On July 27th, before the screening in Piazza Maggiore, Andrea Meneghelli (Cineteca di Bologna) and composer and musician Daniele Furlati presented the restoration work on Mario Fantin’s footage of the 1954 expedition on K2, directed by the geologist Ardito Desio. The footage was originally part of the 1955 Marcello Baldi’s documentary Italia K2, but the restored version of the documentary will have its premiere at the Trento Film Festival and the screening in Piazza Maggiore focuses on the mountain scenery with a new editing by Andrea Meneghelli, texts by Albino Ferrari and original music by Teo Uselli orchestrated and adapted by Daniele Furlati.
The winners of the XVIII Edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato’s DVD Awards were presented on Saturday, the 24th by film critic and jury president Paolo Merghetti. He was joined at Piazzetta Pier Paolo Pasolini by other members of the jury present in Bologna. In addition to core prizes in the categories of Best Box Set, Best Special Features, Best Rediscovery of a Forgotten Film, Best Single Film Release, Best Documentary, and Best Film, each member of the jury chose a personal winner from amongst more than 40 finalists. The full 2021 jury was comprised of Lorenzo Codelli, Shivendra Singh Dungapur, Phillipe Garnier, Pamela Hutchinson, Miguel Marías, and Paolo Mereghetti. A complete list of winners can be found below.
On July 24th, the Auditorium DAMS Lab hosted the talk on the restoration of Sarah Maldodor‘s Sambizanga with the partecipation of Annouchka De Andrade (Daughter of the director and Amiens Film Festival Artistic Director) and Cecilia Cenciarelli (Cineteca di Bologna). This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, created by The Film Foundation, FEPACI and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – in support of the restoration and the distribution of African cinema. Cecilia Cenciarelli explained that this restoration was in the works for a very long time and it was made possible by The Film Foundation and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers – La Federation Panafricaine des Cineastes (FEPACI). Without associations that highlight the African film heritage, many films would be lost forever.
On Friday the 23rd, editor Camille Blot-Wellens and executive publisher Christophe Dupin delivered a presentation at Il Cinema Ritrovato on the newly expanded edition of Harold Brown’s Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification, following its publication in November of 2020.
The project, which was first proposed by Blot-Wellens in 2014, remains true in content and spirit to Harold Brown’s original edition, published by FIAF in 1990. In addition to preserving and clarifying his work with the integration of more than 900 images into the body of the text, and the inclusion of updated information in footnotes and a comprehensive index, the second section of the new edition is comprised of additional research, with a wealth of contributions from archivists specialising in film-identification.
A particularly valuable feature of the expanded text concerns the dating of film from specific production companies: Blot-Wellens and collaborators from a range of archives and cinematheques provide critical findings which enable the precise identification of film stock from AGFA, Pathé, Fuji, and other production companies by year.
Dupin began with a tribute to Brown, sharing details from his extraordinary life as a pioneer in archival preservation and film identification with attendees at Auditorium DAMS lab. From his post as an office boy at the BFI at just 15 years old, Brown would go on to be at the forefront of the creation of scientific film identification methods, a key player in FIAF’s Technical and Preservation Commissions, and an active educator, continuing to teach and publish even after his retirement. The expanded work is an extension of this remarkable legacy.
Additional remarks were made by Martin Koerber, head archivist at the Deutsche Kinemathek and author of the volume’s foreword, as well as Peter Bagrov of the Eastman Museum, whose essay, ‘Preliminary Notes on Soviet Nitrate Film Stock and Other Aids to Identification of Russian and Soviet Films,’ is included in the new edition.
Harold Brown’s Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification is available for online order throughFIAF and North American distributor Indiana University Press, as well as for purchase at the festival book fair in Bologna.
As part of the restoration meetings presented during the mornings of Il Cinema Ritrovato, today the Auditorium DAMS Lab hosted the talk on the two new Cinémathèque française’s restorations: F for Fake and Un chien andalou. While the choice may appear strange, these two films are connected by the importance of the pioneers behind them: respectively Orson Welles and Luis Buñuel.
