New titles enrich the Eye Film Player’s selection. Recent additions are the films of Johan van der Keuken and The Forbidden Quest by Peter Delpeut.
Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001) was a man with an exceptional double talent, who filmed with a photographer’s eye and shot photographs with the eye of a filmmaker. Eye Film Player showcases the entire film oeuvre of Van der Keuken in the collection, from the classics Blind Kind (1964) and Beppie (1965) to his later work, including the now internationally celebrated documentaries, such as Amsterdam Global Village (1996) and The Long Holiday (2000). Eye Filmmuseum is currently devoting a major exhibition to the work of Johan van der Keuken (on display until February 5, 2023). Until February 5, Eye will publish two Van der Keuken films monthly on the Eye Film Player.
Eye Film Player is also the perfect place to discover The Forbidden Quest by Peter Delpeut, a magical story of the sole survivor of an expedition to the South Pole built with historical silent film footage. A compelling adventure film about murder, cannibalism and mystic salvation, a new digital restoration of the film by Eye is now available to watch free of charge worldwide. With films such as Lyrical Nitrate (1991), The Forbidden Questand Diva Dolorosa (1999) Peter Delpeut –a former film programmer at Eye Filmmuseum– set a standard for working with archival sources. The old, restored pieces of film are presented as relics of history; their presence in the film archives inspires a stream of new narratives, representing a dynamic approach to the beauty of our filmed past.
This year FIAF celebrates the 50th anniversary of their Periodicals Indexing Project (P.I.P). To mark this milestone, the association has commissioned a special celebration book, which will be presented during a two-day event, that will be held 22-23 September in Copenaghen at the Danish Film Institute.
Other than the book presentation, the event will also feature an indexing workshop and a symposium (only open to members of the FIAF Community) – organized in collaboration with the FIAF Cataloguing and Documentarion Commission.
The European Film Academy is broadening its scope and embracing European cinema from the classics to the contemporary to celebrate the rich and diverse film heritage of Europe. This will, of course, include the work of the honorary award recipients, such as the European Lifetime Achievement and the European Achievement in World Cinema awards, going in 2022 to Margarethe von Trotta and Elia Suleiman respectively. From this year onwards, it will also focus on special anniversaries or specific theme programmes all relating to European film.
For this reason, the European Film Academy has set up a new European Film Heritage department, led by Pascal Edelmann. As a first step, the European Film Academy has been building up a pan-European film heritage network, where cinematheques, film archives and institutions can share information on anniversaries of filmmakers, films, institutions, or specific themes relevant to the cinema history in the various European countries and regions. From now onwards, the Academy aims to actively connect various initiatives and make them much more widely known among lovers of European cinema.
22 New Places Added to “Treasures of European Film Culture”
As one of the new department’s first activities and in light of this year’s 35th European Film Awards, the Academy adds another 22 places to the TREASURES OF EUROPEAN FILM CULTURE, increasing the total number to 35. The Treasures is the Academy’s list of places of a symbolic nature for European cinema, places of historical value that need to be maintained and protected not just now but also for generations to come.
Matthijs Wouter Knol, Director of the European Film Academy: “Instead of limiting our work to organising the European Film Awards, the European Film Academy will embrace European film history and the people who have made European film what it is today. This will result in new projects with exciting partners, but also become visible in all programming we will do throughout the year: in our work for young audiences, in our awards ceremonies, and in new services we will start offering for our members.”
The European Film Awards’ ceremony will include as always an “In Memoriam” sequence, a tribute to all those colleagues who have passed away since the previous edition. If there are any filmmakers to include in the context who haven’t been mentioned to EFA so far, please send their names their way.
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.
The Association des Cinémathèques Européennes committee has penned a letter to President Zelensky to express its concern regarding the recent developments concerning the Dovzhenko Centre. You can read the full letter here.
Under the title Commercials from the Geesink studio (1942-1972), Eye is releasing ten themed programmes with some of the most important vintage commercials from the Geesink collection. The compilations can be watched – free of charge – world wide on the Eye Film Player, Eye’s streaming platform.
Dutch producer Joop Geesink set up a film studio in 1942 that made hundreds of advertisements for TV and cinema: stop-motion ‘puppet’ films under the name Dollywood as well as live action films under the name Starfilm. The Geesink studio’s collection is held in the Eye Filmmuseum archive. Eye has preserved and digitised part of this collection. Between 1 August 2022 and March 2023, Eye will be releasing eleven themed programmes featuring the best advertisements from the Dollywood and Starfilm studios on the Eye Film Player, Eye’s streaming platform. The compilations can be watched – free of charge – world wide.
Joop Geesink (1913-1984) – also known as ‘the Dutch Disney’ – was extremely effective at bringing in customers. One of his major clients was Philips, but Geesink also had many customers in, for example, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and the United States. Some seventy percent of Geesink productions were for the market outside of the Netherlands. In the US, people started to refer to ‘the Geesink technique’ in relation to the extremely good art direction and highly professional standard of animation. The Geesink studio won many awards for its stop-motion films, including prestigious Cannes Lions Awards.
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.
From 12 to 30 June 2022, the Deutsche Kinemathek mounted a Ukrainian film series in three German cities, including introductions and discussions. The project has been curated by Victoria Leshchenko and Yuliia Kovalenko, whose initiative sloïk film atelier provides a space for underrepresented voices and fosters them internationally. Funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
Information is available in three languages (English, Ukrainian, German) for future iterations of the programme at other institutions.
Russian war rhetoric seeks to negate the existence of Ukraine’s own history and culture. Ukrainian cinema, however, has a rich history and has recently been experiencing a veritable boom, testimony to a vivid, independent film culture. This series provides a map of that film culture negotiating self-perceptions, discourses, and places in the country.
