Film Restoration

The project "DVD as a medium for critical film editions" marks a milestone in the transition of the DVD from a commercial entertainment format to a cognitive tool for the academic disciplines concerned with film and culture. Should it surprise us that this medium proves its innovative capability precisely in the role of an archive? It should not, if one considers the object of analysis: Fritz Lang's Metropolis -the fantastic modernity captures the imagination of the public to the very day. And it should not, if one knows the history of the film: the complicated chain of censorship measures, studio intervention and other losses incurred to the original material along the way, shown by this edition project in quite new ways. An auratic original Metropolis is not magically produced from the conjurer's hat. The DVD rather sharpens the eye to the historical cuts in the work processfor example, in the combination of moving pictures with grey frames which mark missing footage where nothing can be shown. Of course one can also view this DVD of Metropolis in its linear form. However, the real intellectual adventure is to engage with the DVD's digital framework of knowledge, play along with the puzzle made up from the genesis of the work and the way in which it has been handed down, and to recognise how an excellent classic of German film has been transformed by time and history. Metropolis, Fritz Lang, our cultural heritage in cinematographynone of this should be taken for granted. We need institutions like the University of the Arts in Berlin to take on the responsibility for advanced, interdisciplinary research projects. We need archivists and academics like Enno Patalas and Anna Bohn, discriminating experts on the history of film, who, together with young artists such as Gunter Krüger and Björn Speidel, are pioneers of innovative forms of mediation. And we ourselves need perseverance and intellectual curiosity in order to assimilate this cultural heritage and to experience afresh a film such as Metropolis, time and again. This DVD shows us how.

Antologia di two reels scelti tra quelli del periodo più proficuo e fantasioso del duo Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy e il cui titolo si rifaceva in chiave parodica al leggendario kolossal e successo cinematografico hollywoodiano «Via col vento» (Gone with the Wind, 1939), "Via convento" apparve nelle sale cinematografiche italiane nel secondo dopoguerra (1947). Il film era ricavato abbinando tre cortometraggi comici già usciti in Italia negli anni '30 ma adattati con nuovo doppiaggio – Scram, Me and My Pal e One Good Turn.  In quest'ultimo, di James W. Horne, Stanlio e Ollio, vittime della Depressione, si sentono paladini di tutte le cause perse, regalandoci fotogrammi indimenticabili, intrisi di humor e comicità.
L'intera colonna sonora del film è stata ricostruita a partire da più elementi sopravvissuti in pellicola 35mm (ad eccezione di soli 10 secondi di dialogo andati perduti, probabilmente già sullo stesso negativo, reintegrati in inglese con sottotitoli in italiano), e anche mediante lo studio e la digitalizzazione di pellicole 16mm conservate in archivi privati e pubblici. Il doppiaggio in questione riporta le voci di Alberto Sordi e Mauro Zambuto, tornato ora al suo massimo splendore per questo titolo grazie al progetto SOS STANLIO E OLLIO.

Inwiefern sind Filme als Kulturgüter geschützt? Welche Defizite bestehen beim Schutz des Filmerbes? Und welche Standards sollen für seine Sicherung gelten? In zwei Bänden stellt Anna Bohn unter Berücksichtigung zahlreicher Filmbeispiele und Archivquellen erstmals und umfassend die Grundlagen zum Schutz des Filmerbes dar.
Der erste Band behandelt wesentliche Aspekte des audiovisuellen Kulturgutschutzes aus historischer Perspektive wie die Grundlagen filmischer Überlieferung, die Geschichte der Filmarchivierung und die Chronik der Verluste sowie internationale Vereinbarungen und nationale Gesetzgebungen zum Filmerbe. Der zweite Band definiert Schlüsselbegriffe zum Schutz des Filmerbes wie Sicherung, Konservierung, Restaurierung, Rekonstruktion, Dokumentation, Original, Kopie, Reversibilität, Authentizität, Integrität, Autorisation, Fragment, Lacuna, Ergänzung – Komplettierung, Edition und Fassung.
Mit seiner interdisziplinär vergleichenden Methode richtet sich dieses Handbuch sowohl an die Film- und Medienwissenschaften, die Denkmalpflege, Kunstwissenschaft, Philologie, Archiv- und Bibliothekswissenschaften, Museumskunde als auch an die Kultur- und Geschichtswissenschaft.

