Film Preservation: Celebrating The Film Foundation
June 4–August 27, 2022
This series showcases an impressive range of world cinema that has been preserved thanks to a concerted effort by The Film Foundation and the World Cinema Project over more than thirty years.
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Shadows
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Sambizanga
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Taipei Story
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The Color of Pomegranates
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
L’Atalante
Jean Vigo
France, 19344K Digital Restoration
Saturday, June 4 7 PMView DetailsVigo’s only full-length feature, a poetic masterpiece on the theme of passionate love, follows a young barge captain and his peasant bride in their first days together. “One of the most magical of French masterpieces” (Variety).
Sambizanga
Sarah Maldoror
Angola, Congo, France, 1972Digital Restoration
Wednesday, June 8 7 PMView DetailsA searing, indelible portrait of anticolonial struggle in 1960s Africa, Maldoror’s adaptation of a novella by the Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira—“a courageous and powerful piece of filmmaking”—was banned by the Angolan government until the country obtained its independence from Portugal in 1975 (Basia Lewandowska Cummings, Africa Is a Country).
Lions Love ( . . . and Lies)
Agnès Varda
United States, 1969Digital Restoration
Thursday, June 9 7 PMView DetailsVarda’s experimental feature, shot in Hollywood in 1968 and starring Warhol superstar Viva, is a deliberately decadent riff on fantasy, immaturity, and violence. “More than a time capsule of events and moods—it’s a living aesthetic model for revolutionary times” (Richard Brody).
Illustrious Corpses
Francesco Rosi
Italy, 1976Digital Restoration
Saturday, June 11 7 PMView Details“An astute analysis of corruption . . . an absorbing, resonant, at times near majestic whodunit . . . the Italian analogue to Watergate-era conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and The Conversation” (J. Hoberman, New York Times).
Shadows
John Cassavetes
United States, 1959Restored 35mm Print
Friday, June 17 7 PMView DetailsTime never caught up with Cassavetes’s first film; his tale of three Black Manhattanites is still inherently hip, mordantly funny, terribly sad, and very New York.
Enamorada
Emilio Fernández
Mexico, 1946Digital Restoration
Wednesday, June 22 7 PMView DetailsThis classic Fernández-Figueroa collaboration starring Pedro Armendáriz and María Félix marries the Mexican Revolution and The Taming of the Shrew.
Forbidden Paradise
Ernst Lubitsch
United States, 19244K Digital Restoration
Saturday, June 25 7 PMJudith Rosenberg on PianoView DetailsLubitsch’s long-unavailable Forbidden Paradise brims with comic touches, as officer Alexei saves the czarina from revolutionary conspirators and is rewarded with her love; it represents a crucial refinement toward the “Lubitsch touch.”
The Color of Pomegranates
Sergei Parajanov
USSR, 1969Digital Restoration
Thursday, June 30 7 PMView DetailsThis magical work, rich in period music, reimagines Armenian history and culture through the life and writings of its greatest poet. “Watching [it] is like opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed” (Martin Scorsese).
Taipei Story
Edward Yang
Taiwan, 1985Digital Restoration
Friday, July 1 7 PMView DetailsPop star Tsai Chin and director Hou Hsiao-hsien star in Yang’s breakthrough work, a treatise on loves gone wrong, urban alienation, and sorrow within the bright lights of a mid-1980s Taipei caught between past and present.
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Ermanno Olmi
Italy, 1978Digital Restoration
Saturday, July 2 7 PMView DetailsOlmi won the Cannes Palme d’Or with this intimate epic of life, love, and work among three peasant families in turn-of-the-century Italy, “a fully articulated work of cinematic art” (Andrew Sarris).
Wanda
Barbara Loden
United States, 1970Digital Restoration
Wednesday, July 13 7 PMView DetailsWith her first and only feature film—a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in—Loden turned in a groundbreaking work of American independent cinema, bringing to life a kind of character seldom seen on-screen.
Prisoners of the Land
Mario Soffici
Argentina, 1939Digital Restoration
Friday, July 22 7 PMView DetailsThis passionate tropical noir, set in plantation-era Misiones, Argentina, weaves a love triangle around the class struggles of the birth of contemporary Latin America and is widely acclaimed as one the greatest Argentine films.
Queen of Diamonds
Nina Menkes
United States, 1991Digital Restoration
Wednesday, July 27 7 PMView DetailsShot with beautiful compositional rigor, Queen of Diamonds follows the life of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas landscape that juxtaposes glittering casino lights and barren desert landscapes.
The Olive Trees of Justice
James Blue
France, 1962Digital Restoration
Thursday, August 4 7:30 PMView DetailsBlue tells a powerful story of common people living and struggling in their daily lives, while providing a valuable testimony to the complexity of the Algerian struggle for independence. “A neorealist take on the Algerian War made with nonprofessional actors is newly restored and still resonates today” (J. Hoberman, New York Times).
Badou Boy
Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal, 1970Digital Restoration
Sunday, August 7 5 PMView DetailsAnticipating the director’s fanciful 1973 feature Touki Bouki, Badou Boy is an acerbically humorous portrait of Dakar, Senegal’s capital. With Contras’ City, Mambéty’s first short, which also riffs on life in Dakar.
Vittorio De Seta’s Short Films
Digital Restorations
Saturday, August 13 7 PMView DetailsDe Seta’s vivid documentary glimpses of postwar Sicily capture “the vitality of an unspoiled culture” (Martin Scorsese).
The Olive Trees of Justice
James Blue
France, 1962Digital Restoration
Friday, August 19 7 PMView DetailsBlue tells a powerful story of common people living and struggling in their daily lives, while providing a valuable testimony to the complexity of the Algerian struggle for independence. “A neorealist take on the Algerian War made with nonprofessional actors is newly restored and still resonates today” (J. Hoberman, New York Times).
I Know Where I’m Going!
Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
United Kingdom, 1945Digital Restoration
Saturday, August 20 4:30 PMView DetailsPowell and Pressburger’s most romantic, lyrical film sets a love affair against the vast beauty of Scotland’s Hebrides Islands in “one of the finest of all screen romances” (Elliot Stein, Village Voice).
Xiao Wu
Jia Zhangke
China, Hong Kong, 1997Digital Restoration
Friday, August 26 7 PMView DetailsA small-time, undermotivated pickpocket finds himself on the wrong end of China’s economic leap forward in Jia’s debut feature, a milestone in contemporary Chinese cinema.
Al Momia
Shadi Abdel Salam
Egypt, 1969Digital Restoration
Saturday, August 27 4:30 PMView DetailsAn impressive directorial debut by Salam, Al Momia is “an examination of cultural imperialism in reverse: . . . the film develops into a study of the importance of defending the past from would-be cultural exploiters. Slow-moving but absorbing, and quite beautifully shot” (Time Out).
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