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Five of the seven restored versions screening in Berlinale Classics will be celebrating their world premiere in Berlin. In addition to the films from Germany, Israel and Mexico (see press release from December 12, 2016), the section will include four additional restored versions of international classics, by Woody Allen, James Cameron, James Ivory and George A. Romero.

© 1991 STUDIOCANAL. All rights reserved

Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D by James Cameron

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back. In new, three-dimensional form, the T-800 returns to the big screen. DMG Entertainment and Studiocanal, working with James Cameron and his production company Lightstorm Entertainment, initiated the restoration and 3D conversion of Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D (USA, 1991/2017). In the science-fiction classic, an android played by Arnold Schwarzenegger travels back through time to save from assassination the future leader in the human battle against the machines. To create the new version, the original negative was scanned in 4K at Deluxe LA and then digitally processed by Technicolor Hollywood, while StereoD undertook the conversion to 3D. Studiocanal will release the new, digitally restored 3D version of the film, which won four Oscars in 1992, theatrically. All the restoration work was personally supervised by director James Cameron and his team.

“Famous for its one-liners, Terminator 2: Judgment Day set a new bar for special effects and became a cult film. We’re very pleased to be celebrating the release of the new 3D version of the classic here in Berlin”, says Rainer Rother, head of the Retrospective section and artistic director of the Deutsche Kinemathek.

© Image Ten Inc.

Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero

George A. Romero’s black-and-white film Night of the Living Dead (USA, 1968) is considered a milestone and a classic of the horror genre. The film is about a group of diverse personalities who barricade themselves into a secluded house in Pennsylvania to fend off an attack by a growing number of zombies. The impetus for the restoration was when the film’s Image Ten partners, Gary and Russell Streiner, donated the original camera negative to The Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was scanned in 4K by Cineric for digital processing and audio restoration was done by Audio Mechanics in Burbank. Night of the Living Dead was restored under the aegis of The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation and the Celeste Bartos Preservation Fund.

Quelle: Cohen Media Group, LLC

Maurice by James Ivory

Maurice (UK, 1987) won three awards at the 1987 Venice Film Festival – for director James Ivory, and the lead actors James Wilby and Hugh Grant. The film is based on the eponymous book by E.M. Forster and tells the story of a homosexual attraction. At the centre of the tale is young Cambridge graduate Maurice Hall, who must fight to realise his dreams in the puritanical England of the early 20th century. The restoration, by the Cohen Media Group, used a 4K scan of the original camera negative. Director James Ivory gave the nod to the digitally restored version of his film, and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme supervised the colour correction.

© Courtesy of Park Circus / MGM

Annie Hall by Woody Allen

Annie Hall (USA, 1977), Woody Allen’s world-renowned comedy, which won four Oscars, is now available in a digitally restored theatrical version. In this semi-autobiographical tale, Allen plays the neurotic stand-up comedian Alvy Singer who occasionally talks directly to the audience as he relates the story of his relationship with the title character, using flashbacks and moving around in time. The film was restored by Park Circus and MGM at Deluxe, Culver City. The 4K restoration, using the original camera negative, was supervised by Grover Crisp in co-operation with the office of Woody Allen.

The full programme of the Berlinale Classics section:

Annie Hall
By Woody Allen, USA 1977
World premiere of the digitally restored version 
In 4K DCP

Avanti Popolo
By Rafi Bukaee, Israel 1986
International premiere of the digitally restored version 
In 2K DCP

Canoa
By Felipe Cazals, Mexico 1976
World premiere of the digitally restored version 
In 2K DCP

Maurice
By James Ivory, UK 1987
World premiere of the digitally restored version 
In 4K DCP

Night of the Living Dead
By George A. Romero, USA 1968
International premiere of the digitally restored version 
In 4K DCP

Schwarzer Kies (Black Gravel)
By Helmut Käutner, West Germany 1961
World premiere of the digital version 
In 2K DCP

Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D 
By James Cameron 
World premiere of the digitally restored version 
In 2K DCP

Press Office
January 19, 2017

PARIS, November 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ 

All profits from these LOUIS XIII masterpieces designed by Hermès, Puiforcat and Saint-Louis, will benefit The Film Foundation founded by Martin Scorsese 

Each decanter of LOUIS XIII takes four generations of cellar masters over 100 years to craft. It is a unique blend of up to 1,200 eaux-de-vie, the youngest of which is at least 40 years old. A veritable journey through time, it has been present at every milestone in the history of luxury travel. In tribute to this odyssey, LOUIS XIII joined with three of the most prestigious French luxury houses - Hermès, Puiforcat and Saint-Louis - to create three unique masterpieces. To crown their rarity, the LOUIS XIII cognac they house is a tailor-made coupe enriched with a selection of one of the oldest Grande Champagne eaux-de-vie, set aside over the decades by the Cellar Masters.

Inspired by the iconic LOUIS XIII journeys, these objets-d'art have toured the globe, exhibiting their history and savoir-faire at Hermès boutiques, prestige museums and select venues in cultural capitals: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, Singapore, Paris and London... For one year, LOUIS XIII shared its ode to adventure with the world.

To close this exciting tour, each decanter has been auctioned by Sotheby's. In New York, the Americas edition topped the record for sale of a LOUIS XIII decanter; in Hong Kong in October, the Asia decanter surpassed that total; and at the final sale in London on November 16, the Europe decanter fetched US$ 235,000, bringing the full total to US$ 558,000. The proceeds will benefit The Film Foundation, created by Martin Scorsese in 1990 to restore and preserve cinematic heritage. As part of this unique partnership between Louis XIII and The Film Foundation, several short films were produced, directed by Kent Jones and featuring Scorsese, Wes Anderson, and Ang Lee, who serve on the board of the foundation.

