Discovery and Rediscovery at Archival Film
Festivals: (Re)writing Film History at the
Giornate del Cinema Muto and Il Cinema
Ritrovato.
Kitty Robertson (11625309)
June 2018
University of Amsterdam
Graduate School of the Humanities
MA Heritage Studies: Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image
Supervisor: Mark Paul Meyer (Senior Curator, EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam)
Second Reader: Dr. Floris Paalman (UvA)
1 Acknowledgements
My thanks to my supervisor Mark-Paul Meyer, and to Floris Paalman and Eef Masson as members of the Preservation and Presentation programme who were always ready with their advice throughout the course.
I would also like to thank Guy Borlée and say grazie a Carlo Montanaro for allowing me to talk to them for hours about these two festivals, and for offering insights and information above and beyond the call of duty.
2
Introduction 3
Chapter 1: The Film Festival setting as a means of giving value: theoretical underpinnings. 6
1.1 Festival as Liminal Space 6
1.2 Festival, Event and Spectacle 11
1.3 The Archive and the Festival 17
Chapter 2: Il Cinema Ritrovato and Le Giornate del Cinema Muto: Situating the Events. 24
2.1 History and Emergence 24
2.2 Bologna and Pordenone: finding the archival film festival 28
2.3 Reactions, Responses, Identities 33
Chapter 3 Understanding the festivals: discovery and rediscovery. 39
3.1 Cinephile Heaven 39
3.2 Festival as Time Machine 46
3.3 The Canon Revisited 54
Conclusion 62
Appendices 64
Appendix I: Transcript of Interview with Guy Borlée 64
Appendix II: Transcript of Interview with Carlo Montanaro 79
3 Introduction
The Giornate del Cinema Muto and Cinema Ritrovato, festivals organised out of the Cineteca del Friuli and the Cineteca di Bologna respectively, have over the past three decades become key dates in the film archivist’s calendar. Both make significant contributions not only to understandings of the work and status of film heritage institutions, but also to film history and cinema itself. Yet the archival film festival and its impact remain largely unexplored. Marijke de Valck in her PhD thesis and other work exploring the European phenomenon of the film festival covers in great detail its history, meaning and various iterations but, while not excluded entirely from this discussion, the presentation of archival films in a festival setting is largely approached as a ‘sidebar’ to these more conventional film festivals, suggesting it can only be understood as part of this standard.
Given this under-representation, my aim is to explore and give value to the archival film festival as its own entity within the festival sphere. It did not emerge as a branch of the conventional film festival but is a singular form of festival with a distinctive ethos, programming style and impact. The development of archival film festivals speaks to the work, status and ideology of film archives as well as representations of film history. The films on show cannot have the same economic drive as at conventional film festivals or invigorate the film industry in the same way – but neglecting the archival film festival in the theoretical framework of festival events only reinforces this idea and underserves the potential influence of this kind of presentation. It disregards, furthermore, the position of film archives, and what these festivals can mean for film heritage in general.
The Giornate del Cinema Muto and Cinema Ritrovato will be my central case studies: they represent field-defining events, reflecting the various possibilities of the archival film festival and consistently credited with discovering or rediscovering unknown or underappreciated films. The theme of discovery or rediscovery here is fundamental to the aims of the archival film festival. ‘Discovery’ entails the sensation that new knowledge is being revealed; the viewer is engaging in an unprecedented encounter, consequently adding something to cinema history and their experience of it. Rediscovery, conversely, acknowledges that a known object is being represented in a new form or
4 accompanied by new information: the ‘discovery’ here is therefore through the re-evaluation of the lifetime and evolution of the object. Within this thesis both discovery and rediscovery are fundamental to the archival film festival, and to both the Bologna and Pordenone events, as a means of validating the festival presentation. The archival film festival makes its own contribution to cinema culture, addressing a specific field and community that it does not necessarily owe to the conventional film festival.
Beginning with an historical look at the emergence and recognition of these two festivals, I hope to set out a description of the archival film festival apart from the conventional film festival in terms of its claim to (re)discovery. Chapter one will explore the current state of how film festivals are understood, exploring the theoretical underpinnings that create the festival as a site for presentation in terms of temporality, its nature as an event and its framing of the films on display. I will also examine the significance of this setting in terms of film archives and its relevance in the presentation of archives’ films and work. Although a tome dedicated to archival film festivals was published in 2012 (edited by Alex Marlow-Mann), it was more of a collection of essays on independent events – here, de Valck’s conceptualisation provides a more useful baseline to explore the relevance of the archival festival and this section can then present the archival film festival as its own component within her theories.
Chapter two will turn more specifically to the case studies, their history, emergence and legitimisation, and how they are defined through their surrounding discourses. Finally, I will also examine these festivals in terms of their own image and representation to explore how they can be understood as archetypal archival film festivals, particularly in their presentation of a methodology of film history. This also addresses the question of the value imparted on the presentation of archival films and archival work by the festival as well as its contribution to canonical histories of cinema. This thesis is underpinned by a more historical understanding of the two festivals, using interviews with two people involved with each festival for many years – Carlo Montanaro, part of the Giornate del
5 Cinema Muto since its early days, and Guy Borlée, coordinator of Cinema Ritrovato since 1994 – reviews and past programmes to assess the impact and perception of the festivals over time.
The nature of the archival film festival as an event dedicated to the presentation and valorisation of archival film should not be understated. Since the beginnings of the film archival movement the conflict between conservation and presentation has been a continuous debate – most sensationalised in the contrasting personalities of Ernest Lindgren and Henri Langlois; the former’s belief that film must be preserved and protected above all else, the latter’s emphasis on showing films to appreciate cinema heritage. The introduction of the festival does not mean that now everything can be shown – but it brings the debate into a setting in which the emphasis is on how these collections can be presented. Furthermore, rather than advocating showing everything regardless of its condition, these festivals propose an appropriate environment to showcase and discuss archival films and the act of presentation. The mission of these kinds of festivals and the establishment of dedicated discourses around them set them apart as a distinctive mode of presentation.
I feel that examining how a festival can frame and give value to its content though these two notable examples in Pordenone and Bologna is an important means of exploring the reasons behind the development of a wider network of archival film festivals, or screening events dedicated to archival films. Although comparable events existed before these two festivals, they have both enjoyed more than thirty years of presentations and continue to be a prestigious stage for film heritage institutions to present and share their work. I aim to present the value that the festivals can disperse across the field, that institutions confer on each other during the festival, and that is given to the festivals by their attendees as confirmation of the significance and authority of the archival film festival.
6 1. The Film Festival setting as a means of giving value: theoretical underpinnings.
