The world premiere of Fantastic Flowers, a dazzling compilation of early colour films, will take place on 28 June at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna. The programme, which explores the use of colour techniques and the symbolic role of flowers in early cinema, is the result of a cross-border restoration project funded by the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) through its Joint Restoration Grant.

This year’s award-winning project was a collaboration between the CINEMATEK – Royal Film Archive of Belgium, Eye Filmmuseum (The Netherlands), and Filmarchiv Austria. The first public screening was held on 24 May at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, with live music and presentations by the partner archives. Following Bologna, the programme will tour other festivals and cinémathèques.

A Unique Grant to Support Cross-European Film Heritage

The Joint Restoration Grant was launched by ACE in 2022 as part of its A Season of Classic Films programme. Thanks to additional funding from the European Commission, the initiative supports transnational restoration projects involving at least three European film archives. In 2024, a jury comprising Oscar-winning filmmaker István Szabó, ARTE’s Feature Film Department Deputy Head Barbara Häbe, and film curator-educator Eva Sangiorgi selected two winners from applications submitted by film heritage institutions across Europe.

Restoring Fantastic Flowers (1906–1920)

Fantastic Flowers comprises 15 silent short films produced between 1906 and 1920, showcasing the vivid aesthetics of the early stencil-colour era. Each frame was coloured using the Pathécolor process or similar techniques, resulting in a kaleidoscope of floral imagery. Curated around the theme of “flowers”, the programme features everything from ornamental gardens and flower parades to Japanese floral traditions and the use of flowers in fantastical trick films.

Despite being more than a century old, many original nitrate prints remain strikingly vivid. Stencil-coloured films, especially those coloured via Pathécolor, stand out in archive collections. These colours were painstakingly applied to black-and-white stock when film emulsions were not yet colour-sensitive, making them an early milestone in cinematic artistry.

Technical Excellence and Historical Insights

The restoration involved meticulous work by Haghefilm laboratory, using wet-gate scanning at 2K resolution via the Oxberry scanner—ideal for shrunken and fragile material. “Correcting previous repairs that used white opaque tape revealed image areas that had been obscured. It was time-consuming, but worth it,” said Bin Li, film restorer at Haghefilm.

Adeline Law, who supported the scanning process, noted the use of a customised Look-Up Table to accurately map colours: “This allowed us to preserve the rich spectrum of the stencil-coloured films and remain faithful to the original prints.”

Nick Verlinden, film restorer at CINEMATEK added, “Stabilisation was tricky because the flowers often moved or transformed, so they couldn’t serve as fixed reference points.”

Today’s digital technologies allow precise frame-by-frame grading and individual colour processing, unlocking vibrant hues and exposing sophisticated techniques—like hand colouring, tinting, and colour cross-fades—that go far beyond simple stencilling.

“Since these films were originally shot on black-and-white stock with colours added later, reproducing them on colour film negatives compromises both the added colours and the areas deliberately left black-and-white”, said Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Curator at Eye Filmmuseum. “Digital technology allows us to accurately recreate this delicate balance within each frame.”

Archival research also played a crucial role in the restoration process. One example is Le Chrysantème, Roi de l’Automne, identified through archival records as a 1914 Eclair Scientia film.

Bruno Mestdagh, Head of the Digital Film Collection at the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, added that one of the films showcases the production facilities of Vilmorin, a historic seed producer and botanical company that still exists today. “Over the years, Vilmorin’s catalogues have featured a distinctive design and artistic style,” he said. “These catalogues inspired the choice of fonts used in the design of the new title cards and logo.”

The restored programme not only offers a glimpse into the rich visual world of early cinema but also contributes to the ongoing debate around colourisation, particularly in the digital age. As AI tools prompt renewed interest in colour reproduction, Fantastic Flowers invites audiences to appreciate the artistry and craft of early colour pioneers.

The  6^th edition of A Season of Classic Films opens on Wednesday 4 June, with a special screening presented by Cinemateca Portuguesa–Museu do Cinema. This annual programme, coordinated by ACE (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes) and supported by Creative Europe MEDIA, brings this year together 27 European film archives for a rich programme of restored films and parallel events, running from June to December 2025 in cinemas and online.

This year, Portugal’s contribution focuses on two major figures in national animation: Abi Feijó and Regina Pessoa. Organised in collaboration with the National Cinema Plan (Plano Nacional do Cinema), the programme celebrates their artistic legacy and unique contributions through new digital restorations by Cinemateca Portuguesa of some of their most iconic short films.

