ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes and Creative Europe MEDIA join the celebration of the International Animation Day on 28 October, a perfect occasion to spotlight the magnificent contribution that the ‘grand dame’ of animation – Lotte Reiniger (1899 -1981) – has made to the field with her oeuvre of pioneering silhouette films.
To ensure that her legacy lives on, the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, is currently working to restore eight films from Reiniger’s early work. The films will premiere in a free screening with live music on 14 December, as part of A Season of Classic Films, an initiative by ACE that features free screenings of restored films and parallel activities across Europe to attract younger audiences to our shared cinematic cultural heritage, supported by Creative Europe MEDIA. Details about the screening event at DFF can be found here.
For dates and access links of the upcoming free screenings in cinemas across Europe and online, please follow ACE’s website and social media pages on Instagram | Facebook | Twitter.
About the International Animation Day
The International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) created the International Animation Day in 2002, to celebrate the birth of animation historically marked by the first public performance of projected moving images at Emile Reynaud’s Theatre Optique on 28 October 1892 in Paris.
Starting in France with 120 locations, ASIFA now coordinates and helps promote activities in more than 50 countries all over the world, putting the art of animation in the limelight in a global worldwide celebration of animation. Find out what’s happening this year at http://iadasifa.net/.
Since 2015, the Film Restored Festival has been dedicated to film heritage in the digital age. Digital restorations celebrate their premieres here, filmmakers and restorers report on practical aspects of digitization processes, and experts discuss relevant political and aesthetic questions.
The seventh edition of the festival, titled “For real?!”, explores the numerous layers of the documentary form, whether they are aesthetic, political, or technical. It takes its cue from the 80th birthday of exceptional director Werner Herzog on 5 September, who has constantly tested the boundaries between fictional and documentary representations in his work and who has set international standards with his films. Over the course of five days, the festival will shed light on the aesthetic, political, and material layers of the documentary form in film history.
In addition, by choosing this theme, Film Restored aims to draw attention to the vast documentary film history from all around the globe, which have so far hardly been considered in the context of film preservation and digitization efforts.
The fifth edition of Budapest Classics Film Marathon, the international festival of restored films organised by National Film Institute is about to start and will run from September 13-18.
Over six days, the audience will be able to enjoy recently restored, popular classics and rarities for a total of 100 of the finest films from global movie history. The goal of Budapest Classics Film Marathon (BKFM) is to position the values of Hungarian film in the focus of domestic and international attention, and present the best of European film heritage to a Hungarian audience. Once again, the highlight of the festival is the transformation of the square in front of St. Stephen’s Basilica into a free open-air cinema for four evenings.
The main theme of the September festival is the Central European roots of Hollywood. The core of the programme comprises works by artists who, setting out from Budapest and frequently with stop-offs in Vienna and Berlin, made it to Hollywood where they achieved global fame. The lives of those individuals coming from territories that were formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and exporting Central European culture to America were often just as exciting as the works they created.
Filmoteca Española and SEFF (Seville European Film Festival) are committed to organize a two-day workshop titled “Programming European Heritage at Film Festival” during the festival, 5th-13th November 2022, at the city of Seville (Spain).
The workshop “Programming European Heritage at Film Festivals” will explore different forms of curating and screening heritage cinema within the global programming activity of a contemporary film festival. In the last years, European festivals that used to screen complete retrospectives of masters, solid subject-specific programmes or tributes to contemporary filmmakers (build with European heritage cinema), and even publish annual essays dedicated to its investigation, have been reducing or removing the presence of the cinema of the past in their offer.
Restored by Filmoteca de Catalunya in 4K, the film Apartado de Correos 1001 (P.O. Box 1001) will be presented in a free open-air screening event at the Plaza de Salvador Seguí on Sunday 17 July 2022 at 22:00, as part of A Season of Classic Films. The film will also be free-to-view worldwide between 18 and 19 July.
This film is a great classic of Barcelona’s cinema noir. An echo of the Hollywood thrillers in the context of the Franco regime.
