The COVID-19 pandemic forced Rio’s Cinemateca do MAM, like many cultural venues, to suspend programming at its Cosme Alves Netto theatre, where, during 2019, more than 900 films had been screened. While a digital presence was both a wish and an ambition, at this point it wasn’t a short-term prospect. We had actually already begun thinking about establishing a digitization infrastructure and an editorial policy in order to showcas elements of our collection. However, the pandemic caused the immediate need for an online programming plan. It was a sudden demand that had to be met. Our response was developed over a few short months, with experimental programming, which we see as a trial balloon to evaluate the various possibilities in this area and the challenges they imply. Starting with the creation of a “Vimeo de la Cinemateca” channel (https://vimeo.com/channels/cinematecadomam), we pursued three main lines of action: a programme of contemporary Brazilian films (e.g., Alumbramento retrospective); highlighting the Cinemateca’s collections (e.g., http://panoramicarosemberg.art.br/sobre), and co-organizing an experimental film festival (https://festivaldobra.com.br/).

José Quental is Cinema Coordinator at the Cinemateca do MAM and co-artistic director of the Mostra de Cinema de Ouro Preto (Cine OP), specializing in preservation topics. He is technical coordinator of the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Archivos de Imágenes en Movimiento (CLAIM). He has a degree in History (UFF-Brazil), a Master's degree in Cinema (UFF-Brazil), and a PhD in Cinema (University Paris 8, France). He was a lecturer at the University Paris 8 (Cinema, 2016-2017) and a member of the Brazilian committee of the UNESCO "Memory of the World" programme (2011-2015).

Video of the presentation (in French only):

16:00

Discussion with the participants

16:15

Short Break

PROGRAMMING IN A CONTEXT OF CRISIS (II): FILM HERITAGE FESTIVALS

16:30

Robert Byrne

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival

“Live Cinema” has served as calling card for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival ever since Kevin Brownlow first coined the term. Over the past twenty-four years the organization has devoted itself to bringing films of the silent era to life in the most literal way — by screening archival 35mm prints, accompanied with live musical performance, and staged in San Francisco’s 1,200-seat historic century-old movie palace, the Castro Theatre. So how does a festival rooted to a very specific physical location and entirely focused on live performance endure when its very raison d’etre is temporarily prohibited by law? And how does it keep its audience, supporters, and funders engaged? As a non-profit organization these questions are not only a question of artistic programming, they are existential.

The answer is not to simply start showing silent films online. There are few experiences less compelling than watching silent movies on a computer monitor. Instead, the approach has been to create and present a variety of online programs that are unique to SFSFF: masterclasses with musicians, interactive lectures, demonstrations, and presentations of films restored by SFSFF that are not available elsewhere. It is not the same as being there, and it is definitely not “Live Cinema,” but the response has been both overwhelming and gratifying.

Robert Byrne serves is President of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about silent film as an art form and as a culturally valuable historical record. Rob is also a film restorer specializing in early cinema and films of the silent era. Working with film archives and collections worldwide he has led restorations of more than twenty feature films and numerous short subjects. He has also lectured at the Library of Congress, University College Cork, Queen’s University Belfast, The Reel Thing Symposium, and numerous AMIA and FIAF technical symposiums, and publishes regularly on the topics of motion picture restoration and preservation.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

Jay Weissberg

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Pordenone)

Like most film festivals in 2020, the Giornate del Cinema Muto/Pordenone Silent Film Festival was forced to go online, necessitating significant changes in its structure and programming. Thematic series were impossible given archive closures and interrupted restorations, which meant a complete rethink of the originally planned edition. In addition, we felt it necessary to take into consideration our audience's work schedules as well as the multiplicity of time zones, so the number of titles was greatly reduced. Our primary goal was to keep the silent film community together, and happily the experiment paid off: we doubled our accreditations, and fully half the audience watched every film streamed, much to the surprise of our platform partner Mymovies.it, who’d never seen a percentage like that.  Going online also allowed us to stream discussions following each film, as well as book presentations and music masterclasses, significantly increasing the number of attendees for these collateral events.

