Our annual To Save and Project festival returns in 2025 with a rich selection of newly restored treasures from archives around the world. This year's program spans nearly a century of cinema, from pioneering German Expressionist works like Robert Wiene's Raskolnikow (1923) to groundbreaking independent films of the 1970s like James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971). Films from Argentina, Thailand, India, Syria, the Czech Republic, and beyond highlight cinema's global diversity and the work of film preservation institutions worldwide.

Highlights include the rediscovery of Yevgeni Cherviakov's forgotten Soviet masterpiece My Son (1928), found in Argentina and restored by GEM; the racy pre-Code Hollywood comedy The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932) from the Library of Congress; and Andre Bonzel's Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By, a powerful repurposing of home movies from Janus Films. The program features restorations by major archives and funders, including The Film Foundation, UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Cinemathèque française, and Filmmuseum München.

The series opens on January 9 with the world premiere of MoMA's newly upgraded restoration of Frank Borzage's transcendent romance 7th Heaven (1927), and concludes on January 30 with the world premiere of MoMA's new reconstruction of the long unseen, original 1918 version of Charles Chaplin's World War I comedy Shoulder Arms.

Schedule of Events:

January 9, 2025

7:00 pm: 7th Heaven. 1927. - Directed by Frank Borzage

7th Heaven. 1927. USA. Directed by Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Benjamin Glazer, based on the play by Austin Strong. With Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, David Butler. World Premiere. Silent. 118 min.

Casting Fox contract player Janet Gaynor as a Parisian street urchin and newcomer Charles Farrell as the sanitation worker who loves her, director Frank Borzage created one of the great screen couples, an alliance that would continue through 11 more films. 7th Heaven stands as Borzage's strongest expression of the transcendent power of romantic love, evoking emotions of such strength and purity that only the dream world of silent film could contain them. At the first Academy Awards ceremony, the film won Oscars for Gaynor (Best Actress), Borzage (Best Director) and Benjamin Glazer (Best Adapted Screenplay).This is the premiere presentation of a new, upgraded digital restoration featuring improved image quality, stabilized intertitles, and the original color tints.

Digital restoration by The Museum of Modern Art. Funding provided by the Lillian Gish Fund for Preservation.

January 10, 2025

4:00 pm: Maya Miriga. 1984. Written and - directed by Nirad Mohapatra

Maya Miriga. 1984. India. Written and directed by Nirad Mohapatra. North American premiere. Courtesy Film Heritage Foundation. In Odia; English subtitles. 110 min.

Nirad Mohapatra's sole feature film, rescued from near-oblivion, stands as one of the masterpieces of Indian regional cinema. Through its patient, observant lens and haunting score by Bhaskar Chandavarkar, the film chronicles the gradual dissolution of an extended middle-class family in a small Odisha town. With remarkable subtlety, Mohapatra's nonprofessional cast brings to life the complex dynamics of a household caught between tradition and modernity-the trapped daughters-in-law yearning for freedom, the married sons walking an emotional tightrope, and the slow erosion of familial bonds by individual ambition. We are not far from the world of Satyajit Ray, or from the atmosphere of Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons.

Though it garnered international acclaim and helped put Odia cinema on the map upon its release, both film and filmmaker mysteriously vanished from India's cinematic landscape. This meticulous restoration by the Film Heritage Foundation, working from severely damaged negatives found abandoned in a warehouse, returns to the screen a vital work whose intimate portrayal of family life under pressure resonates perhaps even more strongly in today's India. As critic Maithili Rao noted, the disappearance of Mohapatra after such an "exquisitely elegiac" debut remains one of Indian cinema's most poignant mysteries.

4K digital restoration by Film Heritage Foundation from the 16mm original camera negative preserved at Film Heritage Foundation and a 35mm print preserved at the NFDC – National Film Archive of India at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, Bologna.

7:00 pm: Kalamita (Calamity). 1982. - Directed by Vera Chytilova

Kalamita (Calamity). 1982. Czechoslovakia. Directed by Vera Chytilova. Screenplay by Chytilova, Joseph Silhavý. With Bolek Polivka, Dagmar Blahova, Jana Synkova. North American premiere. Courtesy Janus Films. In Czech; English subtitles. 101 min.

Vera Chytilova, the most prominent female director of the Czech New Wave and one of its most uncompromising voices, crafts a biting social satire about a shaggy, idealistic young man who quits university to become a train engineer in a small mountain town. As played in a star-making performance by the brilliant mime Boleslav Polivka, Honza embarks on a search for authenticity that brings him into head-on conflict with small-town hypocrisy, bureaucratic absurdity, and romantic entanglements with three very different women. When his train becomes trapped in an avalanche, the physical calamity mirrors the moral chaos within. Shot under difficult conditions with frequent interference from Communist authorities, the film showcases Chytilova's signature blend of formal experimentation, absurdist slapstick, and sharp social commentary.

4K digital restoration carried out by Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in collaboration with the Narodni filmový archiv, Prague and the Czech Film Fund in UPP and Soundsquare, with funding by Mrs. Milada Ku?erova and Mr. Eduard Ku?era.

January 11, 2025

1:30 pm: Raskolnikow. 1923. - Directed by Robert Wiene

Raskolnikow. 1923. Germany. Directed by Robert Wiene. With Grigorij Chmara, Jelisaweta Skulskaja, Alla Tarassowa. North American premiere. Silent. 142 min.

In this haunting adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's masterwork, director Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) melds German Expressionist aesthetics with the naturalistic performance style of exiled Russian actors from the Moscow Art Theater. Shot in Berlin during the tumultuous inflation of 1922, the film represents a unique cultural fusion-its jagged, anti-naturalistic sets providing an externalized landscape for Raskolnikov's tortured psyche, while the Russian ensemble delivers performances of devastating psychological realism.

Grigorij Chmara embodies the murderous student Raskolnikov with harrowing intensity, moving through Andrej Andrejew's distorted architectural spaces like a man trapped in his own fevered conscience. Wiene's revolutionary decision to cast actual Russian emigres-part of Berlin's burgeoning exile community-lends the production an authenticity that transcends its experimental visual style, creating what contemporary critics called "not acting, but: living!"

This new digital restoration, undertaken by Filmmuseum München, reconstructs the film's original tinting and incorporates previously lost footage from surviving prints in the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, and the United States. Though significantly shorter than its original release length, this version represents the most complete assembly of this landmark collaboration between German Expressionist cinema and Russian theatrical tradition.

2K digital reconstruction by Filmmuseum München.

4:30 pm: Mulher de Verdade (A Real Woman).1954. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

Mulher de Verdade (A Real Woman). 1954. Brazil. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. Screenplay by Oswaldo Molles, Miroel Silveira. With Inezita Barroso, Cole Santana, Jose Sanz. North American premiere. Courtesy Maristela Filmes. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 98 min.

After decades of celebrated work in Europe, Alberto Cavalcanti returned to his native Brazil to make this sophisticated satire of class and gender relations. What begins as a seemingly light comedy about a woman caught between two marriages-one to a reformed petty criminal, another to a wealthy playboy-develops into a pointed critique of Brazilian society. Popular singer Inezita Barroso, in an early film role, brings remarkable complexity to Amelia, a character who becomes a reluctant bigamist simply because society never allows her to say no. Cavalcanti's refined visual style, developed through his work with the French avant-garde and Britain's Ealing Studios, creates telling contrasts between Amelia's humble domestic life and the artificial world of São Paulo's elite. This restoration rescues a key work-long overlooked in discussions of Brazilian cinema-from one of world cinema's most cosmopolitan directors.

The 4K digital restoration was conducted for Locarno Heritage by Cinegrell Postproduction GmbH in Zurich by Nicole T. Allemann (Project Coordination and Colour Grading), Ursula Deiss (Digital Restoration), Peter Matthies (Film preparation and Scanning) and Daniel Nestler (Sound Restoration). The project was carried out in collaboration with Cinemateca Brasileira – Sociedade Amigos da Cinemateca, Heritage Online Partner, and Cinematografica Maristela.

7:00 pm: Et j'aime a la fureur (Flickering - Ghosts of Loves Gone By). 2021. - Written and directed by Andre Bonzel

Et j'aime a la fureur (Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By). 2021. France. Written and directed by Andre Bonzel. With Bonzel, Anna Bonzel, Raymond Expedit-Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde. New York premiere. DCP. Courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 96 min.

From Andre Bonzel, co-director of the audacious Man Bites Dog (1992), comes this haunting meditation on love, memory, and the tactile power of cinema. Bonzel draws from a vast archive of amateur films-scenes of courtship, marriage, and domestic life captured on Super 8 and 16mm between the 1920s and 1970s by ordinary people. These flickering fragments of forgotten romances are woven together into a bittersweet reflection on the ephemeral nature of both love and celluloid. In restoring and reanimating these intimate moments, Bonzel creates not just a history of amateur filmmaking but a deeply moving exploration of how we preserve-or attempt to preserve-the most precious moments of our lives.

January 12, 2025

1:30 pm: Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight). 1988. Written and - directed by Ossama Mohamed

Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight). 1988. Syria. Written and directed by Ossama Mohamed. With Zuhair Abdulkarim, Sabah As-Salem, Saad Eddin Baqdoones. North American premiere. In Arabic; English subtitles. 105 min.