The film was shot on location: on the streets and at popular venues of 1950s Barcelona city centre, especially the neighbourhood where the cinema theatre of Filmoteca de Catalunya is located nowadays. How does this film from the fifties connect to the realities of the neighbourhood today? Filmoteca has conceived a physical and virtual itinerary that connects films linked to the area of Raval. The result is a collaborative map to understand how cinema produces reality and reality produces cinema. The map is available to pick up at the Filmoteca or in a digital version. Audiences can follow the itinerary in the way that suits them best (fragmented, complete, with or without company…) and are encouraged to share snapshots using the tag #FilmoRutaRaval. An organised walk will take place before the film screening, upon registration.
Director: Julio Salvador. Producer: Emisora Films. With: Tomás Blanco, Modesto Cid, Elena Espejo, Guillermo Marín, Conrado San Martín. Script: Julio Coll, Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi. Cinematography: Federico G. Larraya. Music: Ramón Ferrés. Physical characteristics of first release: 16mm, 90’, B&W, sound, Spanish. Film copy screened during A Season of Classic Films: New restoration. DCP 4K, 90’, Spanish. Subtitles available: English, French. Copyright: Video Mercury Films, SAU.
Barcelona, 1950. A man is murdered in the street in front of a police station. Two agents of the criminal brigade, a skilled veteran and an eager young one, are in charge of the investigation. We follow them on their journey to a thrilling climax in a local amusement park.
A Season of Classic Films: Celebrating film heritage across Europe
A Season of Classics Films is a series of free film screenings and parallel activities across Europe designed to attract younger audiences to our shared cinematic cultural heritage. The programme looks to raise awareness of the work of European film archives, connecting the public with cinema history and the significance of film preservation. Most of the films are premiere digital restorations and some screenings include live performances and educational interactive sessions. All films are available with English subtitles. Additionally, French or other subtitles are in some cases available. This is an initiative of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) with the support of the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.
For dates and access links of the upcoming free screenings in cinemas across Europe and online, please follow ACE’s website and social media pages on Instagram | Facebook | Twitter.
ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION DES CINÉMATHÈQUES EUROPÉENNES (ACE)
The Association of European Cinematheques (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes – ACE) is an affiliation of 49 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.
MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna Via Giovanni Minzoni 14, 40121 Bologna, Italy
The beginning of the 21st century brought along the most significant technological transformation that cinema has undergone since its invention.
The replacement by digital of analogue technology in the entire cinematographic chain from production to exhibition has had far more profound consequences than all the technological changes that occurred in the first century of cinema. These include the replacement of the 35mm cellulose nitrate film base with cellulose triacetate, and even the transition from silent cinema to sound cinema.
One of the consequences of the digital transformation is the need to establish an all-new archival methodology — including digital repositories whose long-term viability is still unproven. But another, no less decisive consequence, is the need to define how we intend, from now on, to preserve and exhibit the great historical collection of 20th century cinema.
ACE Film education Training at “Il Cinema ritrovato” Festival
Friday, July 1st, 10.00 – 16.00 pm
Sala Cervi, Via Riva di Reno, 72/A, Bologna
A group of education specialists from key European Cinematheques in the ACE are inviting colleagues to a one-day seminar at the Festival del Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna on Friday 1st July. Cinematheques and film archives have for many decades led the engagement of schools, children and young people with the heritage of cinema, and this event seeks to extend and amplify that work, principally by inviting renowned cineaste, thinker and educator Alain Bergala, to lead a discussion around approaches to film education. The day comes in two parts:
ACE presents the 3rd edition of A Season of Classic Films, which includes cinema and online screenings of restored films and parallel events organised by 22 European film archives between June and December 2022.
Opening night is Thursday 9 June (International Archives Day) and will start with the world premiere of the restored Face to Face (1966) by the Greek Film Archive. The film is about a timid young man hired to give English lessons to the daughter of a nouveau riche family. The screening will take place at Lais Open Air Cinema in Athens, while free online access is available for one day starting at 20:00 (Paris time) on 9th June.
On Friday 10 June, the programme continues with the restored Croatian comedy Blue 9. The film will be presented by the Croatian state archive – Croatian cinematheque at the main cinema room of the Archives and it will be free-to-view online from 10 to 17 June.
Both online screenings offer worldwide access with English subtitles.
