Every year, the member institutions of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) preserve hundreds of motion pictures, working together to find the best surviving materials for each film. Spanning the history of the moving image, these preserved films are vivid reflectitons of the diverse cultures that produced them, making this annual Festival a tribute to the passion and commitment of film conservators and archivists around the world. The films in this third edition of To Save and Project were preserved through the collaborative efforts of FIAF archives, as well as commercial studios and distributors. Virtually all are having their New York premieres, and some are shown in versions never before seen in the U.S.
The Festival opens with a tribute to Il Cinema Ritrovato, the preservation festival in Bologna, Italy, now celebrating its 19th year. Festival codirectors Gian Luca Farinelli and Peter von Bagh present the New York premieres of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution (1964), Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg’s Soviet epic The New Babylon (1929), and Dusan Makavejev’s Innocence Unprotected: A New Edition of a Good Old Movie (1968). Other highlights in May include Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963); a major reconstruction of the Russian release version of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925); Vishnupant Govind Damle and Sheikh Fattelal’s Sant Tukaram (1936), a masterpiece of poetic realism from preindependence India; and special tributes to the French filmmaker Jacques Feyder and British filmmaker Anthony Asquith. In June, screenings include the first films of actors Asta Nielsen and Michel Simon; classics of silent American animation; a special presentation by Marta Braun, scholar of Étienne-Jules Marey’s revolutionary chronophotographs; two documentaries by Ingmar Bergman; Michael Reeves’s horror masterpiece Witchfinder General (1968); and a weeklong presentation of Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958), in its recently rediscovered English-language version.
Organized by Steven Higgins, Curator; Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator; Anne Morra, Assistant Curator; Leigh Goldstein, Executive Assistant, Department of Film and Media.