The film festival as a site to premiere films, promote an international film culture and gather together members of the film industry has been in use since the end of World War Two – although the first Venice Film Festival took place in 1932, it was the post-war ‘boom’ in film festivals, beginning with Cannes in 1946 and followed by, among others, Locarno (also 1946), and Berlin (1951) that set the standard for the contemporary film festival. These festivals began as a means of reasserting national identities after the war through national cinemas, and evolved into highly organised, strictly programmed events to showcase international cinema and launch films (and careers) with great significance within the culture of the global film industry (Smyth 408).
While archival film festivals don’t enjoy the same ‘celebrity’ as these A-list festivals (in both audience and reputation), the development of the film festival and its accrued implications of cultural prestige, spectacle and revelation offers an important reasoning behind why archives may adopt the festival setting. Here the festival will be explored as an organisation that gives value to the objects it presents through creating an atmosphere of novelty and exclusivity, and, when examined in relation to the film archive, the role that events play in heightening the sense of prestige around the presentation of not only the films but the archive itself; how the festival can create a feeling of ‘discovery.’
1.1 Festival as Liminal Space
The transient nature of the festival is a key part of its prestige: it is a time-limited display of a cultural object that gains importance precisely due to its temporary exhibition. The importance of the ‘premiere’ to film festivals, of ‘firsts’, ‘newcomers’ and ‘discoveries’ is connected to the fact that they are viewed in this space, among a community that exists only for a certain amount of time. This community is created outside the standard world of film distribution, circulation and exhibition, creating a specific environment that frames the object within its own logic of presentation (Rüling and Strandgaard Pedersen, 2010).
7 A temporary, event-based presentation strategy is a clear advantage in terms of highlighting new releases. A film festival acts as a launching pad for the commercial life-cycle of the film; it not only enters onto the film market but gains critical and media coverage (Rüling and Strandgaard Pedersen 320). This immediate attention can set the tone for their future release schedule and the time-limited setting creates a sense of expectation and spectacle that amplify a film’s premiere. When a festival’s purpose is to present archival or restored films, the logic is slightly different: the films presented here are not entering a broader commercial circuit in the same way. Cinema Ritrovato does also distribute its titles and restorations may enter the market as DVD releases or in repertory cinemas, but it’s not the beginning of their Oscar campaign. Nonetheless, at an archival film festival the framing offered by this temporary space enhances the rhetoric of discovery and rediscovery in its suspension of normal relationships. The festival and the community created there can operate entirely within a discussion of film and cinema history, where the world becomes the film archive.
‘Discovery’ does also have a presence within conventional film festivals: De Valck in her 2006 PhD thesis posits that certain film festivals, after 1968, characterised themselves as ‘institutions of discovery’ through adopting auteurs and new waves as ‘strategic discourses’ which could allow these festivals to claim to have discovered these contributors to cinema culture (191). (Western) festivals are also often credited with ‘discovery’ when they present films from non-Western cinema cultures (Nichols 1994; Stringer 2001: 134-5). This continues to some degree today in the attention given to directors or the emphasis on certain themes or genres that gain attention within festival programmes, such as the ongoing ‘Directors fortnight’ at Cannes or the ‘Panorama’ section at the Berlinale, which centres on European or global premieres from an extended collection of nationalities. At an archival film festival, by contrast, discovery, rather than a means of claiming ownership, entails the unearthing of archival treasures, screenings of new restorations or the presentation of ‘lost’ films; a means of revealing the history and development of cinema on a micro and macro level. Framing these films as ‘discoveries’ or ‘rediscoveries’ allows them to become new again and implies that the festival contributes to understandings of film history beyond the festival space.
8 Although De Valck’s analyses of the film festival setting generally focus on the more well-known model of film festivals, her theorisation of the underlying characteristics and meaning of this setting provides useful parameters to investigate how the festival atmosphere can complement the presentation of archival films. De Valck draws on cultural anthropology, particularly the work of Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) and Victor Turner (1920-1983) to examine the film festival through the lens of ‘rites of passage,’ transition and ritual to understand why and how festivals continue to exist as an effective means of presenting films. (De Valck 2006: 44). Van Gennep described rites of passage through three stages: firstly, an individual’s symbolic disengagement with and removal from society, secondly the liminal state in which the individual is in transition, secluded from society, and the third and final ‘post-liminal’ stage in which the individual is reintegrated into society after gaining new values and understanding (Tzanelli 506).
Turner was particularly interested by the second phase, during which usual societal rules are suspended. His focus on the liminal state provides a theory behind ‘the creation of symbolic value’ that occurs within a film festival as ‘“other” rules of engagement count and the commercial market rules of the film world outside are suspended’ (De Valck 2006: 44). Turner builds on Van Gennep’s demarcation of the rites of passage, arguing that, rather than simply representing separation from society, the liminal stage implies the creation of a distinct, temporary, community – communitas – ‘that has ceased to be and has simultaneously yet to be fragmented into a multiplicity of structural ties’ (Turner 96). A social relationship is thus established in which outside motivations, status symbols or hierarchies do not apply, rather this liminal phase acts as part of the process of endowing symbolic value or power; it is necessary to pass through the liminal state – to be ‘low’ – in order to emerge with a new ‘high’ status (Turner 98).1 Within a festival context this can be asserted materially through
awards and ceremonies (Wong 16), and while there are often awards at archival film festivals (the Jean Mitry Award at Giornate del Cinema Muto; the Cinema Ritrovato’s DVD Awards) here the value-giving process also occurs at a symbolic level. The presentation of archival films has an undertone of
9 re-exposure, whether it is the presentation of a new restoration, or the first showing of a film thought to be lost, due to the fact that they have become historical objects. The presentation of a film at an archival film festival is always a revisiting, extending the life of that film: value is thus imparted through the combination of a time-limited event and the historicity of the film.
While in his analysis of the transitionary state Turner eschews ‘the notion that communitas has a specific territorial locus’ (126), its establishment outside society implies a spatial as well as temporal element. The value implied by the time-limit of the festival setting is tied to the community created by it, reinforcing this spatial dimension – indeed, this is why De Valck reformulates ‘rites of passage’ as ‘sites of passage’ (2006: 43). This also applies to the festival’s physical location: as a locale is temporarily transformed for the purpose of cinema, the festival’s prestige extends to this specific space. Many festivals, in discussions around them, become known metonymically by the name of their host city – ‘Cannes,’ ‘Telluride,’ even ‘Pordenone’ – to the extent that the city is no longer host: for that period, it is defined by the festival. Julian Stringer (2001) condenses this into the notion of a ‘festival image’, the sense of identity and community within a city that can be established through the film festival (140), while Elsaesser (2005) extends this to examine film festivals and ‘city-branding’; how the festival can enrich cities or districts as cultural hubs (85). The festival is a temporary event, explicitly positioned in a certain space which then adapts itself to the presence (or dominance) of the festival. This can be seen at Cinema Ritrovato, which takes over the city of Bologna during the summer, notably through its public screenings on Piazza Maggiore during which the square becomes an open-air cinema: its purpose is reconfigured for that period of time; the city ‘becomes a true, pulsing city of cinema’ (Canova 2012). This understanding of ‘space’ can also be adapted to the archive more specifically: if the archive is understood as a site in itself, it is then enriched by the festival; the festival doesn’t just give value to the films being shown, it also gives value to the attached location.