The restoration of F for Fake, carried out by Les Film de l’Astrophore and the Cinémathèques française in collaboration with Documentaire sur grand écran, the Cinémathèque suisse and the Institut audiovisuel de Monaco and with the help of Hiventy and the L.E. Diapason Studio, was first presented during Cannes Classics and will be screened in Piazza Maggiore tonight at 21:30. To give a detailed explaination of the restoration work, the conference saw the participation of members from Hiventy and L.E. Diapason. F for Fake has parts in 16mm and others in 35mm and Hiventy’s work consisted in creating a more cohesive visual flow, while preserving the photochemical quality of the original copy. For the sound, L.E. Diapason studio had to work on the post-synchronization of the dialogues.
Un chien andalou will be screened in Piazza Maggiore on Saturday at 21.30. The 4k restoration was carried out by the Cinémathèque française and Filmoteca Española in collaboration with Les Grands Films Classiques. The Filmoteca Española has restored Buñuel’s works over the years, but Un chien andalou was a difficult operation for the availability of the original prints. Hiventy’s work started from an original negative and a safety countertype stored in Cinémathèque française and a 2003 analogical countertype from the Filmoteca Española. In order to preserve the film in its best and most accurate form, the speed of the projector must be changed during the screening. The restoration was possible thanks to the contribution from the Creative Europe project in the context of “A Season of Classic Films”.
Il Cinema Ritrovato hosts during the mornings a series of meeting about restoration. The first one took place in the morning of July 21st at the Auditorium DAMS Lab in Piazzetta Pasolini, where Bruno Mestdagh, responsible for the CINEMATEK‘s Digital Film Collections, presented their restoration of De Man die zijn haar kort liet knippen (L’Homme au crâne rasé), André Delvaux‘s 1965 adaptation of the same-named novel by Johan Daisne.
The brand-new restoration had its world premiere during two free special screenings promoted by A Season of Classic Films in CINEMATEK’s renovated cinema. This is a new digital restoration in 2K from the original negative material preserved and restored by CINEMATEK. The restoration and free screenings are made possible thanks to A Season of Classic Films, an initiative of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) with the financial support of the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.
The Cannes Film Festival returns, after a one-year stop because of the pandemic, for a new edition. As always, the festival has a section named Cannes Classics, that features the best restored prints of the previous months. These are the movies the ACE members have worked on that are going to be screened in Cannes: Read more
The Brilliant Biograph, Mills of the Zaan Region (GB & NL, 1898) (c) Eye Filmmuseum
The Brilliant Biograph has won the FOCAL Award 2021 in the category ‘Best Archive Restoration & Preservation Project’. These recordings from the early years of cinema rank among the most richly detailed images in film history. The compilation transports viewers back to around 1900, when cities such as Berlin, Amsterdam and London were undergoing rapid growth. Of incomparable beauty are the shots of an enchanting Venice, a tourist destination reserved for the happy few at the time. The film can be watched free of charge on the Eye Film Player.
The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902) is a magnificent compilation of recordings from the collection of the Mutoscope and Biograph Company, one of the first film companies. The images take you back 120 years in time to Venice, Berlin and Amsterdam, letting you experience the excitement of the first film footage.Read more
26/02/2014 – This year’s FIAF Film Restoration Summer School will be held in Bologna from 28 June to 18 July.
Since 2007 Cineteca di Bologna – in collaboration with FIAF, ACE and the EU MEDIA Programme – has been hosting the FIAF Film Restoration Summer School. It is designed both for archivists and staff working at FIAF archives, and students. The main purpose of this training programme is to foster knowledge in the field of film restoration and conservation. Selected participants will meet meet experts from all over the world, as well as the Laboratory and Cineteca staff.
The programme is divided in 3 sections:
ON-LINE DISTANCE LEARNING
THEORY CLASSES
RESTORATION PRACTICE
We are glad to announce that FIAF and ACE will grant a number of scholarships for the Film Restoration Summer School 2014:
FIAF grants 3 scholarships of € 1.000 each ACE grants 3 scholarships of € 750 each
31 May 2013 – Cinephiles from all over the world will meet during the 27th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna. From 29 June to 6 July, a selection of very best restorations both in 35 mm and digital formats will be presented in the festival cinemas and during the evening screenings at the Piazza Maggiore. Special sections are dedicated to Hitchcock’s silents films, Allan Dawn, Vittorio De Sica, Charlie Chaplin at Mutual, Glorious 1913, Soviet filmmakers Olga Preobrazhenskaya and Ivan Pravov, to name only a few. This year’s programme will also include two screenings of films digitised in the scope of EFG1914, a joint project between 21 European film archives, with a special focus on First World War.
For further inormation, please visit the official website