"LOUIS XIII and The Film Foundation are both committed to preserving a cultural legacy, honoring the past while ensuring that films survive into the future. The work of the foundation has helped to restore over 700 films, from the 1880s onward, encompassing well over 100 years of this extraordinary art form. We are grateful for our partnership with LOUIS XIII, and its generous and continuous support for the foundation's mission," said Martin Scorsese.

"We chose to support The Film Foundation in honour of the expertise it takes to create a cultural masterpiece and maintain a savoir-faire over the ages," said Ludovic du Plessis, Global Executive Director of LOUIS XIII.

"Sotheby's was delighted to help raise funds for The Film Foundation through this unique series of auctions, each in our major sales locations," said Jamie Ritchie, Worldwide Head of Sotheby's Wine.

With each Cellar Master passing their legacy on to the next, the LOUIS XIII odyssey continues.

ALCOHOL ABUSE CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH - PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

When “Night of the Living Dead” opened in 1968, mostly in grindhouse theaters, Vincent Canby of The New York Times dismissed it in a three-sentence review as “a grainy little movie acted by what appear to be nonprofessional actors, who are besieged in a farmhouse by some other nonprofessional actors who stagger around, stiff-legged, pretending to be flesh-eating ghouls.” He said the filmmakers were “some people in Pittsburgh.”

As it happened, “Living Dead” followed a trajectory rare in American film: Partly fueled by other, more scandalized reviews (including one by a young Roger Ebert, in Reader’s Digest), it went on to cult success, and two years later was recognized as being sufficiently artful to be placed in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Its influence, particularly on the now nearly ubiquitous subgenre of zombie horror (“The Walking Dead” on TV, and the movies “28 Days Later,” “World War Z” and “Shaun of the Dead”) is broadly recognized.

But the filmmakers themselves — the “people from Pittsburgh” who formed a company they called Image Ten to make the low-budget movie — have been able to gain from their groundbreaking work only in a limited way. The film’s original distributor, the Walter Reade Organization (named for its founder, a pioneer of art-house distribution), did not file for a new copyright after changing the title from the original “Night of the Flesh Eaters” to “Night of the Living Dead.” That meant the movie went into the public domain almost immediately. As was once the case with Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the movie has been subjected to many unofficial, though legal, iterations.

The paradox of the situation has not been lost on its director, George A. Romero. “The fact that people were able to show it for free, that anybody was able to distribute it, did result in lots of people seeing it, and keeping the film alive,” he said in a phone interview. But viewers were too often watching inferior versions. That will change — dramatically, the moviemakers hope — on Saturday, Nov. 5, when the Museum of Modern Art screens a new, and copyrightable, restoration of “Living Dead” as part of its annual restoration and preservation festival, “To Save and Project.”

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“We got our baby back,” Gary Streiner, one of the film’s producers, said in a phone interview.

The process, Mr. Streiner said, began in earnest last year, when he; his brother, Russ (who co-produced and also played Johnny in the movie); and the screenwriter John Russo resolved to make a proper inventory of the film’s surviving elements, going through their own archives and the archive of the lab that originally worked on the film.

They turned to MoMA for help, partly because of its history with the film and partly for a practical reason. “Our vaults are in Pennsylvania,” said Katie Trainor, the MoMA’s film collections manager. “Once they had the materials together, they did not want to risk shipping them; they drove them from Pittsburgh. They were literally looking over my shoulder as I was inspecting the materials.”

Mr. Streiner recalled his relief at finding the negative in decent shape: “We could have opened the cans and found dust!”

The restoration was backed by, among others, the Film Foundation, the preservation nonprofit started by the director Martin Scorsese. In an interview, its executive director, Margaret Bodde, said, “The movie had been on a wish list of ours for some time,” and it helped “that we had the director around to consult with, which is too rare in film restoration.”

Mr. Romero said that it had been years since he had seen the film presented in its proper aspect ratio, a squarelike 1.37 to 1; many versions had been cropped to wide-screen proportions. “The restoration is very beautiful, and of course the movie’s pimples do show,” he said. “There’s a copy of the script visible in one of the frames! I won’t tell where. It will be a little challenge for fans to spot it.”

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As Ms. Trainor toiled with the filmmakers, she learned what a shoestring Image Ten had worked on. “The car in the opening scene belonged to the Streiners’ mother,” she said. “They borrowed it from her, and she didn’t realize they’d smashed the windshield because they replaced it before returning it to her. The dent they show in the car after it rolls into the tree was there to begin with, though.”

Josh Siegel, curator of film at MoMA, said in an interview, “It’s an unfortunate turn of historical fate that Image Ten created one of the most successful horror films of all time and didn’t reap the benefits of it.”

Over the years, members of the original filmmaking team have tried to mine some profit from their vision, creating alternate cuts, even a colorized version. Because restoration at a certain level has been deemed to create new intellectual property, this is the first time the film as they wanted it seen will, to an extent, belong to them.

Reflecting on what “Living Dead” spawned, Mr. Romero said: “They aren’t really zombie movies; ‘Night’ wasn’t really a zombie movie. I always understood zombies as living beings put under a kind of spell, as in ‘I Walked With a Zombie’ or ‘The Serpent and the Rainbow,’ that kind of thing. Our creatures, and the ones in movies such as ‘28 Days Later’ and ‘World War Z,’ are the dead returning to life.”

Now 76, Mr. Romero has mostly stayed in indie film, creating a big body of work, including five more film variations on the “Living Dead” theme. “I recently realized that I couldn’t get financing for an inexpensive zombie film anymore, because of Brad Pitt,” Mr. Romero said with a chuckle, referring to the actor and producer of “World War Z.” He added, “I’m hoping to get back into the playground, though.”