For many years the National Cinema Museum of Torino has been committed to the restoration and recovery of films of the past in order to enrich and valorize the archives. The restoration process is carried out in collaboration with a number of archives and specialized laboratories such as Haghefilm of Amsterdam, Prestech of London, L’Immagine Ritrovata of Bologna and ANIM of Lisbon.
Silent Films – The National Cinema Museum’s restoration method
In choosing the films to be restored, the Museum looks to various genres for its source material, from comedies to historical films. It does, however, pay particular attention to Torino’s own silent films.
The restoration of the series of films with Bartolomeo Pagano playing the role of Maciste and the exceptional intervention performed on Cabiria (which restored both the original 1914 version and the 1931 re-edition with sound) are among the most significant projects that were carried out in recent years.
The restoration of Cabiria made the film available to the whole world. Here are the stages of Cabiria’s extraordinary, on-going journey.
The study and analysis of production documents and publicity material, which is carried out in tandem with the work on the film itself, is one of the special characteristics of the film archives’ restoration process. The documents conserved at the Paper archives and the Photo archives are a precious source of various types of information.
Locating the caption texts, reproducing the style of the caption frames and text, identifying gaps and editing errors, accompanying the projection with an original score orchestrated just for the occasion, giving the film back its original colors … These are just a few of the “miracles” that are made possible by an in-depth study of the source material.
Every stage of the restoration work carried out over the years has been documented. In order to obtain an open and perfectible restoration process, the Museum holds it to be of utmost importance that there be a precise track of the entire process.
Sound Films
The activity of film restoration is being expanded to international productions and also to Italian classics of the sound era. Particular attention is paid to works of art-house cinema and authors such as Federico Fellini, Marco Ferreri, Francesco Rosi and Elio Petri, as well as to the conservation and valorization of their personal archives of documents. |
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