Opening with the paradoxical declaration "I am a free man," Ossama Mohammed's masterwork uses the microcosm of a rural Syrian family to explore the psychology of life under dictatorship. In a coastal village, the preparations for two weddings become a devastating study of power and control, centered on Abbas, a despotic older brother whose resemblance to Hafez al-Assad is no accident. Mohammed transforms domestic spaces-seen through cracks, dusty windows, and broken mirrors-into a stark visual poetry that reveals how authoritarian violence seeps into society's most private corners. Banned in Syria after a single screening but celebrated at Cannes, the film draws on influences from Georgian comedy to Federico Fellini while establishing its own powerful visual language. This restoration, from The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project, recovers a vital work by a director who, despite living in exile since 2011, continues to probe the complex relationship between beauty, justice, and political repression.

Restored by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Ossama Mohammed. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

4:00 pm: Mia Luang (My Dear Wife). 1978. Directed by Vichit Kounavudhi

Mia Luang (My Dear Wife). 1978. Thailand. Directed by Vichit Kounavudhi. Screenplay by Kounavudhi, based on the novel by Krisna Asosksin. With Jatupon Paupirom, Viyada Umarin, Wonguen Intrawuth. North American premiere. Courtesy Five Star Production Co., Ltd. In Thai; English subtitles. 145 min.

A sophisticated, Sirkian entry in Thailand's domestic melodrama tradition, My Dear Wife exemplifies the genre's preoccupation with class aspiration and marital discord in rapidly modernizing Bangkok. Director Vichit Kounavudhi, later named a National Artist, crafts an emotionally extravagant narrative centered on the rivalry between a legitimate wife and her husband's mistress, set against a backdrop of rising middle-class prosperity and social ambition. The film's widescreen cinematography, conjuring the look of midcentury American melodramas, lavishes attention on the material trappings of urban affluence-modern apartments, fashionable clothes, new automobiles-while its narrative explores the price of such advancement through the intense psychological warfare between its female protagonists.

Made during Thai cinema's commercial peak, when local studios were producing hundreds of features annually for an enthusiastic domestic audience, My Dear Wife demonstrates the industry's ability to adapt international melodramatic conventions while addressing distinctly Thai social dynamics. This new restoration by the Thai Film Archive preserves a vital example of how popular cinema could transform social tensions into compelling entertainment, offering contemporary viewers insight into a crucial period of Thai cultural history.

January 13, 2025

4:00 pm: Et j'aime a la fureur (Flickering - Ghosts of Loves Gone By). 2021. - Written and directed by Andre Bonzel

Et j'aime a la fureur (Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By). 2021. France. Written and directed by Andre Bonzel. With Bonzel, Anna Bonzel, Raymond Expedit-Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde. New York premiere. DCP. Courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 96 min.

From Andre Bonzel, co-director of the audacious Man Bites Dog (1992), comes this haunting meditation on love, memory, and the tactile power of cinema. Bonzel draws from a vast archive of amateur films-scenes of courtship, marriage, and domestic life captured on Super 8 and 16mm between the 1920s and 1970s by ordinary people. These flickering fragments of forgotten romances are woven together into a bittersweet reflection on the ephemeral nature of both love and celluloid. In restoring and reanimating these intimate moments, Bonzel creates not just a history of amateur filmmaking but a deeply moving exploration of how we preserve-or attempt to preserve-the most precious moments of our lives.

6:30 pm: Rosaura a las 10 (Rosaura at 10 O'Clock). 1958. Directed by Mario Soffici

Rosaura a las 10 (Rosaura at 10 O'Clock). 1958. Argentina. Directed by Mario Soffici. Screenplay by Soffici, Marco Denevi. With Juan Verdaguer, Susana Campos, Maria Luisa Robledo. North American premiere. Courtesy Argentina Sono Film. In Spanish; English subtitles. 102 min.

Mario Soffici's adaptation of Marco Denevi's celebrated first novel preserves both the intricate structure and social observation of its source while creating a uniquely twisty genre piece that begins as a cozy social comedy and ends on the far side of noir. Set within the hothouse atmosphere of a Buenos Aires boarding house, the film follows the timid painter Camilo Canegato (Juan Verdaguer), whose carefully maintained solitude is disrupted by the arrival of perfumed letters from a mysterious admirer called only "Rosaura." As the other residents become increasingly invested in this unlikely epistolary romance, Soffici orchestrates a delicate dance between reality and desire, culminating in the physical manifestation of the enigmatic Rosaura herself.

The film emerged during a watershed moment in Argentine cultural history, as the nation's artists and intellectuals sought to redefine national identity in the wake of Peronism. Soffici, who had helped establish Argentina's studio system in the 1930s, brings his classical visual precision to bear on Denevi's postmodern narrative games, creating a work that simultaneously honors and transcends its popular genre origins. Susana Campos's multifaceted performance as Rosaura represents a departure from traditional feminine archetypes in Latin American cinema, while Verdaguer's Canegato is a Chaplinesque delight.

Restored in 4K by Cubic Restauration in collaboration with the Society for Audiovisual Heritage, coordinated by Fernando Madedo and supervised by Luis Alberto Scalella. Restored in the original AlexScope 2.35 format from the original 35mm negatives in the archives of Argentina Sono Film, the owner of the film.

January 14, 2025

4:00 pm: Kalamita (Calamity). 1982. - Directed by Vera Chytilova

Kalamita (Calamity). 1982. Czechoslovakia. Directed by Vera Chytilova. Screenplay by Chytilova, Joseph Silhavý. With Bolek Polivka, Dagmar Blahova, Jana Synkova. North American premiere. Courtesy Janus Films. In Czech; English subtitles. 101 min.

Vera Chytilova, the most prominent female director of the Czech New Wave and one of its most uncompromising voices, crafts a biting social satire about a shaggy, idealistic young man who quits university to become a train engineer in a small mountain town. As played in a star-making performance by the brilliant mime Boleslav Polivka, Honza embarks on a search for authenticity that brings him into head-on conflict with small-town hypocrisy, bureaucratic absurdity, and romantic entanglements with three very different women. When his train becomes trapped in an avalanche, the physical calamity mirrors the moral chaos within. Shot under difficult conditions with frequent interference from Communist authorities, the film showcases Chytilova's signature blend of formal experimentation, absurdist slapstick, and sharp social commentary.

4K digital restoration carried out by Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in collaboration with the Narodni filmový archiv, Prague and the Czech Film Fund in UPP and Soundsquare, with funding by Mrs. Milada Ku?erova and Mr. Eduard Ku?era.

6:30 pm: The Craving. 1918. Written and directed by Francis Ford, John Ford - The Post Telegrapher. 1912. Directed by Francis Ford

The Craving. 1918. USA. Written and directed by Francis Ford, John Ford. With Francis Ford, Mae Gaston, Peter Gerald. Silent. New York premiere. Silent. 50 min.

The Post Telegrapher. 1912. USA. Directed by Francis Ford. Silent. 24 min.

1918 found both Francis Ford and his younger brother John working at Universal, where Francis was an established action star and accomplished director and John was learning his craft in a series of Westerns starring Harry Carey. The brothers appear to have come together for The Craving, a powerful psychological drama about alcoholism (the Ford family curse), though there is some ambiguity about John's involvement. Drawing on both Victorian temperance narratives and emergent theories of psychoanalysis, the film crafts a remarkably modern exploration of addiction and moral responsibility through the story of Carroll Wayles, played by Francis himself, a brilliant chemist whose struggle with alcoholism makes him vulnerable to manipulation.

Ford's innovative direction makes use of groundbreaking multiple-exposure effects that visualize his protagonist's torment. Particularly striking are the delirium tremens sequences, in which tiny figures dance in a glass of liquor-a technical achievement that turns a "trick film" technique of early cinema into a psychologically expressive moment and demonstrates how Hollywood's pioneering directors were already pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling well before the commonly recognized innovations of the 1920s.

The Craving survived through a single nitrate print with Dutch intertitles, preserved by Eye Filmmuseum. This new restoration, produced by Ben Model (and accompanied by him on the piano), comes with recreated English intertitles. Also on the program is The Post Telegrapher, a 1912 two-reeler directed by Francis Ford for Thomas Ince's Bison 101 studio. The evening will be introduced by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, a film historian and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is working on a biography of Francis Ford.

Digital restorations produced by Undercrank Productions.

January 15, 2025

4:00 pm: Mia Luang (My Dear Wife). 1978. Directed by Vichit Kounavudhi

Mia Luang (My Dear Wife). 1978. Thailand. Directed by Vichit Kounavudhi. Screenplay by Kounavudhi, based on the novel by Krisna Asosksin. With Jatupon Paupirom, Viyada Umarin, Wonguen Intrawuth. North American premiere. Courtesy Five Star Production Co., Ltd. In Thai; English subtitles. 145 min.