Jay Weissberg, Director since 2016 of the Giornate del Cinema Muto/Pordenone Silent Film Festival. He first programmed for the Giornate in 2009, has curated programmes for Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato, and during the pandemic lockdown began a blog, La Gatta Muta/The Silent Cat, dedicated to forgotten stories from the silent film era. He has been a film critic with Variety since 2003.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

Cecilia Cenciarelli

Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna)

Almost exactly a year ago, the Netflix release of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was stirring up emotions and controversy around the production and fruition of cinema and especially auteur cinema. Twelve months and a world pandemic later, our perception of time has slowed down, and yet accelerated so much that The Irishman now seems anachronistic and irrelevant. The extinction of cinema has been dreaded and announced since its early days and been blamed on talkies, colour, tv sets, remote controls, VHS, digital platforms… allegedly, even Louis Lumière called it “an invention without future”. If it’s true that the Lumière brothers invented cinema three times – the technological medium, the Art form and the movie-theatre and its audience – then this is our turn now to preserve the latter. And perhaps turn this dystopian experience into an opportunity to make a statement. A statement about the uniqueness of the cinematic experience, the need of collective, simultaneous watching, about the vitality of film heritage and the richness of film archives. Or, at least, about the power of programming.

Cecilia Cenciarelli is in charge of the research & special projects department at the Cineteca di Bologna (Italy) where she has been working, as archivist, since 2000. For several years, she has supervised the digitization, cataloguing and research of Charlie Chaplin’s paper and stills archive; the Keaton restoration project, and she is currently working on the archive of Bernardo Bertolucci. Since its inception in 2007, she has been part of the World Cinema Project team – a special program run by The Film Foundation to preserve and disseminate endangered film patrimony – which has contributed to restore, preserve and exhibit over forty films from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Central America, South America, and the Middle East. Cecilia is one of four artistic directors of Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival as well as FIAF’s vice-president.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

Ines Aisengart Menezes

CineOP - Ouro Preto Film Festival

CineOP - Ouro Preto Film Festival is the main audiovisual heritage annual event in Brazil. Created in 2006, its programming is structured in three central themes: Preservation, History and Education. Along with screenings of heritage and contemporary films, there are symposiums, masterclasses with international experts, workshops, live concerts, a bulky analytical catalog, a Latin American Education Meeting and the National Meeting of Brazilian Audiovisual Archives and Collections – which has been crucial for building up an advocacy movement for the Brazilian audiovisual heritage. CineOP is held in Ouro Preto, a city in the mountains and a UNESCO World Heritage Centre due to its Baroque colonial architecture. The 15th edition in 2020 was exceptionally online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ines Aisengart Menezes is an Audiovisual preservationist with 19 years of professional experience in cultural heritage management and the audiovisual market. Bachelor in Film Studies (Fluminense Federal University - UFF, Brazil) and Master in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image (Universiteit van Amsterdam - UvA, the Netherlands). After the MA, worked for one year at the EYE Filmmuseum. From 2016 to 2020 worked at the Cinemateca Brasileira. Currently is the co-curator of the audiovisual preservation symposium of the film festival CineOP - Mostra de Cinema de Ouro Preto (since 2017) and gives lectures on audiovisual preservation.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

17:15

Discussion with the participants

17:30

Your Turn to Programme!

The participants will discuss the choices made by some of the partipants who submitted programmes as part of the FIAF programming game ahead of the Winter School.

