ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes

From September 13th to 15th, at the Muranów Cinema, SOUNDS OF SILENTS the Warsaw Silent Film Days – dedicated to the memory of Anna Sienkiewicz-Rogowska – will take place. Screenings of silent film classics, along with restored full-length and short films, will be accompanied by live musical performances from contemporary musicians, as well as a program for family audiences.

Additional events will include masterclasses on the role of women in the early years of the film industry, a masterclass on the theory and practice of composing for silent films, and a panel discussion on Stewardship Models and the Evolving Role of Cultural Managers (from September 7th to October 20th at the Andrzej Wajda Center for Film Culture and The Chopin University of Music).

See the full programme here.

All films will be screened with Polish and English subtitles.

Follow the action on social media:

facebook.com/soundsofsilentswarsaw
instagram.com/sounds_of_silents

A major change is taking place at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum: the current director, Ellen Harrington, is stepping down for personal reasons. The former CEO of Messe Frankfurt GmbH, Michael von Zitzewitz, has been appointed to the board of the association for an initial period of one year, replacing the previous director, Aurélio de Sousa. Christine Kopf, previously head of the film education department at the DFF, will take over as acting director. Her deputy will be Tobias Römer, commercial director of the DFF since the beginning of the year, who will be responsible for personnel and finance as administrative director. This was announced jointly by the Chairwoman of the DFF Board of Directors, Head of the Department of Culture of Frankfurt am Main, Dr. Ina Hartwig, and the DFF.

“After more than six and a half years as Director of the DFF here in Frankfurt am Main, I have made the decision to retire from this position and will now return to our home in Los Angeles. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work for this institution during this dynamic and challenging time for the cultural sector – and for our world at large. However, personal medical and family priorities require that I take some time to refocus my energies. I am pleased that with the support of our Board of Directors, the DFF will continue to have a strong leadership team,” said Ellen Harrington.

“On behalf of the entire Board of Directors, I would like to thank Ellen Harrington for her outstanding work”, emphasized the Chairwoman of the Board, Dr. Ina Hartwig. “She has made a significant contribution to preserving Germany’s film heritage and has also made the DFF internationally visible through archive acquisitions and exhibitions that had an impact far beyond Frankfurt. We wish her all the best for the future.”

Christine Kopf has been involved with the DFF in various capacities since the 1990s. She has been a curator for exhibitions and the festival director for goEast – Festival of Eastern and Central European Film, and has also worked for the ZKM Karlsruhe and the Robert Bosch Stiftung. Most recently, she built up the DFF’s film education department, which she has headed for eleven years. For four years, she was co-head of “Strategic Development” at the DFF.

The DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum e.V. is a non-profit association and is institutionally funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the State of Hesse, the City of Frankfurt am Main, the State Capital of Hesse, Wiesbaden, the public broadcasters and Beta Film GmbH

On 26 June 2024, The ACE General Assembly 2024 elected a new Executive Committee which in turn elected the officers.

The Executive Committee for the term 2024–206 is:

ACE presented the 5^th edition of A Season of Classic Films, which includes cinema and online screenings of restored films and parallel events organised by 24 European film archives between June and December 2024. Opening night is Saturday 22 June with Condenados a vivir (Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent, 1972) at the Cine Doré cinema of Filmoteca Española in Madrid, Spain.

Filmoteca Española hopes that this restoration of Condenados a vivir will offer a stimulus to re-evaluate this gory ’70s film, which is cited as the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. The screening will be introduced by Carlos Reviriego, Head of Programming at Filmoteca Española, and by Javier Rellán, Head of Conservation Service at Centro de Conservación y Restauración de Fondos Fílmicos “Carlos Saura” of Filmoteca Española.

Condenados a vivir (Cut-Throats Nine) | Spain, 1971, 90′, fiction.

Director: Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent. Producer: Films Triunfo. With: Robert Hundar, Emma Cohen, Alberto Dalbés, Antonio Iranzo, Manuel Tejada. Screenplay: Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent. Cinematography: Luis Cuadrado. Music: Carmelo Bernaola. Editing: Mercedes Alonso. Physical characteristics of first release: 35mm, 90’, colour, sound, Spanish and English-dubbed versions. Film copy screened during A Season of Classic Films: World premiere restoration, 2K, DCP, 90’, English version. Subtitles: Spanish. Copyright owner: José Frade PC.