The space of the festival also more practically brings people and institutions permanently situated elsewhere together in one location during which a diversity of knowledge can be exchanged (Maskell et al. 1002, De Valck 2006: 45). Stringer balances his concept of the festival image in which a city’s
10 identity is temporarily resituated around ‘an engagement with dynamic processes of cultural exchange’ with the creation of a ‘socially produced space unto itself, a unique cultural arena’ where different groups can come into contact in ‘a series of diverse, sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating public spheres’ (138). Stringer borrows the concept of the public sphere from Jürgen Habermas, who noted its development in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe as a realm where ‘through the vehicle of public opinion it put the state in touch with the needs of society’ (31). It was conceived as a domain in contradistinction to the state and economic markets, in which public opinion is confirmed and discussed. In the salons and coffee-houses, this discursive atmosphere was also a site where cultural objects could be legitimised; more of a virtual community than a physical one. Cindy H. Wong expands the idea of the public sphere of the festival as ‘overlapping public spheres’ as the festival provides a specific place (or places) for the discourses it generates (159).
Wong furthermore ties this to the ‘physicality of many festivals as they take over public venues and spill over into lobbies, streets and coffeehouses’ which reinforces the idea of a festival atmosphere that infiltrates and overhauls the space in which it occurs (163). This notion of a public sphere can then be tempered with the liminal state: the public sphere of the festival becomes a heightened means of generating value. The public sphere is an impermanent and flexible space that relies on the coming together of particular groups in discursive settings; at the festival these groups are brought together by both the temporal and spatial delineation of the event, creating ‘public opinion’ within the festival. The attendees of these events, and those who take part in question-and-answer sessions or panels, become representatives of this ‘public opinion,’ and become part of the novelty and exclusivity of a ‘one-time’ event. They express the public discourse as contained within the festival and literally articulate the value that this presentation implies.
The public sphere and the population of the festival therefore also act as means of valorising the objects on display. The archival film festival, however, does not necessarily establish a community completely severed from overriding outside discourses. The archival film festival creates a temporary community outside the institution of an archive but nonetheless within an archival atmosphere.
11 Rather than going through a single cycle of cinematheque programming, the festival gathers together international representatives from various organisations, archives, or cinephilic backgrounds (which expands and generalises this ‘archival atmosphere’), collectively giving approval through their viewing of the films, festival reports and their discussions within and outside the festival, whether in official conferences or more casually. While at a standard film festival these extended discussions may set the tone for future awards performance or critical success, at an archival film festival the discursive generation of value can have an influence on the writing of film history, through the selection of works to showcase and restore (Stringer 134).
In this sense this approval can be extended to the ‘discoverers’ and restorers who can represent the work of the film archive as the figures who make this re-exhibition possible. As the films have already had a commercial life in the past, the legitimisation furnished by the public sphere centres on the reinvigoration of historic films and the work done to present them anew. This allocation of value is further realised through introductions to screenings, question and answer sessions and panel discussions which emphasise again the role of the individual while also underlining the significance of special sections, events and spectacle within the film festival, the focus of the following section.
1.2 Festival, Event and Spectacle
Closely tied to the notion of the film festival as a liminal space, then, are event and spectacle. The archive is an institution that operates year-round: whereas other film festivals exist within a festival calendar and are truly temporary events, archival film festivals are impermanent structures closely tied to permanent institutions. The decision to use the festival as a means of presentation underlines the role of events in presenting archival collections: festivals and other events more generally play a role in increasing the visibility of films and the film industry; for an archive, this visibility can have an impact on the (more permanent) perception of the institution, of preservation and restoration, and of the state of film history.
Considering the film festival as event can be linked to its temporality as it positions the festival as a singular, performative occurrence in a specific time or location with a certain audience, removed
12 from usual procedure. When framed as event or experience, as with the time-limited structure and the festival ‘public sphere,’ De Valck argues that the parameters for assessment shift according to the internal logic of the film festival, from a dependence on economic value to one on cultural, aesthetic or critical judgements (2007: 37). Though this perhaps applies less and less to conventional film festivals as they become locations for buying and selling films for exhibition circuits, archival film festivals can focus more unequivocally on the cultural or aesthetic impact of what is being shown. While there can be a concern for future programming of these restored or archival films, they will not necessarily be judged on their commercial performance in cinemas.
However, event also draws attention to the outward aims and effect of the festival, to spectacle and display. It is not just symbolic processes resulting in a valued object, but an emphasis on the performance of this object and its immediate impact. The inherently performative nature of a festival recalls Tom Gunning’s concept of the ‘cinema of attractions’ (1986). Gunning’s focus on early cinema explored its relationship to the spectator and how the effect on this spectator is exaggerated both within film and in the way it is presented. If, as Frank Kessler suggests in Wanda Strauven’s volume re-examining Gunning’s piece, the cinema of attractions is understood as a ‘[mode] of spectatorial address’ (58), it is possible to explore the film festival as some evocation of this ‘attraction.’ The film festival, like the ‘showmen’ cinema exhibitors, utilises a spectacular context, revealing heterogeneity and approaching its audience through both films and programming to create an awesome, perhaps overwhelming, experience (Gunning 384). Although in terms of structural form the films may not be directly addressing the audience in the manner described by Gunning (with gaze and gestures directed at the viewer), the framework of the festival means that the spectator is implicated in the viewing experience – and is integral to its ultimate effect – through a presentation that invites judgement and evaluation (whether historical or purely aesthetic) of what is on display. The spectators enter a relationship with the festival in the understanding that it is a non-standard cinema experience, centring on quantity and singularity. The programming of festivals leans towards abundance – during its lifetime, Cinema Ritrovato has expanded in terms of both number and locations of screenings to
13 such an extent that it is not possible to see everything (reflected in reviews from Alanen 2002; Horak 2010), while at Pordenone, which retains a single screening location, ‘it is possible to see everything in the program, just as long […] as you only sleep four hours a night’ (Fairfax 2013). This, as well as the acknowledgement that something will be missed, creates a heightened spectacle in which film is perceived as something to be seen and experienced as fully as possible.