18:00

End of Day 1

14:00

Welcome of the Participants

REACHING OUT TO UNUSUAL OR REMOTE AUDIENCES

14:05

Sungji Oh

Cinema on Wheels

The Korean Film Archive (KOFA) launched the ‘Cinema on Wheels’ program in 2001 to provide a unique cinematic experience to people residing in remote areas. Armed with two 35mm projectors, this mobile cinema team visited 34 different locations in 2001 alone, and eventually hosted hundreds of screenings per year. Their visits were not just to small towns but also to institutions for the disabled, alternative schools, and military bases. All kinds of films, from the commercial to the independent and arthouse, have been presented as part of this program in the nearly 20 years it has been in operation. Currently, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the 'Cinema on Wheels' team has begun hosting 'Drive-in Theater' programs to allow safe moviegoing experiences for audiences. This presentation will briefly explain the background of the 'Cinema on Wheels' project and how the KOFA organizes and promotes the screenings.   

Sungji Oh is a chief curator of Cinematheque KOFA at the Korean Film Archive. After graduating from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, she joined the Korean Film Archive in Sept. 2002. Since then, she has been working in various fields, yet mostly on film programming. She wrote Stories of Film Archives in 2009.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

14:25

Robert Poupard

Programming in a Prison Environment

In 2016, the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée launched a cinema initiative in prisons in the Paris region. This project, part of a civic service mission, trains young volunteers to lead debates about films. Under the supervision of Robert Poupard, such events have been held at remand centres in Bois-d'Arcy, Villepinte, Versailles, and Paris (La Santé). There are also monthly screenings at the Poissy prison. There are specific programmes depending on whether they are shown in remand centres for men (Bois-d'Arcy, Villepinte and La Santé), for women (Versailles), or at the Poissy prison.

Robert Poupard is in charge of Documentary Studies at the Direction du patrimoine at the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée. From 1992 to 1996, he participated in the identification and restoration of the films of the Lumière brothers. Since 2013 he has organized monthly debates about films in prisons in the Paris region.

Video of the presentation (in French only)

14:45

David Somerset

African Odysseys – a decade of revolutionary film education at the BFI Southbank

For the last 15 years, African Odysseys has delivered a ground-breaking programme of contextualised screenings, presenting a wide range of documentary and fiction, artists film, archive and new work alongside debate with key speakers, on a regular basis to London and the UK’s African Caribbean community. Its achievement is not solely in the content as such since there have been occasional programmes of African and Black film at cultural institutions such as Barbican, ICA and BFI over recent years. Rather its success lies in its regular and sustained engagement of a hitherto under-represented African diaspora audience with a relevant film programme of rarely screened content that directly speaks to their concerns and ongoing struggles. (The only interruption to the programme in the past 14 years has been caused by the intrusion of COVID lockdown in the UK). The programme draws on an understanding of archive, film history and exhibition and a sensitive and thorough awareness of the ongoing concerns of the African diaspora in London and beyond. This is enabled via a steering group (comprised of activists, educators, film creatives and representatives from community groups and voluntary organizations). This active and monthly programme also includes film seasons of notable and often under-recognised film directors as well as film previews and premieres. As such it remains unique in the UK and beyond.

David Somerset studied Literature and Philosophy and MA Film and Video, subsequently developing film making practice and taking work to international film festivals and broadcasters. As a qualified adult educator, he has taught film making to undergraduates and also adult learners at London’s Birkbeck College and City Lit. In the late 1990s he collaborated on an international film magazine and subsequently developed an interest in programming world cinema and independent film production. Appointed to devise and deliver a programme of education and events for the Museum of London/Museum of London Docklands from 2003-2007, he developed expertise in community film programming and was later appointed in 2007 as programmer for Adult Communities at the BFI Southbank. He has recently contributed to film festival panels and continues to write and programme a wide range of independent film (specialising in BFI Production Board film of the mid 70’s, South and East Asian documentary and drama, Refugee film and independent film by and about the African diaspora. In addition to African Odysseys, he implemented a regular monthly programme of film for older audiences, an annual programme of Chinese Cinema and a regular focus on South Asian documentary and drama as well as an annual focus on Refugee film by and about the refugee community.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

15:05

Stéphanie Dongmo & Christian Lambert

The Cinéma Numérique Ambulant, a unique network of mobile cinemas in West and Central Africa

The CNA's aim is to give access to African films in regions where cinema simply does not exist – mainly in villages and underprivileged urban neighbourhoods. It also screens audio-visual documents that raise awareness of the serious health, social, and citizenship problems they face. It is now extending its activities to the production of educational films.