Known as “the bloodiest of the Euro-Westerns”, Condenados a vivir stands as a highpoint in the career of Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent, a prominent figure in European western cinema. In 1971, he directed, co-wrote, and produced this film, driven by a desire to film a western in snowy landscapes. The plot revolves around an army sergeant who has to take his daughter and a group of dangerous criminals across a mountain range in the most horrendous conditions. Marked by its stark violence and nihilistic tone, Condenados a vivir blends elements of western and horror genres, earning it a cult following. The film’s impact is heightened by the notable cinematography of Luis Cuadrado and the breathtaking landscapes of the Pyrenees in the province of Huesca, northern Spain.

Condenados a vivir, like many films of its era, was released in two versions: one tailored for the Spanish market and another for international distribution. Research conducted by Filmoteca Española on the preserved film materials revealed significant additions to the international version, intensifying the violence in certain scenes. These supplementary frames were filmed separately, at times featuring different actors. Filmoteca Española will present the restoration of the internationally distributed version as part of this year’s A Season of Classic Films.

Cine Doré, 22 June, 22:00, Madrid, Filmoteca Española. Book your free seat here.

Repeat screening: Cine Doré, 4 July, 22:00, Madrid, Filmoteca Española.

A Season of Classic Films: Celebrating film heritage across Europe

A Season of Classics Films features free screenings of newly restored films alongside parallel activities across Europe to attract new, younger audiences to cinematic cultural heritage. Through a series of live and online events, the programme raises awareness of the work of European film archives, advocating the significance of film preservation and cinema culture. This is an initiative of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) with the support of the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme. For dates and access links of the upcoming free screenings in cinemas across Europe and online, please follow ACE’s website and social media pages on Instagram | Facebook | Twitter.

 View the full A Season of Classic Films 2024 Programme (PDF) 

ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION DES CINÉMATHÈQUES EUROPÉENNES (ACE)

The Association of European Cinematheques (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes – ACE) is an affiliation of 50 European national and regional film archives. Its role is to safeguard the European film heritage and make the rich audiovisual records collected and preserved by the various film archives accessible to the public. ACE members are non-profit institutions committed to the FIAF Code of Ethics.

Instagram: instagram.com/acefilmeu/

X-Twitter: twitter.com/acefilmeu

Facebook: facebook.com/AssociationdesCinemathequesEuropeennes

The ARTE Group selects the works, in cooperation with the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE). All these films have been recently restored, many of them in the framework of ACE’s A Season of Classic Films.

Supported by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme, the ArteKino project is delivered by the ARTE Group and ACE.

Join the conversation on social media using the #ArteKinoClassics hashtag!

PAST NEWS ABOUT ARTEKINO CLASSICS

2023-12-31 | ARTEKINO CLASSICS BACKGROUND AND RESULTS
2023-02-20 | PRESENTATION OF 2023 ARTEKINO CLASSICS DURING BERLINALE
2022-03-29 | ARTEKINO CLASSICS: A NEW LOOK AT EUROPE’S FILM HERITAGE
2022-02-01 | ACE – ARTE PARTNERSHIP

The Deutsche Kinemathek has launched a trainee programme in 2022, generously supported by the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts.

Each year, a new trainee starts their two-year traineeship at our film archive, meaning that two trainees overlap by a year to work and share the experience together and to pass on the baton.

We are now looking for the next trainee film archivist (full-time) from 1 September 2024 to 31 August 2026.

Applications are welcome until 9 June 2024.

Please find the German-language job description and all details here: deutsche-kinemathek.de/de/kinemathek/karriere.