The Digital Repository Project, initiated by the National Film Archive in 2010, is just finishing its fifth year. The project’s aims were to digitize, archive, catalogue and make available the Polish cinema to a broader audience. The digitization for the project The National Film Archive’s Digital Repository was possible due to the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and its programs: the Digitalizacja materiałów audiowizualnych (2010) and the Wieloletni Program Rządowy KULTURA+ (2011-2014) directed by the National Audiovisual Institute.

Open Access: https://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1005139;keyword=fossati
Almost a decade after its first publication, this revised edition covers the latest developments in the field. Besides a new general introduction, a new conclusion, and extensive updates to each chapter, a novel theoretical framework and an additional case study have been included.

In From Grain to Pixel, Giovanna Fossati analyzes the transition from analog to digital film and its profound effects on filmmaking and film archiving. Reflecting on the theoretical conceptualization of the medium itself, Fossati poses significant questions about the status of physical film and the practice of its archival preservation, restoration, and presentation.
From Grain to Pixel attempts to bridge the fields of film archiving and academic research by addressing the discourse on film's ontology and analyzing how different interpretations of what film is affect the role and practices of film archives. By proposing a novel theorization of film archival practice, Fossati aims to stimulate a renewed dialogue between film scholars and film archivists.
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463725002/from-grain-to-pixel

Resumen: Este artículo recoge la experiencia del hallazgo, restauración y digitalización del film de Carlos Endara De Guayaquil a Quito (1929). Endara (Ibarra 1865-Panamá 1954) fue un pintor y fotógrafo ecuatoriano que se radicó a la edad de 20 años en Panamá, en donde años más tarde abrió el conocido estudio Fotografía Endara Hermanos. Aunque Endara se especializó en la fotografía, también realizó un film con el afán de mostrar los procesos de modernización en Ecuador. Rodada durante dos viajes a Ecuador entre 1925 y 1926, la cinta de Endara es una de las primeras en retratar las ciudades de Guayaquil y Quito, así como el ferrocarril ecuatoriano que unía estos dos centros urbanos, uno en la costa y el otro en los Andes. Las copias de la película terminada, proyectada en Quito pocos años después de ser editada, se perdieron en las décadas subsiguientes. En 2016, un equipo de investigadores de la Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar en Quito, Ecuador, recuperó los rollos originales en un archivo privado en Panamá. Abstract: This article summarizes the process of identification, recovery and digitization of Carlos Endara's film De Guayaquil a Quito (1929). Endara (Ibarra 1865-Panamá 1954) was an Ecuadorian painter and photographer who settled at the age of 20 in Panama where he would later open the well-known studio Fotografía Endara Hermanos. Even though Endara concentrated his work on photography, he made a film in Ecuador in order to show the country's modernization process. Shot during two trips to Ecuador between 1925 and 1926, Endara's film is one of the first to portray the cities of Guayaquil and Quito, as well as the Ecuadorian railway that connected these two urban centres, one on the coast and the other in the Andes. The copies of the finished film, screened in Quito a few years after being edited, disappeared in the following decades. In 2016, researchers from the Universidad Andina in Quito, Ecuador, discovered the original reels in a private archive in Panama. Resumo: Este artigo transmite a experiência de descoberta, restauração e digitalização do filme de Carlos Endara De Guayaquil a Quito (60 min.). Endara (Ibarra 1865-Panamá 1954) foi um pintor e fotógrafo equatoriano radicado na idade de 20 anos no Panamá onde, anos mais tarde, abriria o reconhecido estúdio fotográfico Fotografía Endara Hermanos. Embora Endara se tenha concentrado na fotografia, realizou um filme com o afã de mostrar os processos de modernização no Equador. Rodado em duas viagens ao Equador entre 1925 e 1926, a fita de Endara é uma das primeiras a retratar as cidades de Guayaquil e Quito, assim como a ferrovia equatoriana que conectava essas duas cidades, uma na costa e outra nos Andes. As cópias do filme finalizado, projetado em Quito poucos anos depois de ter sido editada, perderam-se nas décadas seguintes. Em 2016, uma equipe de pesquisadores da Universidade Andina Simón Bolívar em Quito, Equador, recuperou os rolos originais de um arquivo privado no Panamá. Palavras chave: Equador, década de 1920, Guayaquil, Quito.

http://synoptique.hybrid.concordia.ca/index.php/main/article/view/169/211

An alternative film history could be written by film archives, which let cinema tell its stories in a new way, through the relationship among cultural establishments.
In Italy wide access policies have not always been the standard for film archives, and this access has been achieved hardly; this may depend on a misunderstanding on the relevance of film heritage. Italy’s overflowing visual environment, filled with artworks, has shaped the conventions towards mass culture, so film heritage has always been acknowledged as subaltern to the traditional cultural heritage’s preservation priorities, which are more respected by the governmental institutions.
This paper introduces some cases of collaboration among educational institutions and film archives for today and tomorrow's personnel training.