In this sense, ‘event’ becomes its own cultural platform; a means of making sense of a film or programme (Stevens 192). The cinema of attractions was facilitated as much by exhibition settings and methods as it was by the referential qualities of the film, and at a festival the films shown are understood within the structure of the temporary event. Part of the value provided by spectacle in festival presentation lies in the nature of the objects they present: the cultural legitimisation that a festival offers often centres on films that have been made or have an appeal outside the commercial – Hollywood – circuit (De Valck 2006: 141); films that have participated in the ‘event’ gain prestige, but nonetheless outside the festival setting are often targeting a minority audience (Elsaesser 91). The sense of enclosure inherent to the festival through both spatial and temporal markers, the notion of a film festival ‘calendar’ and the timetable of screenings (Harbord 70) realigns the notion of ‘minority’ towards ‘exclusivity’ which is then amplified by the staging of events, creating the sense that these cannot be reproduced or re-experienced.
While resting on the idea of ‘unique event,’ festivals also border on ritual: recurring annually or biannually, becoming a consistent, repeated structure. But as single moments, they are also susceptible to contingency and capable of producing the unexpected (Harbord 70). The value and prestige offered by the festival depends in part on this combination of structure and event: over time, a festival may become known for its sections (the structure) that contextualise and furnish the presentation of new objects or ideas (the event). In this sense, the festival occupies two temporal identities: its historic performance and reputation, and the festival as it happens and is exposed to eventuality and spontaneity. Cinema Ritrovato, in its description on the festival website, underlines this balance between historic reputation and singular event, distilling it into a single phrase: ‘[t]hose
14 of you familiar with il Cinema Ritrovato will know that every edition is a unique and one-off experience’ (“Il Cinema Ritrovato: Thirty-One Years of Emotions”). This description contains within it the value of returning visitors as a means of establishing reputation and the accompanying reward of unexpected discoveries; both history and spectacle. As a film festival becomes well-known and well-understood this ‘historical continuity, lodged under the festival name as a standard bearer across time’ enriches its capability and authority to present (valuable) singular events (Harbord 70).
While conventional film festivals exist exclusively as events – only during their calendar slot – the archival film festival reflects a permanent institution and therefore relies more heavily on this distinction between lasting and time-limited means of giving value. The event, in addition to making sense of a film or programme with a minority appeal (in the case of archival film, professional, cinephile or those interested in film and its history), goes some way toward making sense of the archive. De Valck sets out the duality of ‘[d]istinction and spectacle – high cultural prestige and popular attraction’ as two contrasting elements that nonetheless sustain the film festival (2007: 130). This balance has a particular presence at the archival film festival due to this relationship between institution and festival event. The festival has the trappings of a cinema of attractions, but the spectator can be analytical as well as shocked or awed. The event transforms the cultural authority offered by ‘the film archive’ and makes it performative, creating an unhabitual screening setting, but within a recognisable structure.
The dynamism of the temporary event contrasts with the role of a film archive as protector of film heritage which implies long-term efforts, keeping its collections in a stable state. Conventional film festivals utilise the ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ experience of the temporary screening event (Stevens 189) but the films shown here are largely at the beginning of their exhibition cycle – even if the film is ‘missed’ this generates anticipation for a future release (although there are countless examples of films that don’t ‘make it’ after a festival debut). An archival film festival, on the other hand, can claim to offer a different kind of exposure to film culture. The films at an archival film festival are removed from their institutional setting, while remaining connected to the archive through the emphasis on
15 (and efforts towards) their availability. The values underlying this availability are different to those at a conventional film festival: the continuing existence of the film may be for a variety of reasons (depending on where and why the film has been retained, preserved or restored), but the fundamental motivation is that the film be seen (Cherchi Usai 2013: 23). The spectacle is in the representation of an historic object; there is a sense of work behind the screening, in terms of the challenge not only to locate the film but also in making it presentable. Materiality and the history of the medium are tied into the aesthetic impact of the presentation, and the festival condenses this understanding into a single event.
The spectacle of the film festival then frames films in a particular way – as ‘festival films’ whose meaning is shaped by the setting and experience (De Valck 2007: 176-7; Stringer 2003). Several of the more well-known festivals have archival sidebars, usually retrospectives or screenings of older films, that feature films in this way: a festivalisation of the archive, positioning the films within an event culture. These films become a sub-spectacle – even at Telluride Film Festival which from its earliest days strove to show archival and silent films on 35mm, with musical accompaniment, the emphasis is slightly less interrogative of the present status of film history and is more retrospective (Wagner 241). In 2017, the ‘Cannes Classics’ section (introduced in 2004) within the seventieth edition of Cannes Film Festival focused on ‘the history of Cannes […] put[ting] the prestige of the biggest festival of the world at the service of the cinema rediscovered’ (“Cannes Classics 2017”). This edition of ‘Cannes Classics’ is particularly revealing of the role of archival or restored films screened at the festival: the films have been selected to convey a specific image of the festival, its dedication to film heritage, but also to write the history of the festival around film history and significant films herein to create a ‘Cannes canon’ of film. The films are framed as chapters in the festival’s history rather than archival discoveries. The selection thus serves partly as self-promotion and credits the festival with both the initial discovery of these films on their first release, and the re-discovery of them in telling a history of film. Event and discovery can clearly go hand-in-hand, but here they are in service of the festival image as much as the cultural object.
16 Within the conventional film festival, then, the archival sidebar acts as one form of spectacle. But within this kind of festival spectacle can also be elaborated in ways not shared with the archival festival. Both De Valck and Harbord relate mediated events and the presence of celebrity guests – and for Harbord, the unplanned occurrences within star or director interviews or appearances – to the spectacular nature of the festival (De Valck 2007: 130; Harbord 75-6). This returns to De Valck’s balance between cultural prestige and popular spectacle that underpins the event (2007: 130). Festivals may centre on promoting ‘cinema as art’ and films that otherwise exist outside the commercial circuit, but publicity and cultural recognition is more broadly achieved through media reporting and (thus) the presence of celebrities, stars or high-profile attendees (De Valck 2007: 129, 130).