A sophisticated, Sirkian entry in Thailand's domestic melodrama tradition, My Dear Wife exemplifies the genre's preoccupation with class aspiration and marital discord in rapidly modernizing Bangkok. Director Vichit Kounavudhi, later named a National Artist, crafts an emotionally extravagant narrative centered on the rivalry between a legitimate wife and her husband's mistress, set against a backdrop of rising middle-class prosperity and social ambition. The film's widescreen cinematography, conjuring the look of midcentury American melodramas, lavishes attention on the material trappings of urban affluence-modern apartments, fashionable clothes, new automobiles-while its narrative explores the price of such advancement through the intense psychological warfare between its female protagonists.

Made during Thai cinema's commercial peak, when local studios were producing hundreds of features annually for an enthusiastic domestic audience, My Dear Wife demonstrates the industry's ability to adapt international melodramatic conventions while addressing distinctly Thai social dynamics. This new restoration by the Thai Film Archive preserves a vital example of how popular cinema could transform social tensions into compelling entertainment, offering contemporary viewers insight into a crucial period of Thai cultural history.

7:00 pm: Maya Miriga. 1984. Written and - directed by Nirad Mohapatra

Maya Miriga. 1984. India. Written and directed by Nirad Mohapatra. North American premiere. Courtesy Film Heritage Foundation. In Odia; English subtitles. 110 min.

Nirad Mohapatra's sole feature film, rescued from near-oblivion, stands as one of the masterpieces of Indian regional cinema. Through its patient, observant lens and haunting score by Bhaskar Chandavarkar, the film chronicles the gradual dissolution of an extended middle-class family in a small Odisha town. With remarkable subtlety, Mohapatra's nonprofessional cast brings to life the complex dynamics of a household caught between tradition and modernity-the trapped daughters-in-law yearning for freedom, the married sons walking an emotional tightrope, and the slow erosion of familial bonds by individual ambition. We are not far from the world of Satyajit Ray, or from the atmosphere of Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons.

Though it garnered international acclaim and helped put Odia cinema on the map upon its release, both film and filmmaker mysteriously vanished from India's cinematic landscape. This meticulous restoration by the Film Heritage Foundation, working from severely damaged negatives found abandoned in a warehouse, returns to the screen a vital work whose intimate portrayal of family life under pressure resonates perhaps even more strongly in today's India. As critic Maithili Rao noted, the disappearance of Mohapatra after such an "exquisitely elegiac" debut remains one of Indian cinema's most poignant mysteries.

4K digital restoration by Film Heritage Foundation from the 16mm original camera negative preserved at Film Heritage Foundation and a 35mm print preserved at the NFDC – National Film Archive of India at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, Bologna.

January 16, 2025

4:30 pm: Mulher de Verdade (A Real Woman).1954. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

Mulher de Verdade (A Real Woman). 1954. Brazil. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. Screenplay by Oswaldo Molles, Miroel Silveira. With Inezita Barroso, Cole Santana, Jose Sanz. North American premiere. Courtesy Maristela Filmes. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 98 min.

After decades of celebrated work in Europe, Alberto Cavalcanti returned to his native Brazil to make this sophisticated satire of class and gender relations. What begins as a seemingly light comedy about a woman caught between two marriages-one to a reformed petty criminal, another to a wealthy playboy-develops into a pointed critique of Brazilian society. Popular singer Inezita Barroso, in an early film role, brings remarkable complexity to Amelia, a character who becomes a reluctant bigamist simply because society never allows her to say no. Cavalcanti's refined visual style, developed through his work with the French avant-garde and Britain's Ealing Studios, creates telling contrasts between Amelia's humble domestic life and the artificial world of São Paulo's elite. This restoration rescues a key work-long overlooked in discussions of Brazilian cinema-from one of world cinema's most cosmopolitan directors.

The 4K digital restoration was conducted for Locarno Heritage by Cinegrell Postproduction GmbH in Zurich by Nicole T. Allemann (Project Coordination and Colour Grading), Ursula Deiss (Digital Restoration), Peter Matthies (Film preparation and Scanning) and Daniel Nestler (Sound Restoration). The project was carried out in collaboration with Cinemateca Brasileira – Sociedade Amigos da Cinemateca, Heritage Online Partner, and Cinematografica Maristela.

7:00 pm: Pink Narcissus. 1971. Written and directed by James Bidgood

Pink Narcissus. 1971. USA. Written and directed by James Bidgood. With Don Brooks, Bobby Kendall, Charles Ludlam. World premiere. Courtesy Strand Releasing. 68 min.

A kaleidoscopic fever dream of queer desire, James Bidgood's underground masterpiece Pink Narcissus (1971) transforms a humble New York apartment into a technicolor fantasia of sexual awakening. Shot over seven years on 8mm film, this visually intoxicating work follows a young male prostitute (Bobby Kendall) as he retreats into elaborate fantasies, reimagining himself as a matador, a Roman slave, and the master of an exotic harem.

Predating the baroque aesthetics of Pierre et Gilles by decades, Bidgood's handcrafted sets and saturated lighting create a theatrical dreamscape in which artifice becomes transcendent. Classical music by Mussorgsky and Prokofiev underscores the film's ambitious fusion of high art and homoeroticism, while its confined domestic production speaks to both necessity and liberation-a queer creative spirit refusing to be constrained by material limitations.

Originally released anonymously in protest over creative differences, Pink Narcissus remained a subject of speculation until the 1990s, when writer Bruce Benderson confirmed Bidgood as its visionary creator. At once a milestone of experimental cinema and a landmark of queer representation, this haunting meditation on beauty, desire, and self-reflection remains as mesmerizing today as when it first emerged from its creator's private universe.

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding provided by Snapdragon Capital Partners.

January 17, 2025

4:30 pm: Rosaura a las 10 (Rosaura at 10 O'Clock). 1958. Directed by Mario Soffici

Rosaura a las 10 (Rosaura at 10 O'Clock). 1958. Argentina. Directed by Mario Soffici. Screenplay by Soffici, Marco Denevi. With Juan Verdaguer, Susana Campos, Maria Luisa Robledo. North American premiere. Courtesy Argentina Sono Film. In Spanish; English subtitles. 102 min.

Mario Soffici's adaptation of Marco Denevi's celebrated first novel preserves both the intricate structure and social observation of its source while creating a uniquely twisty genre piece that begins as a cozy social comedy and ends on the far side of noir. Set within the hothouse atmosphere of a Buenos Aires boarding house, the film follows the timid painter Camilo Canegato (Juan Verdaguer), whose carefully maintained solitude is disrupted by the arrival of perfumed letters from a mysterious admirer called only "Rosaura." As the other residents become increasingly invested in this unlikely epistolary romance, Soffici orchestrates a delicate dance between reality and desire, culminating in the physical manifestation of the enigmatic Rosaura herself.

The film emerged during a watershed moment in Argentine cultural history, as the nation's artists and intellectuals sought to redefine national identity in the wake of Peronism. Soffici, who had helped establish Argentina's studio system in the 1930s, brings his classical visual precision to bear on Denevi's postmodern narrative games, creating a work that simultaneously honors and transcends its popular genre origins. Susana Campos's multifaceted performance as Rosaura represents a departure from traditional feminine archetypes in Latin American cinema, while Verdaguer's Canegato is a Chaplinesque delight.

Restored in 4K by Cubic Restauration in collaboration with the Society for Audiovisual Heritage, coordinated by Fernando Madedo and supervised by Luis Alberto Scalella. Restored in the original AlexScope 2.35 format from the original 35mm negatives in the archives of Argentina Sono Film, the owner of the film.

7:00 pm: Bend of the River. 1952. Directed by Anthony Mann

Bend of the River. 1952. USA. Directed by Anthony Mann. Screenplay by Borden Chase, Bill Gulick. With James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Rock Hudson. US premiere. 91 min.

In this second collaboration between Anthony Mann and James Stewart (after Winchester '73), their reinvention of the Western achieves a remarkable fusion of psychological complexity and natural grandeur. Filmed amid the wintry landscapes of Oregon's Mount Hood region, the film transforms the familiar Western journey narrative into a penetrating study of moral character under extreme pressure. Stewart, continuing to darken and deepen his screen persona, plays Glyn McLyntock, a former Missouri border raider seeking redemption as a wagon train guide. His path crosses with Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy), another man with a violent past, setting up a complex mirror relationship that defies simple moral binaries.

Working from Borden Chase's screenplay (adapted from Bill Gulick's novel), Mann crafts a narrative that begins in the familiar territory of community-building and settlement but evolves into something far more troubling: an examination of how quickly civilized veneer can crack under pressure. Stewart's performance as McLyntock represents a crucial development in his postwar screen persona, suggesting depths of violence and moral ambiguity that would have been unthinkable in his prewar roles.

Based on the original Technicolor separations, this new digital restoration from Universal Pictures returns a breathtaking depth and clarity to Irving Glassberg's innovative location photography.

4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures from the 35mm three-strip original negative in collaboration with The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Restoration services conducted by NBCUniversal StudioPost.

January 18, 2025

2:00 pm: Moi syn (My Son). 1928. Directed by Yevgeni Cherviakov

Moi syn (My Son). 1928. USSR. Directed by Yevgeni Cherviakov. Screenplay by Cherviakov, Nikolai Dirin, Iuri Gromov, Viktor Turin. With Gennadii Michurin, Anna Sten, Piotr Beriozov. Silent. World premiere. Silent. Russian intertitles; English subtitles. 49 min.

