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Martin Scorsese on the African Film Heritage Project

Oscar Harding

7/22/2018 12:00:00 AM

The legendary filmmaker talks exclusively to Cinema Escapist about his mission to restore and promote African films.

You might know Martin Scorsese as one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers, directing Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed, and The Wolf of Wall Street, to name a few. What you might not know is how Scorsese also holds a deep passion for international movies from outside Hollywood. Cinema Escapist caught up with Scorsese to discuss the latest manifestation of this passion: the African Film Heritage Project.

Launched last spring, the African Film Heritage Project (AFHP) is a joint initiative between Scorsese’s non-profit Film Foundation, UNESCO, Cineteca di Bologna, and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI). It aims to locate and preserve 50 classic African films, some thought lost and others beyond repair, with hopes to make them available to audiences everywhere.

Crucially, “everywhere” in this case includes Africa itself. Due to political turmoil or even extreme climate, many of these movies never enjoyed proper distribution or storage, even in their home countries. This contributes to a central problem facing African cinema: nearly nobody, including African audiences, knows about the continent’s cinematic masterpieces.

Laudably, Scorsese himself is extremely keen that African audiences enjoy the fruits of the AFHP’s labors. It’s a dream come true for many cinephiles, both on the continent and abroad, that such a well-resourced effort has embarked on this ambitious mission of restoration and promotion.

Martin Scorsese took a break from post-producing his upcoming film The Irishman to tell Cinema Escapist’s Oscar Harding more in an exclusive interview about the AFHP.

 

Scorsese (center) at the partnership signing ceremony for the AFHP. (Courtesy of The Film Foundation)

You’re renowned as a passionate advocate of world cinema, having a varied knowledge of film from around the world. What do you love about African cinema in particular? What are some of your favorite African films and filmmakers?

We make and watch films for many reasons. One of those reasons is curiosity, a search for a way to expand our vision of the world, to understand who we are in relation to others who live lives foreign to ours, and who they are in relation to us and the way that we live our lives.

My relationship with African cinema began with Mandabi by Ousmane Sembene, who is considered one of the pioneers of African cinema. Soon after, I saw Black Girl (La Noire de…), also by Sembene. Black Girl opened in New York in the late 1960s, three years after it was released in Senegal. It had an incredible impact on me, and everybody else who saw it. It was so haunting and very quietly ferocious, and it just opened my eyes to a reality that I’d only read about in the newspaper or seen depicted in benign terms in Hollywood pictures: what it’s like to live in a colonial society when you’re the one whose country has been colonized. It was a powerful experience.

Since then, my love and admiration for African cinema has never stopped growing. The films of Youssef Chahine, Shadi Abdel-Salam, Djbril Diop Mambety, Ababakar Samb Makhamram, Med Hondo, Souleymane Cissé, and Idrissa Ouédraogo—they’re a source of inspiration for me, particularly Yeelen and Al Momia, which I’ve gone back to many times over the years.

We (The Film Foundation) actually restored Al Momia a few years back. And there are so many remarkable pictures that have to be restored and made available again: Faces of Women (1985) by Desiré Ecaré, for example, and a film from the Ivory Coast by Timité Bassori, La Femme au couteau(1967), or the Congolese filmmaker Sarah Maldoror’s extraordinary Sambazinga (1973), set in Angola.

We’ve just started working on Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975) from Algeria, by Mohammad Lakhdar-Hamina— this picture won the Palme d’or in Cannes in 1975, and it’s a milestone in Algerian cinema, and it just hasn’t been available for people to see.

As we go forward with the African Film Heritage Project, I know I’m going to find more treasures.

Still from 1969’s Al Momia. (Courtesy of The Film Foundation)

Onto the African Film Heritage Project – can you tell us about how it came about? Whose idea was it? How did UNESCO and FEPACI get involved?

It was an initiative that began with us, the World Cinema Project (a program of The Film Foundation). One of the WCP’s main goals is to give audiences a chance to discover a wide variety of cinema and languages from all over the world. In the West, we’ve had access to many pictures, but there are many more that we haven’t been able to see so easily—films that were never commercially distributed outside their countries of origin, or films that enjoyed a short window of international recognition and then disappeared, some of them masterpieces.