This is also an element of the conventional film festival that causes concern among the cinephile audience (Czach 2010). Yet while this high-low cultural conflict may be a criticism at these film festivals, it can serve as a benefit to the archive. ‘Celebrity’ within the archival sphere is perhaps not as dominant as in the broader film industry; audiences and attendees don’t act as ‘attractions’ to the same extent as at other film festivals. Nonetheless, high-profile advocates such as Martin Scorsese can be engaged to promote both the festival and the work it represents, whether through screenings of restorations supported by Scorsese’s Film Foundation or his video introductions to restored films. The 2006 presentation of Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914) at Giornate del Cinema Muto was preceded by one such introduction ("Grande Schermo/Alle Giornate del Cinema Muto di Pordenone arrivano "Cabiria" e "Maciste" restaurati."); in 2012 the first edition of the archival film festival at the Cinémathèque Française, ‘Toute la mémoire du monde,’ was also introduced (through video message) by Scorsese and featured a tribute to the Film Foundation in its programme (“Toute la mémoire du monde: International Festival of Restored Film”); the 2015 edition of Cinema Ritrovato celebrated the Film Foundation’s 25th anniversary and in 2016 presented ten Film Foundation-funded restorations as
17 A figure such as Scorsese can bring significant attention to film restoration and the status of the field and lends his authority as both a critically-appreciated and popularly-known filmmaker to these presentations. And rather than an over-saturation of media and celebrity events, his introductions – as single interventions in the festival event – make the appreciation of this work more generally accessible. It adds a sense of spectacle, but also approaches the field from the perspective of a film-lover rather than a professional film archivist. This then overcomes what de Valck describes as ’high-low culture dichotomies’ (2007:19) and rather than compromising the festival, it extends its visibility.
Despite this venture into the world of celebrity, however, archival film festivals generally achieve spectacle through different means. Cinemazero, co-founders of Giornate del Cinema Muto, assert that ‘it is possible to enter the pantheon of major international film festivals even without a red carpet or an abundance of stars’ (“Le Giornate del Cinema Muto│Cinemazero”). Part of the motivation behind archival film festival events is to reproduce or represent an experience – so both Pordenone and Cinema Ritrovato present silent films with live musical accompaniment; in Bologna it is possible to see carbon-arc projections and whenever possible both festivals try to present films on film. This to some extent establishes a marketable image of historic film; spectacle is an important means of gaining attention not only for the sake of cinephilia but also for financial reasons. Nonetheless there is a more ideological lilt to this kind of event. If Gunning referred to the cinema of attractions as centred around ‘this harnessing of visibility, this act of showing and exhibition […]’ (382) then the archival film festivals’ emphasis not only on ‘proper’ projection but an appreciation of this element of film actively performs the object in a way that highlights the specificity of cinema. At an archival film festival, ‘discovery’ is made possible through exhibition: the knowledge that a film exists or has existed is made tangible and given value – the film is (re)discovered – only when it is seen.
1.3 The Archive and the Festival
Thus far this chapter has examined the underpinnings of the festival environment and outlined some conceptual frameworks through which to approach this setting and its value-adding properties, while also balancing this with the functions of the archival film festival. I would like now to turn
18 towards the relationship between the archive and the festival specifically, how the archival film festival was able to emerge and establish itself, and what it is about the archive that is crystallised through the festival setting.
Archival film festivals were not introduced with the first wave of film festivals in the thirties and post-war period. De Valck outlines three phases in the development of the film festival phenomenon: the first goes from the establishment of the first Venice Film Festival in 1932 to the upheavals of 1968 when the Cannes and Venice film festivals were disrupted by protests (2006: 26). This then prompted the second phase in the seventies and a reorganisation of this festival format:
Festival editions and sections became mechanisms for intervention, institutionalised ways to put issues on the international cultural agenda […] With “specialised” and “themed” programming, festivals could participate in world politics and cinema culture […] (De Valck 2006: 33-4).
This demonstrates to some extent how the groundwork was laid for the emergence of archival film festivals as, according to De Valck, the eighties saw the festival become ‘sweepingly professionalised and institutionalised’ (2007: 20) with a significant expansion in the number of film festivals and the concurrent establishment of an ‘international film festival circuit’ in which festivals strove to distinguish themselves (De Valck 2007: 68, 211). By the 1990 the film festival had therefore arrived as an established setting that gave meaning to the films it presented. It was not only an alternative exhibition practice, outside the movie theatre programme, but also a means of presenting and valorising various forms of cinematic expression.
This recognised, highly visible form of presentation coincided with significant developments in approaches to film history and film archives. The roots of both can be traced to 1978 and what is now simply known as ‘the Brighton Conference.’ The Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF) organised the conference, bringing together film scholars and archivists under the theme ‘Cinema 1900 – 1906.’ FIAF member archives submitted 548 titles from these early years of cinema, making both archivists and scholars aware of the breadth, depth and condition of film history and shifting the practice of film studies towards recognition of the importance of archival holdings (Marlow-Mann 4).
19 This conference served in part to bridge the gap between film historians or academics and archivists or preservationists - at the Brighton conference ‘archivists and scholars would sit at the same table for the common purpose of redefining film history and rediscovering some of its unknown territories’ (Cherchi Usai 1995: 243). There was a significant impact on how early cinema was understood as films were discovered that had never been seen before.
The emergence of Cinema Ritrovato and Giornate del Cinema Muto in the eighties, while connected to the established position of the film festival, is not (unlike De Valck’s conception of ‘specialised’ and ‘thematic’ film festivals) necessarily an evolution out of the film festival sphere. Archival film festivals, while not organised exclusively through a film archive, are more closely tied to institutions striving towards a means of presenting their collections and the impact of this presentation on the broader field. They thus have a clear ideological connection to the 1978 FIAF symposium – not just the professionalisation and specialisation of the film festival. By the 1980s the film festival existed as a legitimate and effective area in which new films could be valorised, but this could also extend to an examination of the history of film. With the increased awareness of not only the proliferation of films from the early days of cinema, but also the number of films that had been lost or which were in need of preservation through the 1978 conference (Grgic 55), this setting offered archives a different form of access, presentation and contextualisation. Public and industry awareness of these issues could be mobilised through the actual viewing of films, presenting them (and their history) in such a framework that pushed them forward.
However, this combination of film archive and festival should not be interpreted as the archive manipulating its work and ethos into a pre-existing structure. I would argue that the archival film festival is an entity in itself that brings together the value and prestige of a festival setting with the authority of the archive, in contrast to the conventional film festival which is usually more closely linked to the commercial film industry. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cultural capital’ and its extension to moving image heritage institutions by Karen F. Gracy (2007) continues to be an important means of understanding this authority. Film archives hold and frame ‘objectified’ cultural capital, ‘cultural goods
20 […] pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines etc.’ (Bourdieu 1986: 243) while also acting as the purveyors of ‘institutionalised’ cultural capital due to the value society confers upon them preserve this heritage (Gracy 187). These institutions thus convey the value of cultural objects through both physically providing for them and contextualising them through a surrounding structure.