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Daniel Meiller and Franz Frank

Venue: MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Via Giovanni Minzoni 14, 40121 Bologna, Italy/

Morning panel 10:00 – 12:00

An Economic Model of Audiovisual Heritage: film preservation and restoration as tools for audiovisual market development

Panel Chair: Michal Bregant
ACE President and Director of Národní filmový archiv, Prague

Maria Silvia Gatta
Policy Officer, European Commission

Maria Silvia Gatta has been working with the audiovisual policy of the European Commission since 2002, dealing with the MEDIA programme. From 2019, after a period abroad, she has been supervising the implementation of the Creative MEDIA Programme 2021–2027 and following the European policy for film heritage.

John Rodden
Head of Catalogue and Home Entertainment, STUDIOCANAL UK

Responsible for overseeing the commercial strategy and distribution of the STUDIOCANAL Library in the UK.

Simon Ofenloch
Commissioning Editor, ZDF – Subkoordination Fiktion/ARTE

ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) is one of the two national public television broadcasters in Germany, based in Mainz. ARTE is a European public service television channel dedicated to culture. The Subkoordination Fiktion is a department within ZDF that is responsible for coordinating the production of fictional content, often in collaboration with ARTE.

Davide Pozzi
Director, L’Immagine Ritrovata

L’Immagine Ritrovata is a highly specialized film restoration company founded and owned by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. The company has labs in Bologna and Hong Kong, and has expanded its operations to France and the Netherlands through lab acquisitions.

Philippe Bober
Founder, Coproduction Office

Based in Paris and Berlin, Coproduction Office is an international distributor and producer of bold, award-winning films. Coproduction Office’s founder Philippe Bober has produced forty-one films to date with thirteen of these having been selected to screen in Competition in Cannes, winning two Golden Palms.

Vincent Paul-Boncour
CEO, Carlotta films

Carlotta Films is a French film distribution company focused on re-releasing classic and cult films, particularly from the French New Wave era, for modern audiences.

Jędrzej Sabliński
Co-owner and CEO, DI FACTORY

DI Factory is a Polish film post-production company. In his role, Sablinski is actively involved in promoting and distributing cinema classics, having produced more that 150 restorations. Latest projects include 21 Polish classics presented by Scorcese’s Film Foundation and a Blu-ray album and the book with all films by WJ Has. 

Afternoon panel 14:00 – 16:30

Exhibiting film collections in the museum space: new approaches and new audiences

Panel Chair: Ellen Harrington
ACE Executive Committee member and Director of DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum

Introduction: Gian Luca Farinelli
Director, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna

Ellen Harrington
Director, DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum

Transformation of the Permanent Exhibition through Digital and Inclusion Strategies

The DFF Filmmuseum was fully renovated and a new permanent exhibition was designed a decade ago. Rather than close the galleries and change the entire installation now, a multi-year ‘Transformation’ project was developed to progressively refresh and modernize the storylines and objects, working closely with various age groups and multilingual communities to create a more global and relatable gallery experience, with more accessible text and pathways. At the same time a new digital tool, ‘Constellations,’ was developed with ACMI, to provide a digital overlay to the permanent exhibition, which allows visitors to access curated storylines and archival collections by collecting objects with a simple interactive ticket. Touch screens at the end of the gallery reveal each visitor’s customized collection, which can also be accessed later online. This expands the gallery experience and brings visitors on a journey of exploration and deep-dives, without expanding the square meters of the gallery.

Giovanna Fossati
Director of Collection & Knowledge Sharing, Eye Filmmuseum

Kate Saccone
PhD Candidate, University of Amsterdam

Innovative Museum Installations for Film Collections

This presentation will explore two innovative projects at Eye Filmmuseum that highlight new approaches to showcasing audiovisual collections, developed through collaboration with academic research partners. The Film Catcher is an immersive and interactive installation based on a research project aimed at creating a non-semantic search tool for film collections, which allows visitors to navigate through hundreds of films using visual cues like color and shapes. The Narratives from the Long Tail project aims to transform access to large-scale audiovisual archives. Eye Filmmuseum’s contribution involves digitizing its Mutoscope & Biograph collection for a fully immersive 3D museum installation.

