Silent films will be shown with live piano accompaniment.
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The Museum of Modern Art’s 21st “To Save and Project” International Festival of Film Preservation, the museum’s annual festival dedicated to celebrating newly preserved and restored films, will take place from January 9 to January 30, 2025.
American actors Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell on the set of 7th Heaven, based on the play by Austin Strong and directed by Frank Borzage. (Photo by Fox Film Corporation/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Images
It will showcase over 25 feature films and shorts programs in newly preserved or restored versions, and open and close with the restoration premieres of two major silent films preserved in MoMA’s archives: Frank Borzage’s romance 7th Heaven (1927), in a new upgrade from MoMA’s previous restoration; and Charles Chaplin’s World War I comedy, Shoulder Arms, in a reconstruction of the seldom-seen original 1918 version, presented here as a work-in-progress.
The festival also will include several major rediscoveries, including Yevgeny Chervyakov’s long-lost Soviet film My Son (Moy Syn) (1928), recently discovered in Argentina, and Robert Wiene’s expressionist classic Raskolnikow (1923), which will return in a new restoration from Filmmuseum München.
Silent films will be shown with live piano accompaniment.
Other highlights will include Anthony Mann’s western, Bend of the River (1952), restored by Universal Pictures; James Bidgood’s homoerotic underground classic, Pink Narcissus (1971), restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive; and Anthony Harvey’s 1966 adaptation of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman.
International restorations will include Vichit Kounavudhi’s Dear Wife (Mia Luang) (1978), an examination of marriage and class in Thai society, and Stars in Broad Daylight (Nujūm An-Nahar) (1988), restored by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. This depicts life in a Syrian village through a complex family drama.
André Bonzel, a co-director of the faux documentary Man Bites Dog (1992), will be present on January 11 to introduce Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By (Et j’aime à la fureur), a 2021 film that draws on his family’s long history of amateur filmmaking.
On January 27, Heather McAdams—who is known for her work as a cartoonist, filmmaker and country music preservationist and also participated in Chicago’s 1980’s experimental film scene—will speak with curator Sophie Cavoulacos. The program also will feature newly restored, 16mm prints of her witty, irreverent short films.
Frank Borzage’s 1927 7th Heaven features Fox contract player Janet Gaynor as a Parisian street urchin and newcomer Charles Farrell as the sanitation worker who loves her.
According to MoMA, “7th Heaven stands as Borzage’s strongest expression of the transcendent power of romantic love, evoking emotions of such strength and purity that only the dream world of silent film could contain them. At the first Academy Awards ceremony, the film won Oscars for Gaynor (Best Actress), Borzage (Best Director) and Benjamin Glazer (Best Adapted Screenplay).This is the premiere presentation of a new, upgraded digital restoration featuring improved image quality, stabilized intertitles, and the original color tints.”
Chaplin’s World War I comedy Shoulder Arms was released at the height of the 1918 influenza pandemic.
According to MoMA, “so powerful was Chaplin’s appeal to his public, the film still played to packed houses. But when Chaplin went to release it for use by the US Army during WWII he found that the original negative had been damaged beyond repair, and he asked his longtime cameraman Rollie Totheroh to reconstruct it using outtakes and alternate footage. (The reconstructed version was released theatrically in 1959 as part of The Chaplin Revue, a compilation that also included A Dog’s Life and The Pilgrim.)
“This presentation is a work in progress from MoMA’s Department of Film that attempts to recreate the 1918 release using what footage does survive from the original prints, gathered from archives around the world. Though the anarchic spirit remains the same in both versions, there are significant differences between the original and the reissue. Some scenes were removed entirely, and the entire film was subjected to the process of ‘stretch-printing,’ a not-very-satisfying way of forcing modern sound projectors to imitate the slower frame rate of many silent films.
“Shoulder Arms will be accompanied by MoMA’s new digital restoration of The Bond, a seldom seen propaganda short produced by Chaplin for the 1918 Liberty Loan drive. On a stylized set, Chaplin demonstrates the various sorts of bonds—friendship, marriage, Liberty—culminating in an encounter with the Kaiser. (Spoiler alert: a giant mallet is involved.) This restoration is based on a 35mm reissue print held by MoMA, with the titles revised to reflect the 1918 version distributed by First National,” the museum concluded.
Jane Levere
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