We realized early on that restoration and preservation are only half the battle. The best surviving elements for African films are almost never found in Africa. In the case of many titles, the elements are scattered throughout Europe and are often difficult to locate. There was a conference at UNESCO in Paris in 1995 at which Sembene actually said that he had no idea where some of his own films were: he had access to neither positive elements nor screening prints, and he had absolutely no idea where the original negatives were or even if they still existed. Unfortunately, this is true for hundreds of films throughout the history of African cinema, and for thousands more films around the world.

So we created the AFHP when FEPACI brought the urgency of the situation to our attention, and UNESCO offered its support. Since FEPACI was created in 1969, the organization has been the voice of filmmakers from all over Africa and in the diaspora, and it’s also worked to support filmmaking in Africa by Africans. UNESCO has understood these challenges for a long time: in 1964, they launched the General History of Africa, an attempt to reconstruct and promote an authentic African perspective on African history. That’s an amazing initiative, and we’re extremely proud to be partners on this project.

Still from 1967’s Soleil O. (Courtesy of The Film Foundation)

50 films is a very ambitious number to restore, and frankly this kind of effort is long overdue. What are the main goals of this project? Is it more about restoration and preservation, or eliciting a different perception of African cinema?

50 titles is certainly ambitious, but it barely scratches the surface. For us, it was a way to begin: we needed to identify a body of work, and FEPACI selected films that represented the entire continent. But really, it’s only the beginning. There are hundreds more that need attention… that we know of!

Our first goal is to launch and conduct a thorough investigation in film archives and laboratories around the world, in order to locate the best surviving elements—original negatives, we hope—for our first 50 titles. And as we research particular films, we’ll also try to compile a report on the location of all the other titles from the filmmaker in question—that way, in the future, we’ll have a shared inventory of a large number of archival holdings for African titles.

Restoration is always the primary goal, of course, but within the initiative, it’s also a starting point of a process that follows through with exhibition and dissemination in Africa and abroad. And of course, our restoration process always includes the creation of preservation elements.

How have the 50 African films been chosen? Have you had much input? Or has the selection been decided by FEPACI and UNESCO rather than yourself and The Film Foundation?

These 50 titles are just a starting point. The list was created by FEPACI, and passed through their network of filmmakers and scholars and their regional bodies, so that we could include pioneers and masters from all across Africa.

•   •   •

Cinema Escapist’s exclusive interview with Martin Scorsese is the first in a series dedicated to the African Film Heritage Project. Each article in this series will focus on a different element or figure involved with the AFHP. Next up, we will talk to Ali Moussa Iye, Chief of the History and Memory for Dialogue Section of UNESCO.

If you are interested in learning more about the AFHP or Scorsese’s Film Foundation, please visit the Film Foundation’s website.

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Martin Scorsese Handpicked These 16 Key B-Movies and Westerns for Unique MoMA Series

Jenna Marotta

7/10/2018 4:15:00 PM

The two-part retrospective "Martin Scorsese Presents Republic Rediscovered: New Restorations from Paramount Pictures" returns in August.

Among Martin Scorsese’s directing projects-in-progress are a new television show (“The Caesars”), plus films based on an Oklahoma murder mystery (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and the life of the 26th U.S. president (“Teddy”). He will also soon reunite with actors who delivered their most-acclaimed performances opposite his lens: “Casino” veteran Sharon Stone will star in a Scorsese film that’s still under wraps, while Robert De Niro’s ninth collaboration with the director — Netflix’s “The Irishman” — will be the priciest film of Scorsese’s career (reported budget: $140 million).

Still, the Oscar winner (“The Departed”) has set aside spare time for his signature cause: film preservation.

In his hometown next month, MoMA will host the second-half of its exhibition,“Martin Scorsese Presents Republic Rediscovered: New Restorations from Paramount Pictures.” The defunct studio Republic Pictures churned out 3,000 films and series, all of which are now property of Paramount. In January, Paramount’s chairman and CEO, Jim Gianopulos, announced that his company had preserved more than 800 of the films. For the MoMA retrospective, which commenced in February and was underwritten by the museum’s Annual Film Fund, Scorsese selected a collection of his 30 favorites, restored by Paramount and his own Film Foundation.  