The CNA is both a cultural and social tool that disseminates Africa’s authentic heritage to populations that do not have access to culture and contemporary arts, particularly cinema, due to their geographical and social isolation. The CNA takes advantage of the light digital technology to enable African films to meet their audiences. It organises an average of 1,200 open-air screenings a year, for an estimated annual audience of more than 300,000. It is thus one of the largest film exhibitors in Africa.

Christian Lambert and Stéphanie Dongmo’s presentation will evoke the origins of the project, how it has developed over the years and in which territories, and what its audiences and its missions are today. It will also reflect on the act of programming in crisis situations.

Stéphanie Dongmo is in charge of ‘Cinéma Numérique Ambulant Afrique’, the coordination structure for all the CNA networks on the continent. She has also been President of the CNA Cameroon since 2012.

Christian Lambert is a French film technician. In 2001, with his partner Laurence Vendroux, he founded the Cinéma Numérique Ambulant project and set it up in France and in several African countries.

Video of the presentation (in French only):

15:25

Discussion with the participants

15:45

Short Break

PROGRAMMING HISTORIES

16:00

Beatriz Tadeo Fuica

Getting closer to the history of programming at the Cinemateca Uruguaya

This presentation will analyse examples of seasons, retrospectives and individual screenings organised by the Uruguayan Cinematheque from the early 1950s, when it was created. From the beginning, this institution has considered film exhibition very important. The roots of this principle can be traced back to its birth, which was the result of a collaboration between the two most important Uruguayan cine-clubs of the time (Cine Universitario del Uruguay and Cine Club del Uruguay), and the support of Henri Langlois, who considered that films had to be shown. As many other cinematheques from South America, the Uruguayan institution received films from the French Cinematheque and, having been affiliated with the FIAF since 1952, from many other of its members. Exploring the principles behind specific programmes will allow us to get to know better this institution, one of the oldest of the region and the only one from the first batch of South American cinematheques that, still today, is fully active, organising daily programmes and being supported by its own members.

Beatriz Tadeo Fuica has a PhD on film and cultural studies from the University of St Andrews (UK). She is a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the IRCAV, Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris 3, where she conducted the project "TRANSARCHIVES: Film Heritage and Archival Practices: Past and Present Transcontinental Encounters". She is the author of "Uruguayan Cinema 1960–2010: Text, Materiality, Archive" (2017) and the co-editor and co-author of "CEMA: Archivo, video y restauración democrática" (2016). Her research has been published in journals such as The Moving Image; Iluminace: Journal for Film Theory, History and Aesthetics; Memory Studies; Cine documental; and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Together with colleagues from the Research Association Kinetraces, she is currently coordinating the project "Missing Pieces: For an Alternative History of Moving Images" supported by the INHA-Paris.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

15:25

Brian Meacham

Preserving and Programming Amateur Films at a University Archive

The Yale Film Archive holds a large collection of amateur film by S.W. Childs, Jr., a prolific filmmaker who worked with his family and friends in the Eastern U.S. between the 1920s and 1960s. Providing access to amateur films can be a challenge, and this talk will cover the various ways in which the archive has worked to share these films. Public screenings with commissioned scores, and the new (to the archive) world of online screenings, augmented with interviews to provide context, have allowed the archive to share these personal films with a wide audience for the first time.