Believed lost during World War II until its rediscovery in 2008 as two 16mm reels in Argentina's Museum of Cinema, My Son represents one of the most significant recent archival recoveries in Russian cinema. Yevgeni Cherviakov's masterwork illuminates a crucial but previously obscured strand of Soviet filmmaking: the existential-psychological current that developed alongside the era's dominant constructivist and montage movements.

The narrative, revolutionary for its time, centers on a domestic rather than political crisis: Olga Surina's confession to her husband Andrey that their newborn child belongs to another man. Through this intimate framing, Cherviakov crafts a sophisticated exploration of masculine identity and social transformation in the early Soviet period. The film's treatment of infidelity, jealousy, and forgiveness marks a significant departure from the collective heroics typical of 1920s Soviet production, offering instead a deeply personal meditation on changing social values.

Anna Sten's nuanced performance as Olga-one of her last Soviet roles before Samuel Goldwyn brought her to Hollywood-exemplifies the emerging naturalistic acting style that distinguished Soviet cinema of this period. Gennadii Michurin's portrayal of Andrey's internal struggle similarly reflects Cherviakov's commitment to psychological authenticity over ideological didacticism.

Restored by the George Eastman Museum in collaboration with Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken with funding from the Packard Humanities Institute.

4:00 pm: Adventures of Casanova. 1948. Directed by Roberto Gavaldón

Adventures of Casanova. 1948. Mexico/USA. Directed by Roberto Gavaldón. Screenplay by Crane Wilbur, Walter Bullock, Karen DeWolf. With Arturo de Córdova, Lucille Bremer, Turhan Bey. World premiere. Courtesy Cineverse. 83 min.

Shot at Mexico's newly established Estudios Churubusco, this handsome swashbuckler demonstrates Mexican cinema's ability to match Hollywood production values at their height. The film reimagines Casanova as a Sicilian freedom fighter, with the colonial-era Mediterranean setting allowing the studio to repurpose the extensive period architecture and costumes it typically used for Spanish colonial dramas. Eagle-Lion Films' choice to produce at Churubusco, then emerging as Mexico's premier facility through its partnership with RKO, paired Mexican superstar Arturo de Córdova with Hollywood talent Lucille Bremer and Turhan Bey. Under the assured direction of Roberto Gavaldón, fresh from his masterwork La Otra (1946), and with superb cinematography credited to Poverty Row veteran Jack Greenhalgh, the film exemplifies the technical sophistication of Mexico's Golden Age cinema while offering a unique hybrid of Hollywood adventure and Mexican production craft.

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

6:30 pm: Gunman's Walk. 1958. Directed by Phil Karlson

Gunman's Walk. 1958. USA. Directed by Phil Karlson. Screenplay by Frank S. Nugent, Ric Hardman. With Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Kathryn Grant. New York City premiere. Courtesy Swank. 97 min.

Phil Karlson's widescreen Western continues the psychological and thematic complexity that had been transforming the genre since the late 1940s, particularly in its examination of violence and patriarchal authority in the American West. Van Heflin, one of the first Hollywood stars to embrace the neuroticism of the American male, plays Lee Hackett, a veteran rancher whose mythologized tales of frontier conquest have molded his son Ed (Tab Hunter, in a dark and surprisingly effective performance) into a dangerous reflection of outdated values. Kathryn Grant delivers a nuanced performance as Clee Chouard, a half–Native American woman whose romance with Ed's younger brother Davy (James Darren) catalyzes the film's tragic confrontation with racial prejudice and familial obligation.

Frank S. Nugent's sophisticated screenplay (following his work on The Searchers) deepens the decade's ongoing critique of frontier mythology, while Karlson, celebrated for his taut crime dramas (The Phenix City Story, 99 River Street), applies his characteristic attention to power dynamics and moral compromise to the Western format, creating moments of shocking cruelty.

4K digital restoration by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Restored from the 35mm original picture negative and the 35mm original magnetic mono soundtrack master. 4K scanning and digital image restoration by Cineric, Inc. Sound restoration by BluWave Audio. Color grading, conforming, additional image restoration, and DCP creation (preserving the original Cinemascope aspect ratio 2.55:1) by Motion Picture Imaging with colorist Sheri Eisenberg. Restoration supervised by Grover Crisp.

January 19, 2025

1:30 pm: Broadway. 1929. Directed by Paul Fejos

Broadway. 1929. USA. Directed by Paul Fejos. Screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr., Charles Furthman, based on the play by Philip Dunning and George Abbott. With Glenn Tryon, Evelyn Brent, Merna Kennedy. New York City premiere. 105 min.

A landmark in early sound filmmaking, Paul Fejos's Broadway decisively challenges the persistent myth that the arrival of synchronized dialogue resulted in static, stage-bound cinema. Adapting Philip Dunning and George Abbott's 1926 hit play about romance and crime in a Prohibition-era nightclub, the Hungarian-born Fejos-an avant-garde filmmaker recruited by visionary Universal executive Carl Laemmle Jr.-deployed what was then the largest camera crane ever constructed, creating elaborate tracking shots that sweep through a massive multilevel set with a fluidity that wouldn't become standard for decades.

Against the backdrop of a lavish Times Square nightclub, ambitious hoofer Roy Lane (Glenn Tryon) and chorus girl Billie Moore (Merna Kennedy) are pursuing dreams of stardom, but become entangled in a web of bootlegging and murder when gangster Steve Crandall (Robert Ellis) sets his sights on both the club and Pearl (Evelyn Brent), Roy's former dance partner.

This new restoration from Universal synthesizes several different sources and includes the surviving Technicolor sequences.

4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures from the 35mm nitrate original negative, 35mm composite fine grain, and 35mm two-strip (red/green) original.

4:00 pm: Pink Narcissus. 1971. Written and directed by James Bidgood

Pink Narcissus. 1971. USA. Written and directed by James Bidgood. With Don Brooks, Bobby Kendall, Charles Ludlam. World premiere. Courtesy Strand Releasing. 68 min.

A kaleidoscopic fever dream of queer desire, James Bidgood's underground masterpiece Pink Narcissus (1971) transforms a humble New York apartment into a technicolor fantasia of sexual awakening. Shot over seven years on 8mm film, this visually intoxicating work follows a young male prostitute (Bobby Kendall) as he retreats into elaborate fantasies, reimagining himself as a matador, a Roman slave, and the master of an exotic harem.

Predating the baroque aesthetics of Pierre et Gilles by decades, Bidgood's handcrafted sets and saturated lighting create a theatrical dreamscape in which artifice becomes transcendent. Classical music by Mussorgsky and Prokofiev underscores the film's ambitious fusion of high art and homoeroticism, while its confined domestic production speaks to both necessity and liberation-a queer creative spirit refusing to be constrained by material limitations.

Originally released anonymously in protest over creative differences, Pink Narcissus remained a subject of speculation until the 1990s, when writer Bruce Benderson confirmed Bidgood as its visionary creator. At once a milestone of experimental cinema and a landmark of queer representation, this haunting meditation on beauty, desire, and self-reflection remains as mesmerizing today as when it first emerged from its creator's private universe.

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding provided by Snapdragon Capital Partners.

January 20, 2025

4:30 pm: Will. 1981. Directed by Jessie Maple

Will. 1981. USA. Directed by Jessie Maple. Screenplay by Maple, Anthony Wisdom. With Obaka Adedunyo, Robert Dean, Loretta Devine. New York premiere. Courtesy Janus Films. 73 min.

A landmark of independent American cinema, Will represents the culmination of Jessie Maple's determined path through the film industry's racial and gender barriers. After training at Third World Cinema and honing her craft shooting local news for WABC-TV, Maple became the first Black woman to join the East Coast camera union in 1974. Her early work included news coverage for CBS and NBC, with assignments ranging from local politics to the American Indian Movement's occupation of Wounded Knee.

Maple's hard-won experience behind the camera informed her directorial debut, bringing a documentarian's precision to this intimate portrait of a former college basketball star's struggle with addiction and redemption in Harlem. The film's protagonist, Will (Obaka Adedunyo), finds the strength to stay off drugs when he becomes a mentor to an orphaned boy, played with remarkable naturalism by Robert Dean. In her film debut, Loretta Devine brings her uniquely gentle screen presence to the role of Will's steadfast wife Jean.

Shot on 16mm with a budget of $12,000, the film exemplifies the production methods and alternative distribution networks that sustained African American cinema outside the mainstream industry. Maple and her husband, cinematographer Leroy Patton, founded LJ Film Productions to produce and distribute the film, screening it in community centers, churches, and educational institutions.

This meticulous new restoration came from the original 16mm camera negative and magnetic sound elements preserved by Indiana University's Black Film Center and Archive.

The new 4K restoration of Will (1981) was a joint project between the Black Film Center and Archive (BFCA), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture's Time-Based Media Archives and Conservation staff, and the Center for African American Media Arts. The source material used for the restoration was a 16mm color print, held by the BFCA at Indiana University. The print was donated to the BFCA in 2005 by the director, Jessie Maple, and is preserved within the larger Jessie Maple collection. Work on the restoration was completed between 2020 and 2023, with generous funding provided by the SI-NMAAHC Robert Frederick Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History; Prasad (image restoration); ColorLab (film scanning, color grading, and laboratory services); and Audio Mechanics (audio mastering).