“From the ’30s through the ’50s, the different studio logos at the head of every picture carried their own associations and expectations,” he said in a statement. “And for me, the name Republic over the eagle on the mountain peak meant something special. Republic Pictures was what was known as a ‘poverty row’ studio, but what their pictures lacked in resources and prestige they made up for in inventiveness, surprise, and, in certain cases, true innovation.”

Here are the 16 Republic films Scorsese selected for the series’ conclusion:

“Three Faces West,” directed by Bernard Vorhaus (1940)

“Strangers in the Night,” directed by Anthony Mann (1944)

“I, Jane Doe,” directed by John H. Auer (1948)

“Moonrise,” directed by Frank Borzage (1948)

“Wake of the Red Witch,” directed by Edward Ludwig (1948)

“Surrender,” directed by Allen Dwan (1950)

“Champ for a Day,” directed by William A. Seiter (1953)

“Fair Wind to Java,” directed by Joseph Kane (1953)

“Laughing Anne,” directed by Herbert Wilcox (1953)

“Hell’s Half Acre,” directed by John H. Auer (1954)

“Make Haste to Live,” directed by William A. Seiter (1954)

“The Outcast,” directed by William Witney (1954)

“A Man Alone,” directed by Ray Milland (1955)

“A Woman’s Devotion,” directed by Paul Henreid (1956)

“Come Next Spring,” directed by R.G. Springsteen (1956)

“Flame of the Islands,” directed by Edward Ludwig (1956)

“Martin Scorsese Presents Republic Rediscovered: New Restorations from Paramount Pictures, Part 2,” run from August 9 — 23. View the full schedule here.  

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“Enamorada” di Emilio Fernandez al Cinema Ritrovato 2018

Francesca Divella

6/24/2018 12:00:00 AM

Una banda mariachi ha introdotto ieri sera in Piazza Maggiore la prima proiezione del Cinema Ritrovato sulle note di grandi classici della tradizione latina come Besame Mucho, La bamba, Guantanamera e Malaguena Salerosa, il brano reso celebre nel mondo proprio grazie ad una scena di Enamorada in cui il generale Reyes (Armendàriz) chiede perdono a Beatriz (Maria Félix con una serenata in pieno stile mariachi). 

La presentazione della pellicola restaurata da Ucla Film & Television Archive e The Film Foundation’s è affidata al suo mentore, Martin Scorsese, che come primo atto del suo intervento dedica un accorato ricordo al regista e amico Peter Von Bagh, tra gli ideatori del Festival. Specificando: “Da tanti anni mi sarebbe piaciuto presenziare al Cinema Ritrovato, ma ero sempre impegnato sul set di qualche film...è quindi entusiasmante poter celebrare con voi oggi questo festival del cinema del passato, ma anche del presente e del futuro con un film bellissimo come Enamorada di E. Fernández, che è un classico del cinema messicano e mondiale, ed è un tributo all’amore ed alle difficoltà che si devono affrontare per raggiungerlo”. A proposito del regista, Scorsese cita il celebre aneddoto secondo il quale Fernández, fuggito dal Messico in rivoluzione, si rifugiò a Los Angeles dove si unì ad una compagnia di attori messicani tra cui Dolores Del Rio, sposata con il celebre scenografo Cedric Gibbons, che alla fine degli anni ‘20 ebbe il compito di progettare la statuetta degli Oscar. Scorsese ricorda che a posare come modello per la statuetta fu proprio Emilio “El Indio” Fernández, all’epoca molto attivo come attore e simbolo di beltà latina sia in Messico che ad Hollywood, partecipando a film come Il mucchio selvaggio e Billy the kid. 