Brian Meacham is the Managing Archivist of the Yale Film Archive, where he has worked since 2013. He oversees acquisition, inspection, cataloging, and preservation of the film collection, which includes more than 8,000 print and pre-print elements acquired by the university over the last 50 years. He has overseen the preservation of more than a dozen films in the collection with the help of preservation grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation, and helped launch and program the archive's ongoing 35mm screening series, “Treasures from the Yale Film Archive.” Prior to coming to Yale, he worked as a film preservationist at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles. Since 2015, he has represented Associate archives on FIAF’s Executive Committee, and is a member of FIAF's Programming and Access to Collections Commission.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

15:45

Discussion with the participants

16:00

Short Break

PORTRAIT OF A PROGRAMMER

16:15

Conversation with Bernard Eisenschitz

Programming can do two things: it can provide knowledge about cinema, but also a different kind of knowledge, a different perspective, another history/geography. In my case, it helps distinguish "documentary" from reality, redefines the notion of "major artists", and takes a fresh look at historical cinema (Soviet, German...). The cinema-lover turned historian adds a third party to his relationship with cinema and films: the audience.

Bernard Eisenschitz is a translator and historian, among other activities. He works as a freelance programmer for cinematheques, educational projects, festivals, and museums.

Video of the interview (in French only):

16:45

Discussion with the participants

17:00

Your Turn to Programme! (III)

The participants will discuss the choices made by some of the partipants who submitted programmes as part of the FIAF programming game ahead of the Winter School.

17:45

End of Day 3

14:00

Welcome of the Participants

MONTAGE FILM AS AN EXTENSION OF PROGRAMMING FILM HERITAGE

14:05

Julien Faraut

Editing Archive Materials from a Collection of "Unprogrammable" Films

In the particular context of a collection of sports films with a strong "technical" component (e.g., elaborate instructional films or simple performance footage) and in the presence of very raw material (such as silent rushes), the use of editing and editorialization has proven to be beneficial in order to be able to "programme" these films or bits of films, and allow a wide audience to discover the richness and uniqueness of a collection of documents that are not very comprehensible in their original form, without intervention.

Julien Faraut is head of the image library at INSEP (Institut national du sport, de l'expertise et de la performance). Since 2003 he has directed ten films, including four features, Paris Jeux t'aime, Regard neuf sur Olympia 52, L'Empire de la perfection, and Les Sorcières de l'Orient, all of which take as their starting point the value of archival material from the film collections that he manages.

Video of the presentation (in French only):

14:30

Michael Loebsenstein

Recycling Cinema

In many ways the praxis of film curation and the art of Found Footage filmmaking share a common history and values. Unlike other forms of filmmaking which sprang to life “on their own” and were then preserved by film archives, found footage as a filmmaking tradition appeared only after film archives had gathered enough material to make artists curious about it. 

One the other hand the reuse of pre-existing film footage, and the idea of “preserving” film heritage that drives the work of film museums and film archives, share a fascinating bond. As much as the artist -- as transformer, abuser or even destroyer of archives used to be frowned upon by hard-core preservationists, artists can be considered and have considered themselves as saviours of collections.

Since its earliest manifestations found footage films have displayed their ambition to organize, summarize or interpret specific film collections. Artists’ various strategies of reappropriation, redefinition and transformation of archival and historical film materials have shaped our contemporary understanding of the “art of the archive”: as a forensic tool for examining society’s obsession with images; as a taxonomy or “Atlas” of tropes; as a bearer of memory and identity for individuals and communities; and as a medium of aural and visual poetry throughout his work.

In my talk I will highlight some of these connections, and discuss how curators and programmers can learn from art, and how “recycled cinema” and its artistry can enhance our understanding of preservation and curation.

Michael Loebenstein became drawn into the world of film archiving through his work as a film critic and media producer (CD-ROM and websites) in Vienna. He became the foundational curator of the Austrian Film Museum’s Research& Education department in 2004; from 2011-2017 he was the CEO of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Since October 2017 he is back in Vienna, and works as the Director of the Austrian Film Museum. Michael is the co-author of books on Film Curatorship and on avant-garde filmmakers Gustav Deutsch and Peter Tscherkassky, and has served as FIAF’s Secretary-General since 2013.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

14:55

Bill Morrison

Editing Archival Footage

Dawson City: Frozen Time is a fascinating blend of images found in early films and footage, based on investigation and research. The film reconstructs the local history of hundreds of film reels buried at the beginning of the 20th century under an ice rink in a small Canadian town and later rediscovered, all the while presenting a broader history of the exploitation of cinema in the gold-rush era. With Bill Morrison, we will discuss the secrets of his archaeological work and writing process, which involves the editing of footage from other times, which are miraculously revealed.