6:30 pm: Dutchman. 1966. Directed by Anthony Harvey We Are Universal. 1971. Directed by Billy Jackson

Dutchman. 1966. UK/USA. Directed by Anthony Harvey. Screenplay by Amiri Baraka, based on his play (as LeRoi Jones). With Shirley Knight, Al Freeman Jr., Frank Lieberman. World premiere. Courtesy Janus Films. 55 min.

4K digital restoration from the original camera negative supervised by The Criterion Collection with Metropolis Post. The original monaural soundtrack was restored from the 1/4" magnetic track.

We Are Universal. 1971. USA. Directed by Billy Jackson. With Jesse Jackson, Quincy Jones, Nikki Giovanni. World premiere. 24 min.

Digital restoration by Pittsburgh Sound + Image, with digital transfers by MediaPreserve and funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

When Amiri Baraka's explosive one-act play Dutchman premiered off Broadway in 1964, it outraged and electrified audiences in equal measure before winning an Obie Award as the best American play of the year, making Baraka the first Black playwright to receive this recognition. Despite its critical success, the play's scalding critique of liberal racial politics proved too controversial for American film studios, leading producer Henry T. Weinstein to seek both financing and creative freedom in Britain. At London's Twickenham Studios, first-time director Anthony Harvey, fresh from editing Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, transformed the theatrical material through sophisticated cutting and claustrophobic camerawork into a dynamic work of cinema, as a charged encounter between a buttoned-down Black professional (Al Freeman Jr., who originated the role on stage) and a dangerously seductive white woman (Shirley Knight) unfolds within a meticulously reconstructed New York City subway car.

Grove Press, the legendary publisher of avant-garde and politically radical literature, supported the film's eventual American distribution through their nascent cinema division, though its circulation remained limited primarily to university film societies and urban art houses, and Dutchman virtually disappeared from view when Grove Press dissolved in 1985. This restoration restores the original luster of Gerry Turpin's black-and-white cinematography.

We Are Universal is a 1971 documentary short, directed by the prolific filmmaker and activist Billy Jackson (Didn't We Ramble On), that surveys African American arts and culture, drawing inspiration from the "Black Is Beautiful" movement. It features onscreen commentary from such prominent figures as Jesse Jackson, Quincy Jones, Nikki Giovanni, Babatunde Olatunji, Hugh Masekela, and Freddie Hubbard. Restored by Pittsburgh Sound + Image.

January 21, 2025

4:00 pm: Dutchman. 1966. Directed by Anthony Harvey We Are Universal. 1971. Directed by Billy Jackson

Dutchman. 1966. UK/USA. Directed by Anthony Harvey. Screenplay by Amiri Baraka, based on his play (as LeRoi Jones). With Shirley Knight, Al Freeman Jr., Frank Lieberman. World premiere. Courtesy Janus Films. 55 min.

4K digital restoration from the original camera negative supervised by The Criterion Collection with Metropolis Post. The original monaural soundtrack was restored from the 1/4" magnetic track.

We Are Universal. 1971. USA. Directed by Billy Jackson. With Jesse Jackson, Quincy Jones, Nikki Giovanni. World premiere. 24 min.

Digital restoration by Pittsburgh Sound + Image, with digital transfers by MediaPreserve and funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

When Amiri Baraka's explosive one-act play Dutchman premiered off Broadway in 1964, it outraged and electrified audiences in equal measure before winning an Obie Award as the best American play of the year, making Baraka the first Black playwright to receive this recognition. Despite its critical success, the play's scalding critique of liberal racial politics proved too controversial for American film studios, leading producer Henry T. Weinstein to seek both financing and creative freedom in Britain. At London's Twickenham Studios, first-time director Anthony Harvey, fresh from editing Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, transformed the theatrical material through sophisticated cutting and claustrophobic camerawork into a dynamic work of cinema, as a charged encounter between a buttoned-down Black professional (Al Freeman Jr., who originated the role on stage) and a dangerously seductive white woman (Shirley Knight) unfolds within a meticulously reconstructed New York City subway car.

Grove Press, the legendary publisher of avant-garde and politically radical literature, supported the film's eventual American distribution through their nascent cinema division, though its circulation remained limited primarily to university film societies and urban art houses, and Dutchman virtually disappeared from view when Grove Press dissolved in 1985. This restoration restores the original luster of Gerry Turpin's black-and-white cinematography.

We Are Universal is a 1971 documentary short, directed by the prolific filmmaker and activist Billy Jackson (Didn't We Ramble On), that surveys African American arts and culture, drawing inspiration from the "Black Is Beautiful" movement. It features onscreen commentary from such prominent figures as Jesse Jackson, Quincy Jones, Nikki Giovanni, Babatunde Olatunji, Hugh Masekela, and Freddie Hubbard. Restored by Pittsburgh Sound + Image.

6:30 pm: The Greeks Had a Word for Them. 1932. Directed by Lowell Sherman

The Greeks Had a Word for Them. 1932. USA. Directed by Lowell Sherman. Screenplay by Zoe Akins, Sidney Howard. With Joan Blondell, Madge Evans, Ina Claire. New York premiere. 80 min.

Originally conceived as a vehicle for Jean Harlow (who remained unavailable due to Howard Hughes's contractual grip), The Greeks Had a Word for Them instead became a showcase for Broadway legend Ina Claire, whose razor-sharp comic timing elevates this tale of three mercenary showgirls navigating Manhattan's elite social circles during the Depression.

Director and costar Lowell Sherman brings particular resonance to the material through his complex relationship with the character type he helped create. Having established the archetype of the sophisticated seducer in D. W. Griffith's Way Down East (1920), Sherman spent the 1920s refining this "toxic bachelor" persona across numerous films. By 1932, as both performer and director, he approaches the material with an almost anthropological detachment, supplying a critical commentary on his own screen image.

The source material is a 1930 play by Zoe Akins (the original title, The Greeks Had a Word for It, was apparently too much for producer Samuel Goldwyn). One of the most successful dramatists of the interwar period, Akins would later win the Pulitzer Prize for her adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Old Maid. She and Sherman would collaborate one last time, on the 1933 Morning Glory, which won an Oscar for Katharine Hepburn shortly before Sherman's untimely death in 1934.

This meticulous restoration from the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation rescues the film from decades of circulation in poor-quality public domain prints (usually under the title Three Broadway Girls). Heather Linville, who supervised the restoration for the Library, will introduce the January 21 screening.

Restored by the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

January 22, 2025

4:00 pm: Le Rendez-vous des quais(Rendez-vous of the Docks).1955. Directed by Paul Carpita Despues del terremoto (After the Earthquake). 1979. Written and directed by Lourdes Portillo, Nina Serrano

Le Rendez-vous des quais (Rendez-vous of the Docks). 1955. France. Directed by Paul Carpita. Screenplay by Carpita, Andre Maufray. With Maufray, Jeanine Moretti, Roger Manunta. North American premiere. Courtesy Anaïs Carpita. In French; English subtitles. 75 min.

Digital restoration by the Centre national du cinema et de l'image animee (CNC) and the Cinemathèque française, in collaboration with the heirs of Paul Carpita and Cine-Archives.

Despues del terremoto (After the Earthquake). 1979. USA. Written and directed by Lourdes Portillo, Nina Serrano. With Vilma Coronado, Agnelo Guzman, Mario Lara. New York premiere. Courtesy Women Make Movies. In English, Spanish; English subtitles. 24 min.

Digital restoration by University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, in collaboration with Corpus Fluxus, with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Banned in France for three decades, Paul Carpita's 1955 feature Rendez-vous of the Docks emerges both as a vital document of postwar French social consciousness and a precious record of working-class life in midcentury Marseille. Self-described as "a schoolteacher who knew how to use a camera," Carpita brought both artistic ambition and documentary rigor to this politically charged narrative, in which a young couple searches for a home against the background of Marseille's dock workers' strikes of the early 1950s. The film captures a critical moment when workers, discovering they were loading munitions by day while secretly unloading soldiers' coffins by night, went on strike in protest of France's Indochina War.

A groundbreaking early work from acclaimed Chicana filmmaker Lourdes Portillo, After the Earthquake emerged during the 1970 renaissance of political cinema, and represents a significant intersection of feminist filmmaking and Latin American diasporic narratives. Shot in grainy black and white, this dramatic short follows a young Nicaraguan woman who has immigrated to San Francisco in the wake of the 1972 Managua earthquake, enduring both personal and political aftershocks as she navigates her new reality.

6:30 pm: Will. 1981. Directed by Jessie Maple

Will. 1981. USA. Directed by Jessie Maple. Screenplay by Maple, Anthony Wisdom. With Obaka Adedunyo, Robert Dean, Loretta Devine. New York premiere. Courtesy Janus Films. 73 min.

A landmark of independent American cinema, Will represents the culmination of Jessie Maple's determined path through the film industry's racial and gender barriers. After training at Third World Cinema and honing her craft shooting local news for WABC-TV, Maple became the first Black woman to join the East Coast camera union in 1974. Her early work included news coverage for CBS and NBC, with assignments ranging from local politics to the American Indian Movement's occupation of Wounded Knee.

