BY EVA SANGIORGI
The Viennale is a festival with a keen awareness of film history and the influences it has on contemporary cinema. The great auteurs of the past form a point of reference that allows the contemporary cinephile to experience an even broader palette of pleasures and gives new depths to the surprises offered by the year’s new films.
Historiografie offers a selection of recently restored films that are part of a universal heritage. We have chosen some titles that can finally be shown in their full splendour, and some others that, for different reasons, have not previously circulated. These are films of rare beauty and precious value, which tell the story of our cinema as well as that of an era, a situation, and a set of conditions that echo in our present.
These films highlight just how easily culture can disappear and what can be done to combat this, and are a manifestation of the shared intentions and efforts of various institutions. This part of the story also deserves to be told, because it sheds light on the less obvious mechanisms of our social and cultural systems and offers surprising insights into the skills and dedication shown by those who work in producing or circulating culture.
There are many different intertwining layers here: tracing the history of our cinema, sharing the precious gems produced by the different traditions of this art, and also carrying out far-reaching research and repair work on each individual title by recovering original sources, restoring deteriorated prints, and sometimes even reconstructing missing sections by collating and combining different source materials.
In many cases, a comprehensive search for materials was necessary; in many others, discussions and settlements concerning rights. Not only does each individual film reveal a piece of history, but also the extraordinary adventure of how it can be made available to today’s theatrical audiences.