Metro: Islands Brygge CONFERENCE DINNER VENUE Madklubben Store Kongensgade 66 Copenhagen Centre www.madklubben.dk Metro: Kongens Nytorv INTERNET Eduroam 3 INDEX WELCOME 3 ABOUT LARM -THE RESEARCH PROJECT 4 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS 5 PERFORMANCE 10 PANELS 11 ABSTRACTS 18 PRACTICAL INFORMATION 53 LIST OF ABSTRACTS 57 4

es un referente a nivel internacional de la restauración fílmica. Además de ser un gran investigador e historiador del cine mudo, Berriatúa es en la actualidad uno de los mayores conocedores de la obra de F. W. Murnau. A través de sus diferentes libros, monografías y restauraciones, tenemos acceso a muchos materiales en español sobre el trabajo de Murnau. Berriatúa llegó al mundo de la restauración cinematográfica simplemente porque le interesaba ver las películas tal y como eran y no como muchas veces se comercializan: «Para mí, restaurar es poder presentar la película como se vio y como era en su día, no mejorar, ni cambiar. Creo que estas modificaciones son falsificaciones y operaciones comerciales» (1). Partiendo de esta afirmación fue precisamente como comenzó nuestra conversación que acabó derivando en muchos otros aspectos.

Este artículo tiene como fin poner en valor el proceso de restauración de material fílmico, necesario para la con- servación del patrimonio cinematográfico. En concreto, se ha estudiado el reciente caso de recuperación de la película de Antonio del Amo Noventa minutos (1949) por parte de la Filmoteca Española. Su presentación en el Cine Doré el 8 de noviembre de 2018, tras décadas sin ser proyectada, redescubrió al público y a los investigado- res un título único y fundamental en la historia del cine español; no solo por su originalidad, sino también por el prestigio del equipo de rodaje que la hizo posible. Con el objeto de reivindicar la importancia de esta película, así como de destacar el complejo trabajo llevado a cabo con la única copia original existente, se presenta un estudio introductorio desde un punto de vista histórico y estético, así como una entrevista a la restauradora, María Muñoz. Con todo ello, se defiende la necesidad de mantener y divulgar el patrimonio fílmico general y, en particular, el español, para comprender la historia y circunstancias de un país y de su cultura.

Remembering Wong Kar-wai’s in the Mood for Love on its 20th anniversary.
[Archived version of the url on WayBackMachine (archive.org): https://web.archive.org/web/20201115063249/https://publiknama.com/2020/11/14/melancholia-in-hong-kong-remembering-wong-kar-wais-in-the-mood-for-love/]

Le concept de la restauration des monuments et des œuvres d’art est moderne. Depuis le début, ce terme signifiait rapporter un objet à un état originel précédent, en impliquant dans le même temps la conservation de cette œuvre en vue de sa transmission aux générations futures. Durant ces vingt dernières années, le mot « restauration » est de plus en plus fréquemment appliqué aux œuvres cinématographiques, et il est couramment utilisé soit par la communauté des cinémathèques, archives et musées de films, soit par l’industrie cinématographique. Que faut-il donc comprendre par l’expression « restauration » des films ? Souvent il s’agit de tirer une nouvelle copie de film à partir du matériel subsistant, de le rapporter à un état précédent du passé ainsi que de l’améliorer visuellement. La notion même de restauration est très discutable et génère de nombreuses problématiques face aux images en mouvement. Est-ce qu’il est possible de parler d’une « restauration cinématographique » ? Dans cette optique, celle d’une ontologie « empirique » du cinéma, la définition même de ce qu’est le film doit être reformulée d’après la notion que j’appellerai l’image-matière. Une fois défini le concept de l’image-matière, il faudra reprendre la notion de restauration qui semble aujourd’hui peu satisfaisante si elle est confrontée à ce qui constitue un film.

