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 reflections 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 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 US.
The May program features three rediscoveries of silent French and Weimar cinema, Jacques Feyder’s Crainquebille (1923), Joe May’s Asphalt (1929), and People on Sunday (1929) by Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, and Billy Wilder; a postwar supernatural thriller, Bernard Vorhaus’s The Amazing Mr. X (aka The Spiritualist) (1948); Delmer Daves’s western 3:10 to Yuma (1957); Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965); and four features by Finnish filmmaker Teuvo Tulio, hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as a master of melodrama.
The June program features a special appearance by legendary nonfiction filmmaker Robert Gardner; stunning preservations of films by Fritz Lang, Lev Kuleshov, Haile Gerima, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Otto Preminger, Satyajit Ray, and King Vidor; tales of horror and the uncanny from Japan (Uchida Tomu’s The Mad Fox), Great Britain (Thorold Dickinson’s The Queen of Spades), and the United States (Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess); gorgeous hand-colored, hand-stenciled actualités, or proto-newsreels, from 1900–12; and four features by André Antoine, an unsung master of silent-era French realism.
Organized by Steven Higgins, Curator; Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator; Anne Morra, Assistant Curator; and Leigh Goldstein, Executive Assistant, Department of Film and Media.