Fernández, che in prima persona aveva partecipato alla rivoluzione messicana (1917) ed era stato in prigionia, ambienta Enamorada in quello stesso frangente storico, producendo una pellicola che diverrà il simbolo dell’epoca d’oro del cinema messicano nel mondo. La trama melodrammatica di Enamorada è illustrata dalla fotografia di Gabriel Figueroa, che predilige immagini pittoresche di panorami con una profondità di fuoco riecheggiante quella dell’incompiuto Qué viva Mexico! di Ejzenstejn. Il film si apre con una carrellata dichiaratamente western che galoppa al ritmo della rivoluzione messicana: bombe e rivoluzionari a cavallo scorrono per introdurci nel contesto della storia. Un contesto che con il western ha in comune anche una certa visione romantica della frontiera (qui la città di Cholula) intesa come ideale di libertà e di speranza di riscatto per i più deboli e poveri.

La presentazione dei personaggi avviene in modo più classico: il rivoluzionario è ritratto nei termini dell’eroe che “ruba ai ricchi per dare ai poveri” e che dedica tutta la sua esistenza alla restaurazione del principio di giustizia sociale, dimenticando in questo di pensare a se stesso ed alla possibilità di un amore. Quasi subito l’intreccio però ci fa sapere che José non è mai stato innamorato. La sua figura è caratterizzata dai tratti marcatamente messicani di Armendariz, dal sopracciglio inarcato all’insù e dalla falda del suo sombrero che nei primi piani occupa almeno la metà dello schermo.

Allo stesso modo Beatriz (Maria Félix, lanciata proprio da questa pellicola) appare da subito immortalata da un mezzo primo piano che ne esalta lo sguardo fiero, gli occhi neri sgranati, in contrasto con la veste bianca, e il petto gonfio di rabbioso coraggio. La sua bellezza è in netto contrasto con il carattere da Bisbetica domata, opera alla quale sono palesi i riferimenti del film: Beatriz non incarna un ideale di donna svenevole e sottomessa, ma piuttosto quello a sua volta “rivoluzionario” di donna con la pistola, poco obbediente ai canoni prestabiliti della sua condizione sociale e dallo schiaffo facile. Queste peculiarità del personaggio e il corto circuito che si innesca negli incontri con José/Armendariz, prestano il fianco alla disseminazione nel film di numerose gag di radice screwball comedy in cui la donna prende a schiaffi, legnate insulti il suo pretendente, incredibilmente disarmato di fronte all’esplosione del suo amore per lei. Esplosione resa visibile concretamente dalla scena dei fuochi di artificio, che scoppiando lo mandano letteralmente con il sedere per aria e in totale confusione d’amore, anch’essa denunciata dal dettaglio sonoro degli uccellini che cinguettano sulla testa del generale ad ogni suo risveglio da una botta o una caduta dovuta a Beatriz.

La commistione dei generi è un marchio di fabbrica per l’accoppiata Fernández/Figueroa che grazie al successo delle loro pellicole ebbero il merito di rendere visibile nel mondo il cinema messicano. Tutt’ora Fernández è considerato uno dei massimi esponenti dell’epoca d’oro, ricordato per una filmografia dallo stampo folclorico e indigeno, e vincitore nel 1946 della Palma d’Oro a Cannes con il suo Maria Candelaria (interpretato dalla Del Rio). La fotografia di Figueroa ha invece il grande merito, come scriveva Mereghetti nel suo dizionario “di fissare figure ed elementi decorativi (qui i templi di Cholula dall’ evidente valore metaforico) con una ieraticità ed una nitidezza estetica che trasformano il cinema in fotografia in movimento”.

Ed è proprio il fattore religioso, nel personaggio di Padre Sierrita (Fernando Fernandez) ad intervenire in Enamorada per mediare e ricomporre il corto circuito innescato tra la matrice rivoluzionaria di José/Armendariz e quella proto-femminista, ma allo stesso tempo classista di Beatriz/Felix. Il ritmo mariachi della rivoluzione verrà placato dalle note liturgiche dell’Ave Maria di Schubert, che risuonano sui dettagli sfarzosi della chiesa di Cholula e sui primi piani del sacerdote in un’estasi quasi mistica. Estasi interrotta dalle incursioni di un umano turbamento dovuto alla bellezza irresistibile di Beatriz, o alla sua “erotica” descrizione, come nella celebre scena in cui il rivoluzionario dichiara il suo amore per la donna all’amico sacerdote, descrivendone dettagliatamente la carnale bellezza.