The question then arises of why archives, as ‘creators and sustainers of objectified cultural capital’ (Gracy 183), choose the model of the film festival to present their work and holdings. My contention is that they do so for a distinctive purpose that sets them apart as more than a branch of ‘specialised’ events emerging from the conventional film festival as suggested by De Valck, and in other discussions such as that of Martin Koerber (2009), who addresses a variety of film festivals as operating beneath a single framework, undermining the singularity of a festival such as Pordenone and the particular implications of an archival film festival (90). The film festival itself can be approached as a body that endows cultural capital, through awards and mediated events, but an archive’s employment of the festival setting both channels and reinforces its specific cultural capital. The film festival conveys the ‘institutionalised cultural capital’ around the film archive through strengthening public belief in its cultural authority. The festival is a public form of display but also an institutional process of selection and programming that ‘reaches beyond the level of personal preference and becomes more or less […] globally acknowledged as evidence of quality’ (De Valck 2006: 203). The festival can act as a contextualising force and becomes inherently tied to the archives’ efforts to address and frame their collections for the public.
This framing of collections is also a divergence from archival sidebars in conventional film festivals, where the archival film is supplementary rather than the centrepiece: commercial restorations have more of a place than discoveries. Archival festivals, conversely, in showing restorations, are reflecting broader institutional projects. In some ways, the address to the public is also different: the archival film festival conveys information that has implications for the archival field – there is therefore professional and academic interest, reflected in the audience composition. Though tickets and passes for Cinema Ritrovato and Giornate del Cinema Muto are available to anyone, and the former’s free
21 open-air screenings in Piazza Maggiore are a clear drive to public accessibility and a broad audience, there is certainly a more specialist appeal in some of the events within these festivals – the FIAF Summer Schools held during Cinema Ritrovato, for example, organised with the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) and the MEDIA Plus Programme of the European Union. The presence of these kinds of events gives a particular institutional and professional approval to the archival film festival: FIAF or ACE can become moderating forces that balance the spectacle and ‘event’ status, while nonetheless remaining part of a public-facing representation of film archives. Archival sidebars at more mainstream film festivals, by contrast, are not necessarily aimed at film scholars; they focus on attendees of the festival, who are involved in the festival image itself, viewing films for critical or market-related reasons in the hope of predicting a future life for the film. Retrospectives at conventional film festivals can reinforce the festival’s own authority and reputation in the film industry (Hazdon 124). Films that were successes of the festival, or that have become canonical, can be reintroduced to the programme as a reflection on the festival’s own history – seen explicitly in the 2017 ‘Cannes Classics’ above – rather than the history of cinema.
Both archival sidebars and archival film festivals should also be taken as editorialised views of film history, re-examining the films taken as markers of the development of cinema and reframing this development around a broader life of film. The context of the festival may have an influence on how this (re)writing of film history is perceived– again affected by the address to the public. Even a festival such as Telluride, with a strong history of showing older titles, which ‘provides a context for current cinema from what’s gone before’ (“Program Guide”) does not have the same effect as a purely archival film festival: these are films from the past, understood, approached and presented as such. There is aesthetic pleasure in (re)experiencing these titles, but they are not necessarily interrogated or understood as historical objects to be preserved, with a life in the present. The ‘cultural capital’ or even simply the public perception of archives, as well as the obligations to which they are bound, colour the archival film festival and bring those responsibilities to it. Its association with a film archive means inherently that the question of preservation and film history is present, another instance of
22 how the institutional connection between archive and festival distinguishes this iteration from standard film festivals.
The adoption of this format by film archives also therefore underlines why these institutions make use of events and performance around their collections and work. In her work on the Nederlands Filmmuseum (now EYE) between 1946 and 2000, Bregt Lameris examines the performance of the film museum’s collections and the way in which this changed over time, particularly regarding silent films, an area where, Lameris contends, the Filmmuseum and film historiography intersect (17). From the late 1970s, alongside the Brighton conference, silent film became an important area of film historical and archival attention – and by the eighties, silent film presentations were also being adapted to into performances with lectures and musical accompaniment (Lameris 182). Performance became an important means of contextualising collections; silent film was understood as an experience that could affect a modern audience. Archival films were not frozen historical objects, but legitimate performative materials with contemporary presence – and archives could then take part in this performance.
This was thus an important shift not only in the kinds of film being presented, but the way they were presented by an archive. The lack of canonical titles held by the Nederlands Filmmuseum led to a framing of lesser known titles or film fragments within a spectacular or aesthetic setting. The experience of film presentations, ‘inducing a sense of wonder’, was central to screenings of ‘unknown, newly discovered silent films’ rather than canonical titles (Lameris 187). This reflects a general movement towards live accompaniment for silent film screenings – at the Cinémathèque française and the Centre National de la Cinématographie in the 1990s, and at Giornate del Cinema Muto where every screening has a live musical performance (Lameris 180-181) – and underlines the key interest in discovery and especially how this could be emphasised through (spectacular) presentation to give value to certain aspects of film history. Lameris highlights the motivation for creating awe-inspiring presentations of unknown or underseen films rather than canonical titles and how this shifted film museums’ philosophy: ‘there was not much need to convince the audience that [better-known] films
23 […] were beautiful; it was hardly necessary to make an extra effort to persuade audiences to come and see them’ (187).
Film archives or museums, in presenting these films, assert their ability to represent the important films from the history of cinema. This returns to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and how it can be used, ‘the performative magic of the power of instituting, the power to show forth and secure belief, or, in a word, to impose recognition’ (248). Events within an archive, such as the Nederlands Filmmuseum’s silent film screenings, are housed within this ‘power of instituting’; the institution directly instils its authority through its surroundings. At the archival film festival, however, this film history is presented outside the walls of an archive or museum – a liminal state in which value is implied by its relation to the archive but reinforced by its presentation to an audience gathered temporarily and specifically for this event. It is an extension of what can be achieved through events at the archive to draw up alongside a broader film culture and thus thrust the work and holdings of the archive into this culture. It is a performative assertion of the film archive’s responsibility to provide access to its collections that furthermore suggests this can be done outside the archive space itself. The following chapter will examine the specific archive and festival spaces of Cinema Ritrovato and Giornate del Cinema Muto to explore how practically the archival festival has been employed.
24 2. Il Cinema Ritrovato and Le Giornate del Cinema Muto: Situating the Events.
The previous chapter revealed the balance between film archive and film festival, institution and event, authority and spectacle. It also demonstrated the lack of attention given to archival film festivals as a singular body, framed instead under the banner of more familiar film festivals. Yet neither Cinema Ritrovato nor Giornate del Cinema Muto should be classified as ‘sidebars.’ Approaching these festivals from within the framework of the conventional film festival separates them to some degree from their association with the work and status of film archives when in fact they should be considered alongside this. Although Paolo Cherchi Usai asserts that ‘film archives did not initiate archival film festivals’ (2013: 26) they are a significant confrontation of the conflict between preservation and presentation within the archival sphere and therefore can reflect the archival mission more generally.
