Preserving, restoring, promoting and sharing cinema

Due to an artistic conflict between Aslani and the festival curator, the projection was sabotaged, its reels were disrupted and projector malfunctioned. The critics walked out during the screening, as did the jury who pulled the film out of the competition. Discouraged, the producer didn’t bother sending the film to the international festivals. In subsequent private showings, Henri Langlois, Roberto Rossellini and Satyajit Ray had the opportunity to see the film in proper condition and congratulated the young director. Following the establishment of the Islamic government in 1979, the film was banned because of its non-Islamic content and the reels were subsequently declared lost. There was only a censored VHS, of very poor quality, circulating through informal channels.

Welcome to the World Movie Awards (WMAs)

The World Cinema Foundation would like to specially thank Alain Sembène and the Sembène Family for facilitating the restoration process. After scanning, the sound was digitally cleaned and background noise reduction was applied to eliminate all wear marks, without losing any of the dynamic features of the original soundtrack. All of this means that the African filmmaker’s work is very important – he must find a way that is his own, he must find his own symbols, even create symbols if he has to. Dancing is not a flaw in itself, but I never see an engineer dancing in front of his machine, and a continent or a people do not spend its time dancing.

The breathtaking location of Skellig Michael is just off the coast of Ireland. It is where Luke Skywalker has been in hiding for years, and where young protégée Rhea, finds him. Much of the movie is filmed here, as Rhea takes lessons from Luke and attempts to bring him back to help fight the First Order. When scouting the location, Lucasfilm reps first told residents they were doing a documentary film so as not to create too much stir. Morocco Ksar is a UNESCO World Heritage site in Ait-Ben-Haddou that was the backdrop to a key scene in The Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe.

A project in development

It has been recognised by the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) as one of the ten most prominent film archives in the world due to the extent, diversity and quality of its collections. CAMP DE THAIROYE was restored in 4K at L’Immagine Ritrovata using a second-generation dupe negative and original sound negative, preserved at the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs. The film was scanned in 4K at Éclair Laboratories and restored at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. The image was digitally stabilized and cleaned, and all wear marks were eliminated. Image grading helped recover the richness of the original cinematography. BADOU BOY was restored in 4K using the internegative and the sound negative.

Bradford leads on the Film Heritage project, showcasing Bradford’s contribution to film and television since the dawn of the moving image in the late 1800s. The Bradford District has hosted a diverse range of film and television productions, showing the many sides of the area, from the impressive city centre to the romantic moors of Ilkley and Haworth. Contrary to what people think, we talk a lot in Africa but we talk when it’s time to talk.

• The legendary filmmaker talks exclusively to Cinema Escapist about his mission to restore and promote African films.
• The restoration was closely supervised by Gita Aslani Shahrestani and Mohammad Reza Aslani; the film’s cinematographer Houshang Baharlou also contributed to the grading process.
• Bradford is a much sought after filming location with a wide range of productions coming to city, from Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters to high end TV drama.
• Launched last spring, the African Film Heritage Project (AFHP) is a joint initiative between Scorsese’s non-profit Film Foundation, UNESCO, Cineteca di Bologna, and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI).

Launched last spring, the African Film Heritage Project (AFHP) is a joint initiative between Scorsese’s non-profit Film Foundation, UNESCO, Cineteca di Bologna, and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI). It aims to locate and preserve 50 classic African films, some thought lost and others beyond repair, with hopes to make them available to audiences everywhere. We support activities that may be economically viable for craftspeople and communities. We improve our understanding of one another within and across communities. We are connected with the elements of our community histories and natural environments that help us understand who we are.

With Lucía, I wanted to view our history in phases, to show how apparent frustrations and setbacks –such as the decade of the ’30s–led us to a higher stage of national life. Whenever you make a historical film, whether it’s set two decades or two centuries ago, you are referring to the present. Because the elitist and the popular were so intimately tied, because petit bourgeois consciousness and influences from Europe and North America were so dominant, our general cultural panorama at the time of the Revolution was in fact a pretty desolate one. This was during the sixties, when the most important film movement was the French New Wave. Films like Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (1959) or Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) marked most of the subsequent decade. These influences alienated us from our indigenous cultural forms and from a more serious search for a kind of cultural expression consistent with national life and with the explosive dynamism of the Revolution.

Previous to the Bond THE EARLY SILENT ERA 1895-1915 film, there wasn’t actually a Day of the Dead parade held here. Sounds like a documentary movie you’ll be forced to watch when the substitute teacher walks in. Some of the most popular and acclaimed Hollywood movies have scenes set at these important locations. These places are old, beautiful and have some of the most unique visual characteristics in the world so of course they attract the attention of directors and producers.

Both the Armenian (also known as “Parajanov’s cut”) and Russian (Sergei Yutkevic’s) versions have been preserved and restored. The restoration used the original camera negative preserved at Russia’s Gosfilmofond, as well as the 35mm dupe negative held by the National Cinema Centre of Armenia. The 4K restoration of CHESS OF THE WIND was completed using the original 35mm camera and sound negatives.