Di questa fiera beltà resta schiavo dunque il prode rivoluzionario, che allo stesso tempo riuscirà a domarla grazie alla sua magnanimità. Il film si chiude con un finale che riecheggia in qualche misura l’epopea del cinema muto, perchè a dirci che la protagonista ha ceduto all’amore non saranno parole nè dichiarazioni esplicite, ma le immagini di Beatriz che fugge dal matrimonio con il suo promesso allo scoppiar delle bombe che minacciano la vita del generale, per raggiungerlo ed affiancarlo nella fuga dalla città. Lui maestoso al galoppo del suo destriero e a marciargli di fianco, a piedi, la sua nuova conquista.

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Universal Pictures And The Film Foundation Announce Film Restoration Partnership

5/1/2018 12:00:00 AM

Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg to lend technical and artistic expertise

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif., May 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Universal Pictures and The Film Foundation announce a multi-year partnership to restore a handpicked selection of the Studios' classic titles. With this collaboration, Universal will fund the restorations as well as provide research and technical services.  Through The Film Foundation, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg will be personally involved in the process contributing their unique artistic expertise and historical knowledge throughout the restoration process.  The restored versions will be screened at film festivals and archives around the world. The 2018 restoration slate includes the following:

  • DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939, d. George Marshall)
  • KILLERS, THE (1946, d. Robert Siodmak)
  • KILLERS, THE (1964, d. Don Siegel)
  • MY LITTLE CHICKADEE (1940, d. Edward Cline)
  • WINCHESTER '73 (1950, d. Anthony Mann)

Additional titles will be announced in the coming months.

"I'm so excited by this partnership with Universal and the chance to continue what we started with the restoration of ONE-EYED JACKS," said Martin Scorsese. "Steven and I grew up with these pictures. We didn't just watch them—we absorbed them, they became part of our DNA. Neither of us can wait to get to work on WINCHESTER '73, the first of Anthony Mann's eight pictures with James Stewart, and on both versions of Hemingway's THE KILLERS: two different pictures from two different eras, both of them classics. And there's so much more to choose from in the Universal library. We're all thrilled to be making these treasures of American cinema available to audiences once again." 

"I'm delighted to be working with Marty, The Film Foundation and Universal on this project," said Steven Spielberg. "It's a great opportunity to not only restore a remarkable selection of films, but also to make them available to audiences the way they were meant to be seen. The focus and scope of this project will result in valuable contributions to the preservation of our film history."

"We are very happy to deepen our long relationship with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and The Film Foundation," said Michael Daruty, Senior Vice President, Global Media Operations Management for NBCUniversal.  "These films represent some of the landmark titles in Universal's rich history and library."   

This restoration partnership marks another step in Universal's film restoration initiative announced during the company's Centennial in 2012.  More than 70 titles have been fully restored including All Quiet on the Western Front,The Birds, Buck Privates, Dracula (1931), Drácula Spanish (1931), Frankenstein, Jaws, Schindler's List, Out of Africa,Pillow Talk, Bride of Frankenstein, The Sting, To Kill a Mockingbird, Touch of Evil, Double Indemnity, High Plains Drifter, Holiday Inn, Spartacus, King of Jazz, Cleopatra (1934), Duck Soup, and One-Eyed Jacks. In 2015, Universal launched their silent film initiative.  Since then, the company has restored 15 titles such as Outside the Law, Sensation Seekers, The Last Warning, Straight Shooting, and The Man Who Laughs. 

The Film Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 1990 dedicated to protecting and preserving motion picture history. By working in partnership with archives and studios, the foundation has helped to restore over 800 films, which are made accessible to the public through programming at festivals, museums, and educational institutions around the world. The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project has restored 31 films from 21 different countries representing the rich diversity of world cinema. The foundation's free educational curriculum, The Story of Movies, teaches young people - over 10 million to date - about film language and history.

Universal Pictures is a unit of NBCUniversal, one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, world-renowned theme parks, and a suite of leading Internet-based businesses. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.

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