Born in Chicago, Bill Morrison is a New York filmmaker with over thirty films to his credit, in which he uses editing to cross-reference shots with archival material or pre-existing sources. Since 2002 he has shown particular interest in the motif of decomposition, as in his film Decasia. His obsessive quest for hidden film jewels permeates his films, which are set to hypnotic music by the likes of Phillip Glass and Jóhann Jóhannsson. His work was celebrated by a retrospective at MoMA in 2014, and his film Dawson City: Frozen Time has been acknowledged by American critics as one of the best documentary films of the 2010s.

Video of the interview(in English only):

15:20

Discussion with the participants

15:40

Short Break

AFTER THE WINTER SCHOOL

16:00

Iris Elezi & Louise Burkart

Presenting and Preserving Albania's Cinematic Heritage 

After meeting at the 2018 FIAF Programming Winter School in Paris, Albanian archive director Iris Elezi and film restorer and programmer Louise Burkart met again in the Albanian capital, Tirana.  Louise traveled to the Balkan nation to watch five decades of Albanian films, and discuss the challenges which this endangered heritage faces with local archivists.  This inspiring trip resulted in Burkart curating an extensive Albanian film series that toured four European countries.  The 2019 FIAF Winter School also enabled an Albanian animation series to screen at the Forum des Images in Paris.  Burkart and Elezi are currently working on a restoration of Albania’s first feature film TANA (1958) in cooperation with Swiss and German labs.  Burkart and Elezi will discuss the challenges in preserving and bringing to audiences Albania’s still relatively unknown cinematic legacy.

Iris Elezi is the director of the Albanian National Film Archive and is the writer/ director of the dramatic feature, BOTA, Albania’s Best Foreign Film entry into the 2016 US Academy Awards. She currently serves as a member of FIAF's Executive Committee.

Louise Burkart is an independent programmer and film restorer at the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany. Her latest series, a retrospective of Albanian films, toured Vienna, Frankfurt, Zurich and Paris.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

16:20

Nour Ouayda

Alternative Film Programming and Cultural Resistance in the Current Context in Lebanon

In light of the surreal events that have struck Lebanon in the past year (the 17th of October social uprising, a country-wide economic collapse, the global pandemic and the August 4th blast), cultural institutions find themselves at a crossroads, having to rethink their models whilst also struggling to survive. Having also lost its cinema space at the beginning of this same year, Metropolis Cinema with its Cinematheque Beirut project is facing multiple challenges and questions regarding its role in the Lebanese and regional cultural landscape. What is the value of cultural activity in a place where people are struggling to insure basic necessities? How can we create models that defy the corruption of the political class and their control of public institutions knowing that their deliberate negligence of cultural policies has led to an erasure of the cinematic collective memory? What part does cinema and its histories play in resisting this erasure? And how can we think of safeguarding our film heritage when the mere notion of a safe space is threatened on a daily basis in Beirut?

Nour Ouayda is a filmmaker, film critic, and programmer. She holds a Master’s degree in film with an emphasis on research-creation from the University of Montreal. Other than directing her own films, she is the deputy director at Metropolis Cinema Association in Beirut, where she also manages the Cinematheque Beirut project. She is a co-editor of the Montreal-based online film journal Hors champ.

Video of the presentation (in English only):

16:40

Discussion with the participants

17:00

Your Turn to Programme! (IV)

The participants will discuss the choices made by some of the partipants who submitted programmes as part of the FIAF programming game ahead of the Winter School.

17.45

Concluding Remarks and Evaluation of the Course

18:00

End of the 2021 FIAF Programming Winter School