored films, will have Carole Bouquet as its Godmother and Béla Tarr as the Guest of Honour. The festival will take place from March 30th to April 3rd.

Carole Bouquet will be on stage to talk about the films that are dear to her, Trop belle pour toi, Grosse fatigue, Travaux, but also about her incandescent work in Double Messieurs by her dear friend, Jean-François Stévenin.

The festival will pay a tribute to Béla Tarr during the Festival, an opportunity to review his monoliths, carved since the early 90s, including the impressive Sátántangó , but also to discover the hidden side of his filmography, his pre-glory films, striking portraits in colors of the Hungarian youth and working class.

Toute la mémoire du monde offers a vast selection of prestigious restorations, a unique opportunity to see again in exceptional conditions films as fundamental as Accattone, The Golden Age, Psychosis, The Rules of the Game or Truths and Lies. The festival will showcase rare works long hidden in the folds of history: As Tears Go By, Wong Kar-Wai‘s first feature film, Maddalena, sublimely set to music by Ennio Morricone, or Les Apaches by Dmitri Gaziadis. The festival will pay tribute to Isabelle Weingarten, Melvin Van Peebles, Peter Bogdanovich and Tonie Marshall, by showing some of their finest films on the big screen. Toute la mémoire du monde will help us get to know unknown filmmakers, the avant-garde Gustav Deutsch and Yuzo Kawashima, a pioneering director of the Japanese new wave. In conclusion the festival will showcase a selection of feature films from Deutsche Kinemathek and a selection of gems from Cinémathèque Française and from Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Turin.

For more information, visit the Cinémathèque Française’s website.