Maple's hard-won experience behind the camera informed her directorial debut, bringing a documentarian's precision to this intimate portrait of a former college basketball star's struggle with addiction and redemption in Harlem. The film's protagonist, Will (Obaka Adedunyo), finds the strength to stay off drugs when he becomes a mentor to an orphaned boy, played with remarkable naturalism by Robert Dean. In her film debut, Loretta Devine brings her uniquely gentle screen presence to the role of Will's steadfast wife Jean.

Shot on 16mm with a budget of $12,000, the film exemplifies the production methods and alternative distribution networks that sustained African American cinema outside the mainstream industry. Maple and her husband, cinematographer Leroy Patton, founded LJ Film Productions to produce and distribute the film, screening it in community centers, churches, and educational institutions.

This meticulous new restoration came from the original 16mm camera negative and magnetic sound elements preserved by Indiana University's Black Film Center and Archive.

The new 4K restoration of Will (1981) was a joint project between the Black Film Center and Archive (BFCA), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture's Time-Based Media Archives and Conservation staff, and the Center for African American Media Arts. The source material used for the restoration was a 16mm color print, held by the BFCA at Indiana University. The print was donated to the BFCA in 2005 by the director, Jessie Maple, and is preserved within the larger Jessie Maple collection. Work on the restoration was completed between 2020 and 2023, with generous funding provided by the SI-NMAAHC Robert Frederick Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History; Prasad (image restoration); ColorLab (film scanning, color grading, and laboratory services); and Audio Mechanics (audio mastering).

January 23, 2025

4:00 pm: Gunman's Walk. 1958. Directed by Phil Karlson

Gunman's Walk. 1958. USA. Directed by Phil Karlson. Screenplay by Frank S. Nugent, Ric Hardman. With Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Kathryn Grant. New York City premiere. Courtesy Swank. 97 min.

Phil Karlson's widescreen Western continues the psychological and thematic complexity that had been transforming the genre since the late 1940s, particularly in its examination of violence and patriarchal authority in the American West. Van Heflin, one of the first Hollywood stars to embrace the neuroticism of the American male, plays Lee Hackett, a veteran rancher whose mythologized tales of frontier conquest have molded his son Ed (Tab Hunter, in a dark and surprisingly effective performance) into a dangerous reflection of outdated values. Kathryn Grant delivers a nuanced performance as Clee Chouard, a half–Native American woman whose romance with Ed's younger brother Davy (James Darren) catalyzes the film's tragic confrontation with racial prejudice and familial obligation.

Frank S. Nugent's sophisticated screenplay (following his work on The Searchers) deepens the decade's ongoing critique of frontier mythology, while Karlson, celebrated for his taut crime dramas (The Phenix City Story, 99 River Street), applies his characteristic attention to power dynamics and moral compromise to the Western format, creating moments of shocking cruelty.

4K digital restoration by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Restored from the 35mm original picture negative and the 35mm original magnetic mono soundtrack master. 4K scanning and digital image restoration by Cineric, Inc. Sound restoration by BluWave Audio. Color grading, conforming, additional image restoration, and DCP creation (preserving the original Cinemascope aspect ratio 2.55:1) by Motion Picture Imaging with colorist Sheri Eisenberg. Restoration supervised by Grover Crisp.

6:30 pm: Bend of the River. 1952. Directed by Anthony Mann

Bend of the River. 1952. USA. Directed by Anthony Mann. Screenplay by Borden Chase, Bill Gulick. With James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Rock Hudson. US premiere. 91 min.

In this second collaboration between Anthony Mann and James Stewart (after Winchester '73), their reinvention of the Western achieves a remarkable fusion of psychological complexity and natural grandeur. Filmed amid the wintry landscapes of Oregon's Mount Hood region, the film transforms the familiar Western journey narrative into a penetrating study of moral character under extreme pressure. Stewart, continuing to darken and deepen his screen persona, plays Glyn McLyntock, a former Missouri border raider seeking redemption as a wagon train guide. His path crosses with Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy), another man with a violent past, setting up a complex mirror relationship that defies simple moral binaries.

Working from Borden Chase's screenplay (adapted from Bill Gulick's novel), Mann crafts a narrative that begins in the familiar territory of community-building and settlement but evolves into something far more troubling: an examination of how quickly civilized veneer can crack under pressure. Stewart's performance as McLyntock represents a crucial development in his postwar screen persona, suggesting depths of violence and moral ambiguity that would have been unthinkable in his prewar roles.

Based on the original Technicolor separations, this new digital restoration from Universal Pictures returns a breathtaking depth and clarity to Irving Glassberg's innovative location photography.

4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures from the 35mm three-strip original negative in collaboration with The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Restoration services conducted by NBCUniversal StudioPost.

January 24, 2025

4:30 pm: The Wages of Sin. 1938. Directed by Herman E. Webber

The Wages of Sin. 1938. USA. Directed by Herman E. Webber. With Constance Worth, Willy Castello, Blanche Mehaffey, Clara Kimball Young. New York premiere. 76 min.

A rare surviving example of Depression-era exploitation cinema produced outside the constraints of the Production Code, Herman E. Webber's stark melodrama follows Marjorie Benton, a struggling working woman coerced into prostitution. Like Dwain Esper's Narcotic (1933) and Sex Madness (1938), the film traveled the exploitation circuit under the pretense of public health education, complete with a live lecturer and sensationalistic lobby displays warning of "moral decay." Shot in a raw, unvarnished style typical of "vice films" of the period, The Wages of Sin exemplifies how independent producers addressed taboo social issues while skirting censorship through strategic marketing of their films as educational ventures. While ostensibly serving as a cautionary tale, it provides an unexpectedly sympathetic portrait of women's economic vulnerability during the Depression, sharing thematic concerns with more prestigious social-problem films like William Wyler's Dead End (1937).

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding provided by David Stenn.

7:00 pm: The White Heather. 1919.Directed by Maurice Tourneur Peg o' the Mounted. 1924. Directed by Alfred J. Goulding

The White Heather. 1919. USA. Directed by Maurice Tourneur. Screenplay by Charles E. Whittaker, based on the play by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton. With Holmes Herbert, Ben Alexander, Ralph Graves, Mabel Ballin, John Gilbert. World premiere. Silent. 70 min.

Digital restoration by the San Francisco Film Preserve, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and Eye Filmmuseum.

Peg o' the Mounted. 1924. USA. Directed by Alfred J. Goulding. Screenplay by Bert Sterling. With Baby Peggy, Sterling, Jack Earle. New York premiere. Silent. 20 min.

Digital restoration by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in cooperation with Eye Filmmuseum and the Library of Congress, Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation.

By 1919, Maurice Tourneur had established himself as one of American cinema's most sophisticated visual stylists, known for his innovative use of chiaroscuro lighting and painterly compositional techniques. The White Heather demonstrates his characteristic ability to transform talky theatrical material into compelling images, here elevating a Victorian stage melodrama into a visually dynamic exploration of class, morality, and the destructive power of social ambition.

Set in Scotland, the narrative follows Lord Angus Cameron (Holmes Herbert, at the beginning of his long Hollywood career playing distinguished patriarchs), who, facing financial ruin, seeks to annul his secret marriage to his housekeeper, Marion Hume (Mabel Ballin). The only material proof of their union is a marriage certificate aboard a sunken yacht, The White Heather. As Marion, with the help of her father, fights to save her reputation and secure a future for her son, Lord Angus sends agents to track down the witnesses to his marriage, leading to a dramatic underwater confrontation.

Working with cinematographers Rene Guissart and Harold S. Sintzenich, Tourneur created groundbreaking underwater sequences that pushed the boundaries of what was technically possible in 1919. For a contemporary reviewer in Variety, the film was "an absolute masterpiece" that stood out "on the strength of the thrills that the camera made possible and which could not be secured on the stage."

Long thought lost, The White Heather was recently rediscovered and has been restored by the San Francisco Film Preserve and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. SFFP president Rob Byrne will introduce the screening. The feature will be accompanied by SFSFF's restoration, the two-reel comedy Peg o' the Mounted, starring TSAP favorite Baby Peggy.

January 25, 2025

1:30 pm: Le Rendez-vous des quais(Rendez-vous of the Docks).1955. Directed by Paul Carpita - Despues del terremoto (After the Earthquake). 1979. Written and directed by Lourdes Portillo, Nina Serrano

Le Rendez-vous des quais (Rendez-vous of the Docks). 1955. France. Directed by Paul Carpita. Screenplay by Carpita, Andre Maufray. With Maufray, Jeanine Moretti, Roger Manunta. North American premiere. Courtesy Anaïs Carpita. In French; English subtitles. 75 min.

Digital restoration by the Centre national du cinema et de l'image animee (CNC) and the Cinemathèque française, in collaboration with the heirs of Paul Carpita and Cine-Archives.

Despues del terremoto (After the Earthquake). 1979. USA. Written and directed by Lourdes Portillo, Nina Serrano. With Vilma Coronado, Agnelo Guzman, Mario Lara. New York premiere. Courtesy Women Make Movies. In English, Spanish; English subtitles. 24 min.