The Man with the Movie Camera is one of the best-known works in film history and generally regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the classical Soviet avant-garde. Every person who has ever shown the slightest interest in the history of cinema has heard about this film and probably seen it at some point. But what has this person actually seen? Of course this is a question that often occurs when you see film presentations or video releases of films: how do you know what version you are looking at and how does it relate to other prints or copies of the same film? It is well known that many films exist in variant versions. Sometimes these are intentionally created by the director or the producer, as with multi-language versions, or films that were made with multiple cameras to produce additional negatives, as was common practice in the era of silent films. But mostly film prints have suffered from wear and tear, from cuts by projectionists or censors, or as a result of inferior duplication and reproduction. When you see a film from 1929, like TMWTMC, you must always be aware of the fact that you may be watching just "a " print of the film, not necessarily exactly as it was intended by the film maker or as it was shown on its opening night. Unfortunately TMWMC is mostly known in prints that are defective. For decades the film was widely seen only in prints that were printed with a sound aperture. TMWMC was shot in the period of silent cinema with silent camera aperture. This means that the filmed image used the full area between perforations on both sides that were necessary for the transport of the film. In later years, when sound was introduced, part of the image width was used for the optical sound track. This reduced the horizontal size of the image ; then both top and bottom of the silent image were also cropped to maintain the customary screen shape. The consequence of this practice was that the cinema apparatus, both in cinemas and in film laboratories, was soon no longer set up for the silent frame ratio. In a nutshell, most prints of TMWMC, even in archives, have these parts of the image cutoff. They are full length-all the shots are there-but suffer severe mutilation so far as the photographic composition is concerned. The most important feature of the restored film print represented here is that the full frame image is preserved. This is because the print that served as the source is from the first years of its release and preserved in the archives of the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. This print was brought to Amsterdam by Vertov himself when he travelled through Western Europe in 1931 and showed the film on different occasions. In the Netherlands this print was presented by the Filmliga, an active film club that promoted film as visual art. The film was shown in the presence of Dziga Vertov, and when Vertov returned to the Soviet Union, the print was acquired by the Filmliga. The Filmliga continued to occasionally show the film in the Netherlands and after the war the film became part of the collection of the then Nederlands Filmmuseum. This vintage nitrate print is full frame and has superb photographic quality, due to the fact that it is directly printed from the original negative on good quality positive film stock. This doesn't mean that the film is perfect. For many reasons this print has also its deficiencies. The main reason is that the print was regularly used for presentations in the years that inflammable nitrate film was still shown. Subsequently the print was screened in the Filmmuseum itself as well as in other film museums and archives that requested the film print from Amsterdam. When in the 1960s a duplicate was made on

The three films created in 1972 by the artist Ugo Locatelli (Noi sappiamo, Tempo di lettura, Meta) are presented here for the first time in a new 16mm version restored and reprint by Home Movies  Italian Amateur Film Archive. The talk will be introduced by Jennifer Malvezzi (Università di Parma), Ugo Locatelli, Mirco Santi and Paolo Simoni (Home Movies).

Despite the closure of virtually all original grindhouse cinemas, ‘grindhouse’ lives on as a conceptual term. This article contends that the prevailing conceptualization of ‘grindhouse’ is problematized by a widening gap between the original grindhouse context (‘past’) and the DVD/home-viewing context (present). Despite fans’ and filmmakers’ desire to preserve this part of exploitation cinema history, the world of the grindhouse is now little more than a blurry set of tall-tales and faded phenomenal experiences, which are subject to present-bias. The continuing usefulness of grindhouse-qua-concept requires that one should pay heed to the contemporary contexts in which ‘grindhouse’ is evoked.

My article on "Tiga Dara" (Three Sisters, Usmar Ismail, 1957) and "Ini Kisah Tiga Dara" (Three Sassy Sisters, Nia Dinata, 2016), both in English and Chinese. About the importance of the films (the restoration, the content, and the context).
It was originally published in 2017 Taipei Film Festival catalog.

The restoration of La battaglia dall’Astico al Piave (Italy, 1918) has been funded by MiC (the Italian Ministry of Culture) and carried out by the University of Udine in collaboration with several film archives. Starting
from a historical-philological and restoration framework, the case study offers some reflections and considerations between the fields of the digital humanities, film preservation, and cinema history.
Furthermore, it provides a concrete opportunity to achieve the two goals of raising awareness about the status of digitized film artefacts, framing them as the result of modelling practices, and documenting the film preservation process as well as the surrounding historical and cultural network in a digital historical-critical infrastructure.
Keywords: First World War; Cinema History; Film Restoration; Film Philology; Digital Infrastructure.