Investing in Restoration and Distribution of Films from European Archives

ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes unveiled on 20 May details of this year’s edition of A Season of Classic Films, during the 77th Festival de Cannes. Building on the success of previous years, A Season of Classic Films returns for a fifth edition with free screenings of newly restored films in cinemas and online, to continue to raise awareness about the work of the European film archives and advocate for the significance of film preservation and cinema culture, especially to younger generations. During the first five editions, the programme has supported the restoration and circulation of more than 170 European films.

The restored films of each edition are presented in a catalogue that includes context and contact information to enable further distribution beyond the end of this programme.

 View the full A Season of Classic Films 2024 Programme (PDF) 

Full programme and awards of the Joint Film Restoration Grant announced at Cannes

This year’s programme is curated by 24 European film heritage institutions. The films range from early silent classics, to sci-fi and noir films, and to works that foster reflection about humanity, slavery and domination, authoritarian regimes, and memory. The film institutions organise free-admission cinema screenings to present their respective restored films between June and December 2024. These special events feature talks by filmmakers or archivists, masterclasses, live music, educational activities, or parallel exhibitions. Selected films are also globally accessible online at no charge. All films are available with English subtitles. 

In addition to the newly restored films presented by each European archive, a Joint Restoration Grant is awarded as part of A Season of Classic Films to support transnational collaboration between film institutions for film preservation and restoration, for at least three European film archives collaborate on a single restoration.

At the Cannes event, ACE also presented the two recipients of this year’s Joint Restoration Grant of €60.000 shared between Vulo Radev’s humanist film The Peach Thief (1964) and a compilation of spectacular stencil-coloured shorts titled Fantastic Flowers (1906-1920). The jury, comprised of Oscar-awarded filmmaker István Szabó, ARTE’s Feature Film Department Deputy Head Barbara Häbe, and film curator-educator Eva Sangiorgi, selected the winners from applications submitted by Europe’s film heritage institutions.

“The Peach Thief is a piece of film history with a powerful humanist message of understanding and brotherhood. In this sense, the central love story is an image of a broader meaning that can be embraced in our time. For us, as members of the jury, it was a discovery and we were touched by the grace and intensity of its language,” the jury writes of its choice. The Peach Thief will be meticulously restored in 4K thanks to the partnership between the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, the Bulgarian National Film Archive, and the Montenegrin Cinematheque.

The second grant award goes to the restoration of lavishly stenciled-coloured films on the theme of “flowers”, a collaborative effort between the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, Eye Filmmuseum, and Filmarchiv Austria. This restoration programme aims to recreate for today’s audiences the experience of cinemagoers of more than a century ago, but also to provide a historical context to the colourisation debate, which surged as a result of the new possibilities offered by present-day digital technologies, particularly the emergence of AI.

A Season of Classic Films is supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

Joint Film Restoration Grant 2024 – Jury Members

Barbara Häbe is currently the Deputy Head of the Feature Film Department at ARTE. She joined the French TV channel La Sept in 1989, which later became a member company of the European culture TV channel ARTE, and since 1992, she works at ARTE’s head office in Strasbourg. Initially, in charge of coproductions and acquisitions of international short films, Barbara Häbe is now responsible for coordinating feature films and selecting and supporting cinema coproductions proposed by the ARTE Group in the domains of classical movies, young cinema, and international coproductions. She also collaborates with the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes for the ArteKino Classics programme. 

Eva Sangiorgi is currently the artistic director of the Viennale, the Vienna International Film Festival. In 2021, she also became the coordinator of the Film Curating Studies Department at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE) film school in San Sebastian, Spain.

István Szabó is a legendary filmmaker with an impressive body of work distinguished by its stylistic virtuosity and narrative complexity, often exploring the timeless theme of personal identity and politics. He is the first to bring Hungary the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and his numerous distinctions include Jury Prize, Best Screenplay and FIPRESCI at Cannes, two Silver Bears at Berlinale, a Golden Leopard at Locarno, a BAFTA Film Award, Best Director at Mar del Plata, five Oscar and Palme d’Or nominations, and lifetime achievement awards.

 View the full A Season of Classic Films 2024 Programme (PDF) 

ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION DES CINÉMATHÈQUES EUROPÉENNES (ACE)

The Association of European Cinematheques (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes – ACE) is an affiliation of 50 European national and regional film archives. Its role is to safeguard the European film heritage and make the rich audiovisual records collected and preserved by the various film archives accessible to the public. ACE members are non-profit institutions committed to the FIAF Code of Ethics.

Instagram: instagram.com/acefilmeu/ 

X-Twitter: twitter.com/acefilmeu 

Facebook: facebook.com/AssociationdesCinemathequesEuropeennes