Cineteca del Friuli announces the program for Pordenone 1993
The 12th Silent Film Festival, the annual event organized by the Cineteca del Friuli in Italy, will be held from October 9 to 16 in Pordenone.
A special opening for the festival will be provided by the screening of the silent films with live music, featuring the acclaimed avant-garde Belgian composer Wim Mertens. The event, which is a joint production of Pordenone and the Cinémathèque Royale, is scheduled to have its co-premiere in Brussels next October.
The main retrospective of the Pordenone event is focused on the film production in the year 1913. "And so we came to the fateful year of 1913", said Cecil B. DeMille. Fateful for him, indeed, as he was starting a pioneering adventure in filmmaking that was bound to lead him to celebrity. However, 1913 proved to be a fateful year on a more general level for film industry, then affected by a structural change of impressive scope. The same proved to be true for the other arts. Literature, music, visual and architectural disciplines were shaken by avant-garde movements; most of the long-respected rules of politics and diplomacy were quickly crumbling towards the abyss of war. The cinematic events of the period will be reconstructed in Pordenone through a chronologically ordered series of programs, one for every month of 1913. In doing so, an attempt will be made to analyze filmmaking practice in 1913 within the broader context of art, music, literature, politics and social conflict in the twelve months preceding the even more "fateful" wave of World War I.
The second retrospective is a tribute to Rex Ingram, director of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), celebrating the centennial of his birth. The program will include all available prints of his films. The event is also an occasion for giving a tribute to the Irish film historian Liam O'Leary, recently deceased. O'Leary was responsible for reassessing Ingram's contribution to the art of film, and wrote a seminal book which is still the only major source of documentation on the creative output of the Irish-born filmmaker.
Silent cinema in New Zealand and Australia is the topic of the third program, the largest ever held outside the two countries. One of the highlights from the series will be The Jungle Woman, directed in 1926 by Frank Hurley, who captured for the camera some of the most extraordinary footage on Aboriginal life and Antarctic expeditions ever shot in the silent period. A not-to-be-missed oddity will be The Birth of White Australia (1928), a politically controversial sequel to The Birth of a Nation. New Zealand cinema, too, has provided its interpretation of D.W.Griffith's masterpiece with The Birth of New Zealand (1922). However, the originality in the filmmaking practices of that country is best represented by a creative output where home movie meets avantgarde, ranging from rare images of native life and culture to exhilarating experiments with sound. A representative of the Maori community, 87-years old Witarina Harris (who also starred in a silent film to be screened in Pordenone), will lead a "special event" involving dance, music and speech conceived as a "dialogue" between the audience and the spirit of the characters depicted on the screen. Maori culture considers moving images as a phenomenon surrounded by a "sacred" aura: if seen outside its geographic context, the presentation of Maori footage requires the presence of a "familiar" host, whose role is to integrate the screening environment to the persons revived in the film.
Pordenone 1993 completes its program with a selection of films by the American comedian Charley Chase, and a special tribute to the 50 years of the Národní Filmovy Archiv in Prague. Finally, the annual Jean Mitry Award will be given to representatives of the scholarly and archival community for their outstanding merits in the field. For contact, please write to the Cineteca del Friuli, 26 via Osoppo, 33013 Gemona del Friuli (Udine), Italy; Fax 39-432-97.05.42.
Livio Jacob
Le 12ème Festival du film muet aura lieu du 9 au 16 octobre 1993 à Pordenone.
La rétrospective sera consacrée à la production de 1913. Ce fut, selon Cecil B. DeMille, une année "fatale" pour le cinéma, marquée par un changement important des structures et des styles.
La seconde rétrospective sera dédiée à Rex Ingram, réalisateur de "Les quatre cavaliers de l'Apocalypse", à l'occasion du centième anniversaire de celui-ci.
Le troisième programme comprendra quelques classiques et de nombreux documents du cinéma muet d'Australie et de Nouvelle Zélande illustrant la vie des aborigènes de cette région du Pacifique.
Des films de Charley Chase ainsi qu'un choix proposé par le Narodni Filmovy Archiv de Prague (qui fête cette année son 50ème anniversaire) seront présentés dans d'autres sections.
Comme chaque année, le prix Jean Mitry sera décerné à une personnalité qui se sera dinstinguée dans le domaine de la recherche ou de l'archivage.
La "Cineteca del Friuli" anuncia su programa de Pordenone 1993
El duodécimo Festival del Cine Mudo tendrá lugar del 9 al 16 de Octubre de 1993 en Pordenone. En la sesión inaugural el compositor vanguardista belga Wim Mertens acompañará con composiciones proprias la proyección de películas mudas de la Filmoteca Real de Bélgica.
La retrospectiva estará dedicada a la producción de 1915, "año fatal", según Cecil B. de Mille, en el que las estructuras de la producción cambiaron totalmente.
La segunda retrospectiva se dedicará a Rex Ingram, realizador de "Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis", en el centenario de su nacimiento.
El tercer programa consistirá en la proyección de algunos clásicos y de numerosos documentos del cine mudo australiano y neozelandés, que ilustran la vida de los aborígenes de esta zona del Pacífico.
En otras secciones se proyectarán películas de Charley Chase y una sección propuesta por el Narodni Filmovy Archiv de Praga que este año celebra su cincuenta aniversario.
Como cada año se concederá el premio Jean Mitry a una personalidad que se haya distinguido por su dedicación al mundo de la investigación y la conservación cinematográficas.