Digital restoration by University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, in collaboration with Corpus Fluxus, with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Banned in France for three decades, Paul Carpita's 1955 feature Rendez-vous of the Docks emerges both as a vital document of postwar French social consciousness and a precious record of working-class life in midcentury Marseille. Self-described as "a schoolteacher who knew how to use a camera," Carpita brought both artistic ambition and documentary rigor to this politically charged narrative, in which a young couple searches for a home against the background of Marseille's dock workers' strikes of the early 1950s. The film captures a critical moment when workers, discovering they were loading munitions by day while secretly unloading soldiers' coffins by night, went on strike in protest of France's Indochina War.

A groundbreaking early work from acclaimed Chicana filmmaker Lourdes Portillo, After the Earthquake emerged during the 1970 renaissance of political cinema, and represents a significant intersection of feminist filmmaking and Latin American diasporic narratives. Shot in grainy black and white, this dramatic short follows a young Nicaraguan woman who has immigrated to San Francisco in the wake of the 1972 Managua earthquake, enduring both personal and political aftershocks as she navigates her new reality.

4:00 pm: Broadway. 1929. Directed by Paul Fejos

Broadway. 1929. USA. Directed by Paul Fejos. Screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr., Charles Furthman, based on the play by Philip Dunning and George Abbott. With Glenn Tryon, Evelyn Brent, Merna Kennedy. New York City premiere. 105 min.

A landmark in early sound filmmaking, Paul Fejos's Broadway decisively challenges the persistent myth that the arrival of synchronized dialogue resulted in static, stage-bound cinema. Adapting Philip Dunning and George Abbott's 1926 hit play about romance and crime in a Prohibition-era nightclub, the Hungarian-born Fejos-an avant-garde filmmaker recruited by visionary Universal executive Carl Laemmle Jr.-deployed what was then the largest camera crane ever constructed, creating elaborate tracking shots that sweep through a massive multilevel set with a fluidity that wouldn't become standard for decades.

Against the backdrop of a lavish Times Square nightclub, ambitious hoofer Roy Lane (Glenn Tryon) and chorus girl Billie Moore (Merna Kennedy) are pursuing dreams of stardom, but become entangled in a web of bootlegging and murder when gangster Steve Crandall (Robert Ellis) sets his sights on both the club and Pearl (Evelyn Brent), Roy's former dance partner.

This new restoration from Universal synthesizes several different sources and includes the surviving Technicolor sequences.

4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures from the 35mm nitrate original negative, 35mm composite fine grain, and 35mm two-strip (red/green) original.

7:00 pm: The Wages of Sin. 1938. Directed by Herman E. Webber

The Wages of Sin. 1938. USA. Directed by Herman E. Webber. With Constance Worth, Willy Castello, Blanche Mehaffey, Clara Kimball Young. New York premiere. 76 min.

A rare surviving example of Depression-era exploitation cinema produced outside the constraints of the Production Code, Herman E. Webber's stark melodrama follows Marjorie Benton, a struggling working woman coerced into prostitution. Like Dwain Esper's Narcotic (1933) and Sex Madness (1938), the film traveled the exploitation circuit under the pretense of public health education, complete with a live lecturer and sensationalistic lobby displays warning of "moral decay." Shot in a raw, unvarnished style typical of "vice films" of the period, The Wages of Sin exemplifies how independent producers addressed taboo social issues while skirting censorship through strategic marketing of their films as educational ventures. While ostensibly serving as a cautionary tale, it provides an unexpectedly sympathetic portrait of women's economic vulnerability during the Depression, sharing thematic concerns with more prestigious social-problem films like William Wyler's Dead End (1937).

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding provided by David Stenn.

January 26, 2025

1:30 pm: 7th Heaven. 1927. - Directed by Frank Borzage

7th Heaven. 1927. USA. Directed by Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Benjamin Glazer, based on the play by Austin Strong. With Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, David Butler. World Premiere. Silent. 118 min.

Casting Fox contract player Janet Gaynor as a Parisian street urchin and newcomer Charles Farrell as the sanitation worker who loves her, director Frank Borzage created one of the great screen couples, an alliance that would continue through 11 more films. 7th Heaven stands as Borzage's strongest expression of the transcendent power of romantic love, evoking emotions of such strength and purity that only the dream world of silent film could contain them. At the first Academy Awards ceremony, the film won Oscars for Gaynor (Best Actress), Borzage (Best Director) and Benjamin Glazer (Best Adapted Screenplay).This is the premiere presentation of a new, upgraded digital restoration featuring improved image quality, stabilized intertitles, and the original color tints.

Digital restoration by The Museum of Modern Art. Funding provided by the Lillian Gish Fund for Preservation.

4:00 pm: A Circle in the Fire. 1974.Directed by Victor Nunez Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver. 1974. Directed by Carolyn Jones

A Circle in the Fire. 1974. USA. Directed by Victor Nunez. Screenplay by Nunez, based on the short story by Flannery O'Connor. With Betty Miller, Ingrid Schweska, Katherine Miller. World premiere. 50 min.

Digital restoration by the filmmaker using IndieCollect's 5K scan of the original camera reversal.

Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver. 1974. USA. Directed by Carolyn Jones. With Elijah Pierce. World premiere. 18 min.

Digital restoration by Colorlab in conjunction with the Ohio State University Libraries Preservation and Digitization Lab, with funding provided by the National Film Preservation Foundation.

An early work by one of American independent cinema's most distinctive regional voices, Victor Nunez's 50-minute adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's haunting short story marks the transition between his UCLA student shorts and the sublime series of features he began with Gal Young Un in 1979. The story follows Mrs. Cope (Betty Miller), a proud farm owner whose carefully ordered world is disrupted by three teenage boys, led by the son of a former worker. Their unwanted presence escalates from nuisance to threat, culminating in an act of biblical proportions that eerily echoes the Book of Daniel's fiery furnace. Unlike John Huston in his O'Connor adaptation Wise Blood, Nunez refuses wide-angle close-ups and eccentric performances, finding his Southern gothic instead in the experience and perspective of his very human characters.

Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver is an 18-minute documentary from 1974 that explores the life and artistry of Elijah Pierce, a self-trained African American woodcarver whose sculptures explore historical, Biblical, and personal themes. The film traces his journey from Baldwin, Mississippi, where he was born to formerly enslaved parents, to Columbus, Ohio, where he worked as a barber, turning his shop into a gallery and community center.

January 27, 2025

4:00 pm: Maria Candelaria. 1943. Directed by Emilio Fernandez

Maria Candelaria. 1943. Mexico. Directed by Emilio Fernandez. Screenplay by Fernandez, Mauricio Magdaleno. With Dolores del Rio, Pedro Armendariz, Alberto Galan. New York premiere. In Spanish; English subtitles. 98 min.

Winning both the Palme d'Or and Best Cinematography awards at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, Maria Candelaria marked Mexico's entry into the highest ranks of world cinema. The floating gardens of Xochimilco provide a lyrical background to a self-consciously mythological tale of a pair of lovers (Dolores del Rio and Pedro Armendariz) menaced by a covetous shopkeeper (Miguel Inclan, Mexican cinema's Man You Love to Hate). Cameraman Gabriel Figueroa brilliantly finesses that most difficult of lighting situations: nighttime on water. Director Emilio Fernandez captures the spirit of Mexico's great muralists with his epic vision of a noble peasantry exploited by the petty bourgeoisie. This new restoration, based on the camera negative preserved by Filmoteca UNAM, returns this work to its original visual splendor.

Restored by the Academy Film Archive, Televisa-Univision, Filmoteca UNAM, and The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project, with funding provided by the Material World Foundation. This project was initiated by Fundación Televisa and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

7:00 pm: An Evening with Heather McAdams

Heather McAdams joins us to present new 16mm restorations of her irreverent collage films from the 1980s, recently preserved by the Chicago Film Society. Known for her work as a cartoonist and filmmaker, McAdams has long been a fixture of Chicago's alternative film and music scenes and was once hailed by B. Ruby Rich in the Chicago Reader as combining "the collage finesse of a Bruce Conner with the crude campiness of the Kuchar brothers." McAdams's found-footage films mine popular culture, often drawing on her extensive collection of industrials, educational films, advertisements, home movies, and music films. Through scratch animation, hand-painting, and audiovisual collage, these celluloid fragments of Americana are reassembled into feminist send-ups of gender norms, beauty standards, and the nuclear family.

The screening also features McAdams's personal documentaries, including her offbeat portrait of Bradley Harrison Picklesimer, a Kentucky drag queen who ran his own nightclub in downtown Lexington. Assembling found imagery with footage of Bradley tending bar or reflecting on the goings on at the club, gender expression, and the ups and downs of life, Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer is a memorable entry in queer oral history, brought to life with McAdams's distinctive DIY sensibility.

The screening is followed by a conversation with the filmmaker, moderated by Sophie Cavoulacos, associate curator in the Department of Film.

The Scratchman. 1980. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 3 min.
Scratchman # 2. 1982. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 3 min.
Holiday Magic. 1985. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 7 min.
All Up. 1983. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 8 min.
Fetal Pig Anatomy. 1989. Directed by Heather McAdams. Sound by Billy DesJardins. 16mm. 6 min.
You. 1983. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 4 min.
Comes to a Point Like an Ice-Cream Cone. 1997. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams, Chris Ligon. 16mm. 18 min.
Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer. 1988. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 32 min.