Segunda Parte de la conversación con el realizador y restaurador Luciano Berriatúa ¿Cómo consigue financiación para restaurar las películas?, ¿Cómo se inició en ese mundo de la conservación de archivos? Yo trabajo para archivos, y los archivos tienen, al igual que los museos de arte, la responsabilidad de preservar el patrimonio. Empecé en el año 77 con la película Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1921), así que estaba medio asociado con Enno Patalas (1). Yo no soy restaurador, quiero decir, me dedico a eso pero entre otros miles de cosas, hago películas de animación, películas documentales para DVD y la restauración no me interesa en si. Con esto quiero decir que lo que me interesa es ver las películas como eran porque estoy harto de ver las películas falsificadas. Por ejemplo, el cine mudo se veía durante muchos años en blanco y negro, en copias que eran copias de copias, de copias con los rótulos que no eran los originales y que podían ser la traducción de la traducción de una traducción incompleta de cuatro países, sin las músicas. Entonces en el caso de Murnau, como a mi me gustaba muchísimo, empecé a estudiarle como realizador para aprender sus técnicas de rodaje. Lo que me empecé a encontrar es que sobre Nosferatu, Lotte Eisner decía que había escenas que no se habían rodado nunca y en una moviola podía verlas ante mi (2). Me pasaban cosas de ese estilo, así que, a partir de ahí me planteé la restauración para ver como era originalmente la película. La primera restauración importante que hicimos fue el Fausto (F.W. Murnau, 1926) dentro del Proyecto Lumiere de la Union Europea que da dinero para una restauración en la que intervengan tres archivos, y estos fueron: la Filmoteca española, la filmoteca danesa de Copenhage (Det Danske Filmmuseum) y hacia falta una alemana, sin embargo, la Murnau Stiftung (Fundación Murnau) no quiso intervenir, entonces intervino el DIF (Deutsches Filminstitut). Leí que hubo problemas con la restauración de Fausto... Cuando sacamos Fausto lo que hizo la Murnau Stiftung fue boicotearla e impedir que se pasase en Berlín. Ellos decían que como había unos españoles que estaban interviniendo en Fausto, que no hacia falta que se restaurase, ya que había un negativo original perfecto. El "negativo original perfecto" era uno horrible, pero como tenía los rótulos en alemán, era mas largo. Entonces cuando Faust ya estaba en el catalogo de la Berlinale (3), con la música y la orquesta, de pronto la Berlinale nos comunica que aún estando en el catálogo no la pueden pasar en la sala porque la Murnau Stiftung lo ha prohibido, pues ellos tienen los derechos de la película y también son ellos quienes suministran todos los clásicos a la Berlinale (4), nos dicen que lo sienten mucho pero no pueden hacer nada por nosotros, entonces lo que hace Berndt Heller, el músico, es alquilar una sala de conciertos justo frente a la Berlinale y allí pasamos el Fausto. Entró toda la gente de la Berlinale a verlo, puesto que estaba anunciado en el catálogo y en los carteles que ponemos en la Berlinale. Durante tres o cuatro años la Murnau Stiftung prohibió que la película se viese y al cabo de cuatro años de discusiones, lo que hizo fue comprarla, pagando cuatro veces más de lo que DVD de la restauración de Faust de la Murnau Stiftung

Il ruolo che davvero sogno di interpretare è l'ebreo di Shakespeare. Io sono cristiano (non che la cosa importi), ma ho sempre sentito una certa affinità verso Shylock e vorrei raccontare questo mio sentimento al pubblico. Orson Welles L'attrazione che Orson Welles dimostra lungo tutto l'arco della sua attività nei confronti del personaggio di Shylock si manifesta in una serie di riprese e ritorni con cui il regista si cimenta fino agli ultimi anni di vita. In quella sorta di caleidoscopio rappresentato dalla produzione artistica di Welles, Shylock riappare all'improvviso, nelle forme meno attese. Nel 1938, un anno dopo la fondazione del Mercury Theatre, Welles propone una versione del Merchant of Venice per la nuova serie della Columbia di testi shakespeariani registrati su disco, The Mercury Text Records, il primo esperimento del genere. Le varie occasioni di ripresa del Mercante non sono certo all'insegna della sperimentazione del linguaggio o della messa in scena, come potevano essere il Giulio Cesare 'mussoliniano' o il Macbeth voodoo, ma sicuramente sono al cuore degli interessi tematici ed etici di Welles. Il potere e la solitudine del

An event centered on a reenactment of various works created in 1972 by the artist Ugo Locatelli: three Super8 and 8mm films (Noi sappiamo, Tempo di lettura, Meta), and an installation of eleven photographic images (Aree e Tracce - Portable Exhibition) here shown for the first time after forty years. The talk will be introduced by Jennifer Malvezzi.