Cherchi Usai’s contention should be examined further in terms of the relationship between the archive and the festival: the motivation behind its adoption and the responsibilities it fulfils. This chapter will centre on these two events that largely laid the groundwork for the archival film festival. They emerged within four years of each other, embedded in a local context, and have become key events within the international film archive field – but each has its own focus, representation and perception. Giornate del Cinema Muto, focusing on silent film, became the definitive place where this specific element of cinema history could be re-examined, while Cinema Ritrovato addresses as broad a sweep of the history of film as possible. Their motivations and trajectory, the (sometimes overlapping) space that each carved out for itself in the archival sphere, underline the distinct and diverse entity that is the archival film festival.
2.1 History and Emergence
The divergent nature of these two festivals extends to their founding, and that of the institutions with which they are associated. The Cineteca del Friuli has its beginnings in a natural disaster: the Friuli earthquake of May 1976, the worst Italy had experienced at the time. In the aftermath of the earthquake, ‘improvised’ itinerant screenings were organised which subsequently gave rise to the idea
25 of a ciné-club with a permanent seat in Gemona. This would be ‘Cinepopolare,’ founded in February 1977 with the objective of rebuilding two local cinemas destroyed in the earthquake (“Com’è nata la Cineteca del Friuli?”). This ciné-club, after appeals in 1977 to raise money for the rebuilding of these theatres, caught the attention of Angelo R. Humouda, founder of the Cineteca D.W. Griffith in Genova. Humouda arrived in Gemona on the 5th August 1977 with 16mm films from his archive, a projector
and a screen, and, according to Cineteca lore, by the 10th August ‘the Cineteca del Friuli was born’
(“Com’è nata la Cineteca Del Friuli?”). These six days revolved around several screenings: retrospectives on silent filmmakers, from Mack Sennett to Chaplin to Laurel and Hardy, and another series focused on animated film before Disney (Beltrami 95).
These screenings would be a precursor to the film archive, legally instated as the Cineteca del Friuli in 1985. During the 1977 screenings, Humouda suggested that the money raised would not be sufficient to maintain a cinema but could be used to open a Cineteca, putting the funds towards buying silent films (around twenty, on 16mm, including films by Méliès and the Lumières) with which ‘lessons’ on the history of cinema were organised (“Com’è nata la Cineteca del Friuli?”). That the archive itself emerged through these screenings highlights the central role of presentation from its earliest days. A Cineteca opening nearly fifty years after the initial wave of film archives, not emerging through the initiative of official public powers (Frappat 2006: 47) and born of a presentation strategy indicates a certain shift in the archival community: that it was possible for a film archive to have a stronger connection to presentation than preservation, outside a rigid structure, and to use this to bolster its collection.
The founders of the Cineteca would also be co-founders of Giornate del Cinema Muto, which began almost concurrently: in 1982, in cooperation with the film club Cinemazero in Pordenone, the soon-to-be Cineteca del Friuli organised the first edition of the festival. This first iteration focused on the French comic Max Linder and involved fewer than ten attendees, composed of experts and enthusiasts, including journalist and film historian Davide Turconi who would become director and honorary president of the festival (“Le Giornate del Cinema Muto – The Pordenone Silent Film
26 Festival”). The festival was furthermore based in the sharing and acquisition of archival material: in the first few years of the festival, it acted directly as a means of building the collection of the Friuli archive. The field was moving from one generation of ‘closed’ archives towards a younger one focused on a more open archive (Carlo Montanaro, Appendix II); rather than strictly following the Lindgren line with preservation at the forefront, space was being made for presentation to occupy a central role. The fundamental conflict at the centre of archival practice, between the two poles of preservation and presentation was seemingly collapsed in the relationship between the cine-club Cinepopolare, the Cineteca del Friuli and Giornate del Cinema Muto.
While the Cineteca del Friuli and Giornate del Cinema Muto emerged within only a few years of each other, it took slightly longer for the Cineteca di Bologna to conceive Cinema Ritrovato. The festival is perhaps less tied to the origins of its Cineteca than the Giornate and Friuli – around thirty-five years separate the founding of the Cineteca di Bologna and the first edition of what would become Cinema Ritrovato in 1986. Its emergence is perhaps more closely connected to the surrounding developments in the field – whereas a line can clearly be drawn from the Cinepopolare screenings in the aftermath of the Friuli earthquake to the Cineteca del Friuli and the Giornate, Cinema Ritrovato represents an older film archive adapting to and following the changes of the time, including those wrought by the Pordenone festival itself.
The Cineteca di Bologna was created in 1963 as a municipal institution, rooted in a local political landscape: Bologna had been and would remain until the mid-nineties a stronghold of the Italian Communist Party, and the ‘Commissione Cinema’ that led to the establishment of the Cineteca was a result of a policy that channelled access to culture through institutions (Bloomfield 93). Created by public powers, from its earliest days the Cineteca had an emphasis on programming, first with the Cinema Roma and subsequently with Cinema Lumiere. Nonetheless, a festival was not part of the Cineteca’s archive or presentation strategy. Anecdotally the festival seems to have similar origins to the Giornate, beginning as a gathering of friends, led by Gian Luca Farinelli (now the Cineteca’s director), Nicola Mazzanti and Vittorio Boarini, bringing film prints from their associated archives
27 (Ennio Patalas from the Munich Film Archive, for instance), presenting them in a collegiate, film-enthusiasts’ atmosphere (Guy Borlée, Appendix I). However, Cinema Ritrovato must be understood in relation to the Cineteca’s refocusing around restoration, and the delineation of a theory to underpin archival practice, supported by an understanding of cinema history.
The first edition of Cinema Ritrovato in December 1986 consisted of five days of discussion centred on ‘Experiences and Perspectives in the Conservation and Promotion of Film Heritage’, driving towards a theoretical and practical understanding of film preservation. Described at this time as a ‘convegno’ (congress) rather than a festival, the aims were set out to ‘approach the questions of the conservation, cataloguing, distribution of film heritage; the role of cineteche in the safeguarding of this heritage; the role of public institutions in the production of film culture’ (“Due convegni tra passato e futuro alla Mostra di Bologna”). The emphasis on presentation was therefore tempered with an attention to preservation and professional practice, making film archives, their work and attitudes, central to the framework in which these films were shown – the festival itself became a means of diffusing restoration expertise and securing international appeal.