Erika Balsom
Curator and Reader in Film Studies, King’s College London

The Exhibition No Master Territory: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image 

Curator and film scholar Erika Balsom will give a presentation on the project No Master Territory: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image, an exhibition and cinema programme that originated at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2022, co-curated by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg. It staged an expansive encounter with over 100 works of nonfiction film and video by 89 artists and collectives across the spaces of the cinema and the gallery, concentrating on the period of the 1970s to 1990s, a time when women’s liberation movements took hold internationally. Erika will tell us something about the curatorial and historiographic thinking that informed the project and the choice to take the films outside the cinema and into the exhibition space.

Samantha Leroy
Head of Programming, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé

Collaborations between film programming and exhibitions

Public screenings in theaters still remain the most significant way to present cinema to the audience whose regaining interest must be fulfilled continuously. However, in order to explore and talk about the history of silent cinema – not to mention its relationship with contemporariness, these screenings need relevant introductions such as presentations, conferences and music accompaniment, just as much to be closely related to exhibitions about cinema. Few examples of collaborations between film programming and exhibitions held at Fondation Jérôme Seydoux – Pathé will be highlighted here.

A fruitful discussion is expected also thanks to the presence of the FIAF Summer School participants.

Investing in Restoration and Distribution of Films from European Archives

ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes unveiled on 20 May details of this year’s edition of A Season of Classic Films, during the 77th Festival de Cannes. Building on the success of previous years, A Season of Classic Films returns for a fifth edition with free screenings of newly restored films in cinemas and online, to continue to raise awareness about the work of the European film archives and advocate for the significance of film preservation and cinema culture, especially to younger generations. During the first five editions, the programme has supported the restoration and circulation of more than 170 European films.

The restored films of each edition are presented in a catalogue that includes context and contact information to enable further distribution beyond the end of this programme.

 View the full A Season of Classic Films 2024 Programme (PDF) 

Full programme and awards of the Joint Film Restoration Grant announced at Cannes

This year’s programme is curated by 24 European film heritage institutions. The films range from early silent classics, to sci-fi and noir films, and to works that foster reflection about humanity, slavery and domination, authoritarian regimes, and memory. The film institutions organise free-admission cinema screenings to present their respective restored films between June and December 2024. These special events feature talks by filmmakers or archivists, masterclasses, live music, educational activities, or parallel exhibitions. Selected films are also globally accessible online at no charge. All films are available with English subtitles. 

In addition to the newly restored films presented by each European archive, a Joint Restoration Grant is awarded as part of A Season of Classic Films to support transnational collaboration between film institutions for film preservation and restoration, for at least three European film archives collaborate on a single restoration.

At the Cannes event, ACE also presented the two recipients of this year’s Joint Restoration Grant of €60.000 shared between Vulo Radev’s humanist film The Peach Thief (1964) and a compilation of spectacular stencil-coloured shorts titled Fantastic Flowers (1906-1920). The jury, comprised of Oscar-awarded filmmaker István Szabó, ARTE’s Feature Film Department Deputy Head Barbara Häbe, and film curator-educator Eva Sangiorgi, selected the winners from applications submitted by Europe’s film heritage institutions.

“The Peach Thief is a piece of film history with a powerful humanist message of understanding and brotherhood. In this sense, the central love story is an image of a broader meaning that can be embraced in our time. For us, as members of the jury, it was a discovery and we were touched by the grace and intensity of its language,” the jury writes of its choice. The Peach Thief will be meticulously restored in 4K thanks to the partnership between the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, the Bulgarian National Film Archive, and the Montenegrin Cinematheque.

The second grant award goes to the restoration of lavishly stenciled-coloured films on the theme of “flowers”, a collaborative effort between the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, Eye Filmmuseum, and Filmarchiv Austria. This restoration programme aims to recreate for today’s audiences the experience of cinemagoers of more than a century ago, but also to provide a historical context to the colourisation debate, which surged as a result of the new possibilities offered by present-day digital technologies, particularly the emergence of AI.

A Season of Classic Films is supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

Joint Film Restoration Grant 2024 – Jury Members

Barbara Häbe is currently the Deputy Head of the Feature Film Department at ARTE. She joined the French TV channel La Sept in 1989, which later became a member company of the European culture TV channel ARTE, and since 1992, she works at ARTE’s head office in Strasbourg. Initially, in charge of coproductions and acquisitions of international short films, Barbara Häbe is now responsible for coordinating feature films and selecting and supporting cinema coproductions proposed by the ARTE Group in the domains of classical movies, young cinema, and international coproductions. She also collaborates with the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes for the ArteKino Classics programme. 