The notion of “film restoration” raises considerable problems for research into silent film music. Handwritten scores with the orchestration intended by their authors are rare; in cases where piano scores have been preserved, these were often produced in a different context and for a completely different purpose. In contrast, a large repertoire of mood music pieces has come down to us from the silent film era, which according to their nature, however, could either precede a “musical illustration” or descend from it a posteriori.
Musical documents of such varied nature, which could represent completely different moments in the compositional process, raise notable problems of interpretation when they are assumed as the starting point for a “film-music restoration”. In contrast to an alleged authenticity, emphatically proclaimed for mostly commercial reasons, it will be noted that even the most historically accurate procedures of film-music reconstruction often require arbitrary interventions in the musical documents, which imply different assumptions regarding the ontological status of the score and the film, as well as their respective authorships.
It is surprising to find a similar level of arbitrariness even in the most celebrated exemplar of a film-music restoration of the last years: Frank Strobel’s reconstruction of Huppertz’ score for the film Metropolis. Despite all declared claims for philological completeness and historical truthfulness, the reconstruction of this silent film score proves rather to be a process of translation and adaptation. The final result of such a procedure is not only historically new and indirectly derivable from the state of the sources, but also completely rooted in the aesthetic expectations of the present era.

Oliver Hardy rimane uno degli attori più sottili, espressivi, naturalistici che il cinema abbia mai conosciuto. Possedeva quella che Pauline Kael definì, riferendosi al personaggio di Tony, interpretato da John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, il "dono della trasparenza". Ciò che lei disse di Travolta ben si addice a qualunque attore che abbia quei connotati: "La faccia ed il corpo di Travolta si possono leggere…Quando egli vuole farci percepire quanto Tony sia spaesato e confuso, lo sentiamo. Riesce ad esprimere sfumature emozionali che non sono scritte nelle sceneggiature". I film di Laurel e Hardy non richiedono infatti ad Ollio una grossa dose di introspezione o di azione scenica da dramma operistico, ma lui è comunque capace di trasmettere qualsivoglia emozione necessaria. Uno dei capolavori della coppia, Helpmates (1932), cortometraggio da due rulli recentemente recuperato nella sua versione italiana nell'ambito del progetto "S.O.S. Stanlio e Ollio" 1 , risulta esemplare a tal proposito.

This project adopts a contemporary lens and revisits the post-Partition golden era of Bengali  cinema to draft a historical and topographic narrative of the diverse media infrastructural networks that formed the industry during the 1950s. The historic events of the Second World  War and the Partition of India created numerous ripples in the economic and cultural  ecology of the region, triggering networks of knowledge transfer and circuits for the  dissemination of discourses.
Rather than engaging with the era through the binary critical tropes of the canonical auteur  status of Satyajit Ray or the affective stardom of Uttam Kumar- Suchitra Sen, this project  explores the diverse infrastructures that formed the nodal points of convergence between the  two distinct cinematic templates (Larkin, 2013). It therefore analyses the institutions, cultural  practices, processes and discourses that were integral to both the film forms. The  methodological approach is to bridge the golden era to the contemporary by tracing the  institutions through which the celluloid film prints travelled, from their points of production  to consumption to their eventual after-life in the form of film preservation and restoration. Such an approach renders significance to the studios, cinema halls, film societies and film archives  through which the films travelled. It also enables a critical examination of the aesthetic, ethical,  legal and technological concerns that are inscribed in the processes of production,  exhibition and restoration of the analogue film print, that bears on its surface traces of  the historical processes that it was subjected to.
Emphasizing moments of continuity and fissures that rendered the decade of 1950s  distinct from the 1940s, my imperative is to write an “entangled/ transnational history” that  doesn’t limit historiographic exercises to frameworks of regional/national. It rather focuses on  “encounters” and “exchanges” to understand the “interaction, interdependence and  complexity” between different force-fields that constituted the film culture of the post-partition  era (Hagener, 2014).