Πρόσωπο με Πρόσωπο [Prosopo me Prosopo] (Face to Face) | Greece, 1966, 84’, fiction
Director-Producer: Roviros Manthoulis. With: Costas Messaris, Eleni Stavropoulou, Theano Ioannidou, Lambros Kotsiris, Alexis Georgiou, Mary Gotsi. Script: Roviros Manthoulis, Kostas Mourselas. Cinematography: Stamatis Trypos. Music: Nikos Mamangakis. Editing: Panos Papakyriakopoulos. Physical characteristics of first release: 35mm, 1:1.66, 24fps, 84’, B&W, sound, Greek. Film copy screened during A Season of Classic Films: Restoration premiere. DCP 4K (physical screening) and ProRes (online screening), 84’, Greek. Subtitles: English. Copyright: Roviros Manthoulis.
The main story of the film is about a poor English teacher who tutors the daughter of a rich family and flirts with both the daughter and her mother. Manthoulis presents a bitter satire of the new bourgeoisie which was profiting from the rapid economic growth in the 1960s but also presents a unique portrait of Athens experiencing a rapid and poorly planned urban development.
Only a few weeks after filmmaker Roviros Manthoulis passed away, this screening also serves as a tribute to his acclaimed work. Manthoulis played a crucial role in the renewal of Greek cinema in both documentary and fiction film. In the beginning of April, he was informed about how the restoration of his film Face to Face was going and of the great impression it made to the colleagues at the laboratory of Imagine Ritrovata in Paris – he was happy but also very modest. He died on April 21st, exactly 55 years after his film was first screened in Hyeres Festival. It was enthusiastically received by both the public and the critics and, as a result, it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Manthoulis then made statements against the Greek military junta (1967-74) that were broadcast worldwide and the film was banned by the colonels.
The image and sound restoration have been carried out in 4K based on the original 35mm negatives, preserved at the Greek Film Archive vaults. The film will be screened during the 12th Avant Garde Film Festival in Athens, following a roundtable discussion on film restoration including film experts Cecilia Barrionuevo, Ehsan Khoshbakht, Céline Ruivo, Elena Tammacarro, and Marian Vujovic as well as the inauguration of the Greek Film Archive’s exhibition “Magical Images”.
Plavi 9 (Blue 9) | Yugoslavia, 1950, 93’, fiction
Director: Krešo Golik. Producer: Jadran film. With: Irena Kolesar, Jugoslav Nalis, Antun Nalis, Ljubomir Didić, Tješivoj Cinotti, Šime Šimatović, Josip Daneš, Stane Sever, Veljko Maričić. Script: Geno Senečić, Hrvoje Macanović, Krešo Golik. Cinematography: Nikola Tanhofer and Slavko Zalar. Music: Bruno Bjelinski. Editing: Radojka Ivančević. Physical characteristics of first release: 35mm, 93’, B&W, optical sound, Croatian. Film copy screened during A Season of Classic Films: New restoration. DCP 2K, 93’, Croatian. Subtitles: English. Copyright: Jadran film (until the end of 2000); authors rights.
The film Blue 9 depicts adventures in the world of football with all the challenges and glory this game offers. The main striker of the city football team, Fabris, is a selfish individualist convinced of his irreplaceability. He is also a womanizer who tries to seduce young Nena, a hardworker and successful swimmer. Nena is close to the underwater welder Zdravko, a talented football striker who wears a jersey with a blue 9.
The basic formula of this film is part of the agitprop, which dealt with one of the foundations of the socialist system – physical education. The ideological engagement did not prevent the film from becoming a big hit in cinemas, mainly due to attractive footage of sport competitions, girls in bathing suits, and the fashionable life of football stars. Blue 9 is regarded as the first Yugoslav film to escape from the war narrative and set its plot in the everyday life.
A Season of Classic Films: Celebrating film heritage across Europe
A Season of Classics Films is a series of free film screenings and parallel activities across Europe designed to attract younger audiences to our shared cinematic cultural heritage. The programme looks to raise awareness of the work of European film archives, connecting the public with cinema history and the significance of film preservation. Most of the films are premiere digital restorations and some screenings include live performances and educational interactive sessions. All films are available with English subtitles. Additionally, French or other subtitles are in some cases available. This is an initiative of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) with the support of the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.
For dates and access links of the upcoming free screenings in cinemas across Europe and online, please follow ACE’s website and social media pages on Instagram | Facebook | Twitter.
ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION DES CINÉMATHÈQUES EUROPÉENNES (ACE)
The Association of European Cinematheques (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes – ACE) is an affiliation of 49 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.
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 inPiazza 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 from25 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)
The third edition of ‘A Season of Classic Films’ was presented today at the EU Pavilion in Cannes when ACE (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes) revealed details of the new programme running June to December 2022 in European cinemas and online.
A Season of Classic Films
‘A Season of Classic Films’ is a series of free screenings designed to attract younger audiences to our shared cinematic cultural heritage. The programme looks to raise awareness of the work of European film archives, connecting the public with cinema history and the significance of film preservation. Most of the films are new digital restorations, and some screenings include dynamic elements such as live music performances and educational interactive sessions. All films are available with English subtitles.
Twenty-two film archives from 21 European countries (all ACE members) will participate in the classic film season, and each archive has selected a film or film compilation from their own collection to restore and present.
Joint Restoration Grant
Additionally at the event in Cannes, ACE presented the Joint Restoration Grant of €50,000 awarded for the restoration of the film Life of a Shock Force Worker (1972). The jury, comprising filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, Pordenone Silent Film Festival director Jay Weissberg and director of the Cinema-Fiction Department of ARTE Claudia Tronnier, selected the film from a raft of proposals submitted by European film archives.
Four partner institutions from Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Bosnia are joining forces to restore Life of a Shock Force Worker, a wonderful example of Yugoslavian New Cinema. Inspired by daily life in a coal mine, the film critiques the political regime of the era, all the time illustrating the state ideology of comradeship and unity. It further offers a clearer and more nuanced view of Yugoslavian film history, one of the blind spots on the map of European film heritage, and at the same time touches upon the pertinent matter of propaganda in our post-truth era.
“Large parts of the Yugoslavian film heritage have so far been underserved,” the jury writes of its choice. “Life of a Shock Force Worker has strong imagery, but it is in desperate need of colour grading since the original has faded with time. A key asset is that ACE and the four partner institutions responsible for this restoration project will collaborate with DoP Karpo Godina.”
During the war in Bosnia in the 1990s, film director Bahrudin Bato Čengić deposited a 35mm print of the film at the Slovenian cinematheque, while the image and sound negatives remain at the Croatian state archive. Post-restoration, the film will be offered in a new 2K edition with the support of the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme and the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia.
Cinema and online screenings
This year’s ‘A Season of Classic Films’ promises to offer very much an in-person series of events and presentations within European cinemas. Most of the films will also be available online to allow for a greater reach to international audiences, building up on the experience gained during the previous edition.
“The second edition of A Season of Classic Films took place when most of our public venues were closed for long periods of time,” says ACE President Sandra den Hamer, also Director of Eye Filmmuseum. “Nevertheless, European cinematheques actively connected with their audiences through online screenings, new streaming platforms and/or hybrid events. ‘A Season of Classic Films’, as a joint project, again strengthened the collaboration and solidarity between the participating film institutions.”
From left: Jay Weissberg, Paulina Reizi, Sergei Loznitsa, Claudia Tronnier, Sandra den Hamer.
The Cannes ‘A Season of Classic Films’ presentation took place on May 23 at the EU Pavilion. The event was moderated by Paulina Reizi (Eye Filmmuseum, Coordinator of A Season of Classic Films). Speakers and special guests included Sandra den Hamer (President of ACE and director of Eye Filmmuseum), Sergei Loznitsa (Filmmaker), Claudia Tronnier (Director of the Cinema-Fiction Department at ARTE) and Jay Weissberg (Director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival).
ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION DES CINÉMATHÈQUES EUROPÉENNES (ACE)
The Association of European Cinematheques (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes – ACE) is an affiliation of 49 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.
ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes and Creative Europe MEDIA join the celebration of the International Animation Day on 28 October, a perfect occasion to spotlight the magnificent contribution that the ‘grand dame’ of animation – Lotte Reiniger (1899 -1981) – has made to the field with her oeuvre of pioneering silhouette films.
The International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) created the International Animation Day in 2002, to celebrate the birth of animation historically marked by the first public performance of projected moving images at Emile Reynaud’s Theatre Optique on 28 October 1892 in Paris.