Eva Sangiorgi is currently the artistic director of the Viennale, the Vienna International Film Festival. In 2021, she also became the coordinator of the Film Curating Studies Department at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE) film school in San Sebastian, Spain.

István Szabó is a legendary filmmaker with an impressive body of work distinguished by its stylistic virtuosity and narrative complexity, often exploring the timeless theme of personal identity and politics. He is the first to bring Hungary the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and his numerous distinctions include Jury Prize, Best Screenplay and FIPRESCI at Cannes, two Silver Bears at Berlinale, a Golden Leopard at Locarno, a BAFTA Film Award, Best Director at Mar del Plata, five Oscar and Palme d’Or nominations, and lifetime achievement awards.

 View the full A Season of Classic Films 2024 Programme (PDF) 

ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION DES CINÉMATHÈQUES EUROPÉENNES (ACE)

The Association of European Cinematheques (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes – ACE) is an affiliation of 50 European national and regional film archives. Its role is to safeguard the European film heritage and make the rich audiovisual records collected and preserved by the various film archives accessible to the public. ACE members are non-profit institutions committed to the FIAF Code of Ethics.

Instagram: instagram.com/acefilmeu/ 

X-Twitter: twitter.com/acefilmeu 

Facebook: facebook.com/AssociationdesCinemathequesEuropeennes 

The Filmuni Summer School is organizing the  Summer School Digital Archives in cooperation with the Bundesarchiv as well as with support from the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). The summer school “Digital Archives. Data Literacy and Presentation Strategies in Audiovisual Archives” is a 5-day, practice-oriented course aimed at people working in audiovisual archives as well as at everyone else who is interested in enhancing their knowledge about digital environments and processes related to digital archives. In our third year we will emphasize machine-assisted processes, offering beginner classes in how to use widely adopted open source tools to support archival tasks: including metadata extraction, transcoding, data enrichment and file maintenance.

Date: 23-27 September 2024

Location: Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF

Cost: 850,- EUR

Registration deadline: 28 July 2024

There is also the possibility to apply for a scholarship, sponsored by The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), that covers full or partial participation fees.

The application deadline for the FIAF scholarship is May 31, 2024.

More information: Website  / PDF

Please, do not hesitate to contact Anja Dornieden if you have any questions.

Filmuni Summer School

Tel. | phone: +49 (0)331-6202-554

Mail: summerschool@filmuniversitaet.de

www.filmuniversitaet.de/summerschool

The ACE, in partnership with FIAF, wants to support the ACE member institutions willing to spread and enforce the knowledge and practice of analogue film projection. The idea of the Projectionists’ Workshop project is based on a common will to keep this craft and experience alive, and to support the current and future colleagues in this field by offering them a platform for learning and sharing. 

The original proposal of our colleagues from FIAF, Chicca Bergonzi (Programming and Access to Collections Commission) and Camille Blot-Wellens (Technical Commission) was well received among the film archival community. The Executive Committee of ACE agreed that such a project is invaluable for building the professional community and has decided to support a pilot phase financially. This should help the selected hosting institutions to organize a first series of Projectionists’ Workshops aimed at practicing professionals and motivated participants. It is expected that the workshops will attract participants by region and language, for the comfort of participants and to avoid long travels. 

The workshops should focus on knowledge exchange and best practices, for example in terms of repairs and maintenance, contact lists for suppliers of the equipment and spare parts, connections among projectionists. The workshops should also be open to projectionists not (yet) working for an archival cinema. 

The budget should be moderate, and the contribution from ACE and FIAF can be used towards honoraria, production of educational materials, accommodation, travels, and meals. 

Applications will be evaluated by the representatives of the Executive Committees of FIAF and ACE by the end of May 2024, and the results will be published on the ACE website without delay. It is expected that the first of these workshops should take place during the current calendar year.

Deadline: 17 May, 2024

Download the application form for more details about the process:

FIAF Projectionists’ Workshop Application Form (PDF)