Among the rediscovered rarities are Victor Trivas’s 1931 German antiwar film, “No Man’s Land” (next Friday and Oct. Scorsese’s coming film “Hugo” is partly a tribute to Méliès.)Īnd then there’s a wide selection of films that we’re lucky to have at all. (For those seeking to make connections between past and present, Mr. 11 the French restorationist extraordinaire Serge Bromberg will present a stunning hand-colored version of Georges Méliès 1902 “Trip to the Moon,” followed by the world premiere of “The Extraordinary Voyage,” a new documentary on the film’s creation by Mr. 5 screening.) The director Martin Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker will introduce a Technicolor restoration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1943 “Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” on Nov. They include Walter Hill’s brilliantly terse 1978 thriller, “The Driver.” (Mr. Schawn Belston of 20th Century Fox’s film library will introduce a series of films that were photographed in the studio’s notoriously unstable DeLuxe process but that have been restored to their initial luster. Movies made in color offer an additional set of challenges. The results can be seen on Sunday and Wednesday. Working from nitrate material in its archives, MoMA was able to return the black-and-white film to a close approximation of its radiant original visual quality. Dante said of the scratches and dust spots that invade “The Movie Orgy,” but a different kind of restoration was required for “Hoop-La,” a 1933 Fox film that was Clara Bow’s last feature. “I think the funky condition actually contributes to the fun,” Mr. Dante massaged his found material into a hilarious metamovie in which five or six stories seem to be going on at once (giant grasshoppers invade Chicago, as flying saucers attack Washington), constantly interrupted by prom night dos and don’ts, stomach-churning commercials for laxative pills and disturbing excerpts from children’s television shows (including a stuffed cat and mouse who perform “Jesus Loves Me” on piano and drums). Working with Jon Davison, a friend and fellow student at the Philadelphia College of Art, Mr. If you knew the guy behind the counter, sometimes he’d just give the stuff away.” When the prints became too tattered, they were often junked, in pieces. Dante said, “there were lots of mom and pop 16-millimeter rental sources, often attached to camera stores. When the director Joe Dante was assembling his epic-length mash-up, “The Movie Orgy,” in the late 1960s, he scoured the East Coast for castoff footage - educational films, commercials, TV shows, forgotten drive-in features - that would lend itself to being creatively re-edited. Film preservation takes many forms, some perilously close to Dumpster diving.
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