Con ocasión del centenario de la unificación de Italia (1861-1961), la productora Gamma Film realizó un mediometraje musical conmemorativo de dibujos animados titulado La lunga calza verde, con guión de Cesare Zavattini, gran exponente del neorrealismo italiano.
Cincuenta años después, la Fondazione Micheletti de Brescia, junto al MUSIL de Rodengo Saiano, que custodia el archivo de la productora, permite el estudio de cuatro dibujos sobre acetato de celulosa trasparente (en italiano, rodovetri), utilizados en la realización de unos fotogramas pertenecientes a la secuencia número quince de la película, porque en ellos se pone en evidencia la gran mayoría de las alteraciones que se manifiestan, de forma individualizada o común, en todo el conjunto de la colección.
La degradación cíclica propia del acetato y la naturaleza de estos objetos, productos semielaborados que serán fundamentales para la creación de la película de animación, nos plantean estas preguntas: ¿por qué conservar los rodovetri? y ¿cómo preservarlos frente a su natural degradación de carácter cíclico?

This article focuses on the issues of conservation and restoration of films through digital technologies. Films, as an expression of collective memory, become part of the common heritage of humankind, which deserves to be safeguarded and disseminated. As a consequence of this awareness, the issue of preserving cinematic materials becomes a pressing one, especially when the structural frailty and transience of the film stock is taken into account.

This article summarizes the process of identification, recovery and digitization of Carlos Endara’s film De Guayaquil a Quito (1929). Endara (Ibarra 1865 - Panama 1954) was an Ecuadorian painter and photographer who settled at the age of 20 in Panama where he would later open the well-known studio Fotografia Endara Hermanos . Even though Endara concentrated his work on photography, he made a film in Ecuador in order to show the country’s modernization process. Shot during two trips to Ecuador between 1925 and 1926, Endara’s film is one of the first to portray the cities of Guayaquil and Quito, as well as the Ecuadorian railway that connected these two urban centres, one on the coast and the other in the Andes. The copies of the finished film, screened in Quito a few years after being edited, disappeared in the following decades. In 2016, researchers from the Universidad Andina in Quito, Ecuador, discovered the original reels in a private archive in Panama. Keywords: Ecuador, 1920s, ...

Seit den Anfängen des Kinos ist ein Grossteil des Filmerbes verlorengegangen oder zerstört worden, sei es aus wirtschaftlichen, ästhetischen oder Platzgründen oder einfach aus Vernachlässigung. Hinzu kommt, dass sich Filme auch selber zerstören, denn jedes Filmmaterial ist natürlichem Zerfall ausgesetzt. Nitrat ist entflammbar, Azetat kann vom Essigsyndrom befallen werden, und die digitalen Medien, die vor einigen Jahren auch in die Archivwissenschaft eingeführt und zunächst als Zukunft der Langzeitarchivierung und -sicherung diskutiert wurden, erwiesen sich als anfällig für neue Probleme.
Film ist demnach insgesamt ein instabiles Medium. Bezüglich der analogen Medien als besonders instabil erwiesen hat sich der Farbfilm, sodass dessen Konservierung und Restaurierung spezielle Voraussetzungen verlangt. Die Probleme, die im  Zusammenhang mit der Farbrestaurierung von Filmen bestehen, sind Archiven und Restauratoren seit langem bekannt, und es steht ausser Frage, dass durch die Prävalenz der digitalen Domäne auch in der Filmrestaurierung die ethischen Fragen aktueller sind denn je und an Gewicht und Format gewonnen haben.

Diese Masterarbeit befasst sich mit der digitalen Restaurierung des Agfacolor-Mehrschichtenverfahrens, das insofern besondere Ansprüche an Restauratoren stellt, als es einerseits das erste chromogene Negativ-Positiv-Verfahren war, welches in seiner Technologie noch nicht sehr erprobt war und aufgrund dessen mit einigen Schwierigkeiten zu kämpfen hatte. Andererseits weist dieses Verfahren eine sehr spezifische Farbgebung und Materialität auf, für deren Ästhetik nicht viele Referenzen bestehen. Für die Untersuchung und Wiederherstellung dieser Ästhetik bieten digitale Technologien neue Optionen, welche in der vorliegenden Arbeit eingeführt, diskutiert und in den Kontext der sich damit eröffnenden restaurierungsethischen Problemfelder gestellt werden. Diese verschränkten Thematiken werden diskutiert, indem die restaurierungsethischen Ansätze, die für die Filmrestaurierung, insbesondere der digitalen Prozesse, im Laufe der letzten Jahre erarbeitet wurden, vorgestellt werden. Im Fokus steht die digitale Restaurierung, die ein neues Set an Techniken zur Verfügung stellt und so zu einer authentischen, der ursprünglichen Ästhetik entsprechenden Repräsentation von Agfacolor beiträgt. Es werden verschiedene Konzepte und Forderungen beleuchtet, die das filmische Werk mit definieren und die deshalb mittels verschiedener Autoren aus historischer Perspektive sowie der Erweiterung deren Ansätze in moderneren Versionen erarbeitet werden. Ferner muss in diesem Zusammenhang diskutiert werden, welche ästhetischen Eigenschaften dieses neue Medium mit sich bringt, das die Ästhetik des Ausgangsmaterials nun repräsentieren soll. Diesen Problemen zugeordnet ist, ob und wie bei diesem Medientransfer für die Restaurierung die Einhaltung restaurierungsethischer Grundsätze gewährleistet werden kann. Als Fallbeispiel dient dafür die Restaurierung des Films OPFERGANG (1944) von Veit Harlan, die 2015/16 im Auftrag der Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung vorgenommen wurde.