At this time the festival did not yet have its name and was produced in association with the Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero, a festival founded in 1960 in Poretta Terme as a counterpoint to the Venice film festival and its perceived trivialisation of cinema. The Mostra strove to reinvigorate something that had been lost in Italian film culture, ‘a non-conformist event, promoting a cinema of participation rather than escapism […] A Cinema that would help us to understand ourselves […]’ (Leonida Repaci, founder of the Mostra, 1960. Cited by Farinelli 2013: 94). This alternative approach to cinema, drawing from an understanding of (film) history, could join with the work and focus of the Cineteca. The aspects of the Mostra that investigated a certain theory of film culture as well as its re-appropriation of a festival setting to facilitate (re)discovery, discussion and re-evaluation could realise the goal of making films visible through a philological approach to film preservation, key to this first formulation of Cinema Ritrovato. In the special edition of Cineteca (the journal of the Cineteca di Bologna) for the 25th edition of the Mostra, Pietro Bonfiglioli, president of the ‘Commissione Cinema,’
28 argued that the relocation of the Mostra to Bologna brought ‘free cinema’ into contact with the autonomy of the cultural institution, to produce a ‘diverse social relationship’ (1986: 2). In 1990 in the same journal, Vittorio Boarini, director of the Cineteca, summarised the mutually supportive relationship between the Mostra and Cinema Ritrovato, aligning the inclination of the former ‘to show the invisible […] representing emerging cinemas […] but also bringing light to ‘treasures’ buried in the archives’ with film archive aims, contributing to the ‘historic memory of cinema’ and rooted in ‘theoretical principles and historical awareness’ (1990: 2), validating the relevance of this form of presentation for the archive. This was confirmed in 1987 when the ‘congress’ evolved into its own section, Cinema Ritrovato.
The fact that Cinema Ritrovato emerged only four years after the first edition of Giornate del Cinema Muto reflects the rapidity with which spreading visibility of early and archival films became part of film archive culture: Robert Daudelin in a special edition of the Journal of Film Preservation exploring ‘the future of FIAF’ in 1995 alluded to the power of these two festivals to push archives to re-evaluate the history of cinema with each year’s programme (22). This claim to rewriting film history through discovery and re-evaluation is central to the establishment (and longevity) of both festivals, although the ‘rewriting’ and conception of this history encompass different ideas within them. The activity entails uncovering something new that adds to or alters the story of film (in terms of the films themselves) but also unveils a methodology; a different way to approach the reading and writing of film history. How this mission has been pursued, both in terms of the position of the festivals in the archival sphere and the way in which they have been received will be examined further in the next two sections of this chapter.
2.2 Bologna and Pordenone: finding the archival film festival.
“Il Cinema Ritrovato is a grand museum of film.” (“Il Cinema Ritrovato: Thirty-One Years of
Emotions” on the festival website)
“The museum is something different. It’s being taken out of the museum […] It’s life. Returning, giving life to things.” (Carlo Montanaro of Giornate del Cinema Muto, Appendix II).
29 These two apparently conflicting statements appear to cement the difference between Cinema Ritrovato and Giornate del Cinema Muto. Cinema Ritrovato is positioned as the vetrina, a showcase of historical objects performed for an audience, while Giornate del Cinema Muto thrusts cinema history onto a contemporary screen, in the interests of showing as much as possible to demonstrate the worth of its films. However, the two festivals exist on the border of film archiving and film exhibition, each leaning on occasion to one side or the other, balancing the appreciation of historical film with a dynamic understanding of their continuing capacity to entertain and reveal new knowledge.
The particularity of the archival film festival was largely established through Giornate del Cinema Muto and Cinema Ritrovato. They brought forward the obligation of film archives not only to present but to evaluate film history and culture2 through both the films and their condition. And while they
seemingly adopt a ‘modern’ exhibition practice which in many ways emphasises the historical distance between the audience and the film, the focus on discovery and rediscovery through event reflects the desire to evoke the sensation of first seeing these films and demonstrate an historical and cultural understanding not just of film but of cinema as an experience. The act of presenting becomes a means of giving value to archival collections and work and creates an event out of and dedicated to the specificity of film.
This mode of presentation should be distinguished from other methods of showing archival and historical film. It is telling that in both quotes used to open this section, the word ‘museum’ is invoked – the festival, by its nature, is not a museum, and arguably the decision of film archives to utilise the festival setting brings films out of the museum (as Montanaro suggests). The emphasis of a festival is so securely on dynamic presentation and engagement; this combined with the transformation in
2 Article 4 of the FIAF Statutes: ‘Members are also encouraged to organise the projection and the viewing of
films, using copies specially made for this purpose […] and, in general, to develop a full range of non-profit making activities related to the promotion and diffusion of film culture, from a historical, educational and
artistic perspective.’ (my emphasis - KR). The implication of this is that film archives’ presentations should be
30 attitudes in the eighties that saw film considered as performance art rather than individual art objects (Lameris 192) means that film history is being approached in a different way through these festivals, underlining its performativity. The museum is a setting in which the viewer chooses whether (or not) to see an object on display which has been contextualised and memorialised; there is a sense of containment to the museum or the ‘white cube’ of the gallery and any ‘performance’ of the object is closely organised within the walls of the museum space (Balsom 30). The museum referred to on the Cinema Ritrovato website is probably connecting the festival to an easily understood physical representation of ‘history’ and its exhibition – also perhaps suggesting a closer relationship to its associated Cineteca – but neglects certain aspects of the festival. The implication of museum is of something unchanging and definitive while both Cinema Ritrovato and Giornate del Cinema Muto, simply through the fact that they continue to present programmes rooted in ‘rediscovery,’ seem actively to reinforce the notion that the history of cinema is incomplete and can be renewed each year.
Both Cinema Ritrovato and Giornate del Cinema Muto latch on to the idea of cinema as ‘an experience of reception’ and furthermore position this as central to understanding archival film (Schulte Strathaus 3). An important element of these two festivals, that again perhaps distinguishes them from the museum, is that they bring film as an historical object (particularly in terms of what has been ‘forgotten’) into contact with the present time (Hennefeld n.p). Cinema Ritrovato draws attention to the meaning of restoration in similar terms, what can be revealed about the film but also what the restorer brings to it: viewing a restored film becomes a means of combining the past and present life of the film. The 1990 edition of Cinema Ritrovato is especially significant here as part of the programme (and the first pages of Cineteca) was dedicated to ‘Towards a Theory of Film Restoration,’ exploring the concept of the original, the reconstruction of a text, ‘The Text and the Event: Questions of Philology and Implementation’ and ‘Fragments and Lacuna’ (Farinelli and Mazzanti 1990: 4-5). This indicates the weight given to an awareness of film history within film restoration and furthermore brings the act of restoration and programming together: the notion that