Program approx. 81 min.

New York restoration premiere. Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer preserved by Chicago Film Society through the National Film Preservation Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. All other films preserved by Chicago Film Society with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

January 28, 2025

4:30 pm: Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight). 1988. Written and - directed by Ossama Mohamed

Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight). 1988. Syria. Written and directed by Ossama Mohamed. With Zuhair Abdulkarim, Sabah As-Salem, Saad Eddin Baqdoones. North American premiere. In Arabic; English subtitles. 105 min.

Opening with the paradoxical declaration "I am a free man," Ossama Mohammed's masterwork uses the microcosm of a rural Syrian family to explore the psychology of life under dictatorship. In a coastal village, the preparations for two weddings become a devastating study of power and control, centered on Abbas, a despotic older brother whose resemblance to Hafez al-Assad is no accident. Mohammed transforms domestic spaces-seen through cracks, dusty windows, and broken mirrors-into a stark visual poetry that reveals how authoritarian violence seeps into society's most private corners. Banned in Syria after a single screening but celebrated at Cannes, the film draws on influences from Georgian comedy to Federico Fellini while establishing its own powerful visual language. This restoration, from The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project, recovers a vital work by a director who, despite living in exile since 2011, continues to probe the complex relationship between beauty, justice, and political repression.

Restored by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Ossama Mohammed. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

7:00 pm: The Greeks Had a Word for Them. 1932. Directed by Lowell Sherman

The Greeks Had a Word for Them. 1932. USA. Directed by Lowell Sherman. Screenplay by Zoe Akins, Sidney Howard. With Joan Blondell, Madge Evans, Ina Claire. New York premiere. 80 min.

Originally conceived as a vehicle for Jean Harlow (who remained unavailable due to Howard Hughes's contractual grip), The Greeks Had a Word for Them instead became a showcase for Broadway legend Ina Claire, whose razor-sharp comic timing elevates this tale of three mercenary showgirls navigating Manhattan's elite social circles during the Depression.

Director and costar Lowell Sherman brings particular resonance to the material through his complex relationship with the character type he helped create. Having established the archetype of the sophisticated seducer in D. W. Griffith's Way Down East (1920), Sherman spent the 1920s refining this "toxic bachelor" persona across numerous films. By 1932, as both performer and director, he approaches the material with an almost anthropological detachment, supplying a critical commentary on his own screen image.

The source material is a 1930 play by Zoe Akins (the original title, The Greeks Had a Word for It, was apparently too much for producer Samuel Goldwyn). One of the most successful dramatists of the interwar period, Akins would later win the Pulitzer Prize for her adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Old Maid. She and Sherman would collaborate one last time, on the 1933 Morning Glory, which won an Oscar for Katharine Hepburn shortly before Sherman's untimely death in 1934.

This meticulous restoration from the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation rescues the film from decades of circulation in poor-quality public domain prints (usually under the title Three Broadway Girls). Heather Linville, who supervised the restoration for the Library, will introduce the January 21 screening.

Restored by the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

January 29, 2025

4:30 pm: Adventures of Casanova. 1948. Directed by Roberto Gavaldón

Adventures of Casanova. 1948. Mexico/USA. Directed by Roberto Gavaldón. Screenplay by Crane Wilbur, Walter Bullock, Karen DeWolf. With Arturo de Córdova, Lucille Bremer, Turhan Bey. World premiere. Courtesy Cineverse. 83 min.

Shot at Mexico's newly established Estudios Churubusco, this handsome swashbuckler demonstrates Mexican cinema's ability to match Hollywood production values at their height. The film reimagines Casanova as a Sicilian freedom fighter, with the colonial-era Mediterranean setting allowing the studio to repurpose the extensive period architecture and costumes it typically used for Spanish colonial dramas. Eagle-Lion Films' choice to produce at Churubusco, then emerging as Mexico's premier facility through its partnership with RKO, paired Mexican superstar Arturo de Córdova with Hollywood talent Lucille Bremer and Turhan Bey. Under the assured direction of Roberto Gavaldón, fresh from his masterwork La Otra (1946), and with superb cinematography credited to Poverty Row veteran Jack Greenhalgh, the film exemplifies the technical sophistication of Mexico's Golden Age cinema while offering a unique hybrid of Hollywood adventure and Mexican production craft.

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

7:00 pm: Maria Candelaria. 1943. Directed by Emilio Fernandez

Maria Candelaria. 1943. Mexico. Directed by Emilio Fernandez. Screenplay by Fernandez, Mauricio Magdaleno. With Dolores del Rio, Pedro Armendariz, Alberto Galan. New York premiere. In Spanish; English subtitles. 98 min.

Winning both the Palme d'Or and Best Cinematography awards at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, Maria Candelaria marked Mexico's entry into the highest ranks of world cinema. The floating gardens of Xochimilco provide a lyrical background to a self-consciously mythological tale of a pair of lovers (Dolores del Rio and Pedro Armendariz) menaced by a covetous shopkeeper (Miguel Inclan, Mexican cinema's Man You Love to Hate). Cameraman Gabriel Figueroa brilliantly finesses that most difficult of lighting situations: nighttime on water. Director Emilio Fernandez captures the spirit of Mexico's great muralists with his epic vision of a noble peasantry exploited by the petty bourgeoisie. This new restoration, based on the camera negative preserved by Filmoteca UNAM, returns this work to its original visual splendor.

Restored by the Academy Film Archive, Televisa-Univision, Filmoteca UNAM, and The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project, with funding provided by the Material World Foundation. This project was initiated by Fundación Televisa and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

January 30, 2025

4:30 pm: A Circle in the Fire. 1974.Directed by Victor Nunez Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver. 1974. - Directed by Carolyn Jones

A Circle in the Fire. 1974. USA. Directed by Victor Nunez. Screenplay by Nunez, based on the short story by Flannery O'Connor. With Betty Miller, Ingrid Schweska, Katherine Miller. World premiere. 50 min.

Digital restoration by the filmmaker using IndieCollect's 5K scan of the original camera reversal.

Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver. 1974. USA. Directed by Carolyn Jones. With Elijah Pierce. World premiere. 18 min.

Digital restoration by Colorlab in conjunction with the Ohio State University Libraries Preservation and Digitization Lab, with funding provided by the National Film Preservation Foundation.

An early work by one of American independent cinema's most distinctive regional voices, Victor Nunez's 50-minute adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's haunting short story marks the transition between his UCLA student shorts and the sublime series of features he began with Gal Young Un in 1979. The story follows Mrs. Cope (Betty Miller), a proud farm owner whose carefully ordered world is disrupted by three teenage boys, led by the son of a former worker. Their unwanted presence escalates from nuisance to threat, culminating in an act of biblical proportions that eerily echoes the Book of Daniel's fiery furnace. Unlike John Huston in his O'Connor adaptation Wise Blood, Nunez refuses wide-angle close-ups and eccentric performances, finding his Southern gothic instead in the experience and perspective of his very human characters.

Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver is an 18-minute documentary from 1974 that explores the life and artistry of Elijah Pierce, a self-trained African American woodcarver whose sculptures explore historical, Biblical, and personal themes. The film traces his journey from Baldwin, Mississippi, where he was born to formerly enslaved parents, to Columbus, Ohio, where he worked as a barber, turning his shop into a gallery and community center.

7:00 pm: Shoulder Arms. 1918. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin The Bond. 1918. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin

Shoulder Arms. 1918. USA. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin. With Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Sydney Chaplin. Silent. 46 min.

The Bond. 1918. USA. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin. With Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Albert Austin. World premiere. Silent. 11 min.

Charles Chaplin's World War I comedy Shoulder Arms was released at the height of the 1918 influenza pandemic. So powerful was Chaplin's appeal to his public, the film still played to packed houses. But when Chaplin went to release it for use by the US Army during WWII he found that the original negative had been damaged beyond repair, and he asked his longtime cameraman Rollie Totheroh to reconstruct it using outtakes and alternate footage. (The reconstructed version was released theatrically in 1959 as part of The Chaplin Revue, a compilation that also included A Dog's Life and The Pilgrim.)

This presentation is a work in progress from MoMA's Department of Film that attempts to recreate the 1918 release using what footage does survive from the original prints, gathered from archives around the world. Though the anarchic spirit remains the same in both versions, there are significant differences between the original and the reissue. Some scenes were removed entirely, and the entire film was subjected to the process of "stretch-printing," a not-very-satisfying way of forcing modern sound projectors to imitate the slower frame rate of many silent films.

Shoulder Arms will be accompanied by MoMA's new digital restoration of The Bond, a seldom seen propaganda short produced by Chaplin for the 1918 Liberty Loan drive. On a stylized set, Chaplin demonstrates the various sorts of bonds-friendship, marriage, Liberty-culminating in an encounter with the Kaiser. (Spoiler alert: a giant mallet is involved.) This restoration is based on a 35mm reissue print held by MoMA, with the titles revised to reflect the 1918 version distributed by First National.

Digital restorations by The Museum of Modern Art. Funding provided by the Lillian Gish Fund for Preservation.

Date: January 9 - 30, 2025

Location: Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019

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