Una delle migliori fra le commedie minori di Laurel e Hardy, per la regia di James Parrott e la fotografia di George Stevens. Sotto Zero inizia quasi come
un film di Jean Vigo: L&H musicisti di strada, più che mai immersi nel loro piccolo mondo privato, tentano di riscaldare il gelido inverno del ‘29 dimostrando la loro abilità con il contrabbasso e l’harmonium. Se la passano male, soprattutto perché sbagliano tanto la loro collocazione- si esibiscono dinanzi a un istituto per sordomuti – quanto il loro repertorio: strimpellano e cantano coraggiosamente “In the Good Old Summer Time” (Nella cara vecchia estate) – motivo popolare negli Stati Uniti -, durante una furiosa bufera di neve. Il loro unico guadagno consiste in un dollaro, con la richiesta di trasferirsi più in là di un paio di strade. Un padrone di casa furioso (Charlie Hall) fa il suo commento con alcune palle di neve ben mirate. Lasciano cadere il dollaro
che hanno guadagnato, non realizzando la loro perdita fino a quando un uomo finto “cieco” non si china a raccoglierlo. Quando un’altra moneta sembra cadere sulla loro ciotola di latta, si scopre che si tratta in realtà di un uovo deposto da un piccione. Stan punta una palla di neve contro il volatile, colpendo un uomo che ha appena aperto una finestra al piano di sopra. Quando questi si vendica, la palla di neve finisce in una piccola lattina appartenente a  una donna di proporzioni gigantesche (Blanche
Payson). Incolpando Stan e Ollie, li coinvolge in uno scambio di violenza che si conclude con la distruzione degli strumenti musicali dei ragazzi. La fortuna muta e l’azione raggiunge il culmine quando i due scoprono nella neve un portafoglio zeppo di denaro, ma un delinquente (Leo Willis) scorge il ritrovamento e li insegue. Il provvidenziale intervento di un poliziotto (Frank Holliday) salva la situazione
e Stan e Ollie, grati per l’aiuto ricevuto, lo invitano a cena. Al momento di pagare,
però, si accorgono che il portafogli appartiene proprio a quel poliziotto il quale, credendoli borseggiatori, li affida al manesco trattamento che il proprietario del locale riserva a chi non è in grado di pagare. Le luci si spengono, ma i rumori
del tafferuglio che segue immediatamente sono decisamente eloquenti. Ollie viene scaricato in strada e quasi investito da un camion. Di Stan non c’è traccia e quando Ollie ritorna al locale per cercare l’ amico, i suoi colpi alla porta sono interrotti dal gorgoglio proveniente da un barile colmo di acqua piovana, posto lì vicino.
Stan è dentro la botte, ma ha dovuto bere tutta l’acqua. Quando viene tirato fuori, in una gag tipicamente disturbante, vediamo che il suo corpo ha assunto dimensioni gigantesche.

Digital home video is an extremely useful means of watching and analyzing films. However, scholars often neglect the fact that official home video or streaming releases of a film can have differences from the original version of the film itself. Such variances typically are lack of film grain (resulting from digital noise reduction), differences in color grading, and soundtrack remixing. This can depend on the fact that the technicians who work on home video releases are unprepared, or are instructed to adjust the look and the sound of the film to the current taste, or because the filmmakers changed their mind and requested some modifications. At any rate, film scholars must be aware of such possible inconsistencies, otherwise their study could be fallacious. In this article I discuss upon philological problems of home video releases mainly from a practical point of view.