Highly recommend catching this retrospective, Wenders' post-screening discussions (this week only) have been amazing. Even if you can't make them, it's worth catching some of the new restorations at later screenings.
It's part of an on-going initiative, and while some films don't benefit greatly, simply because existing prints already looked amazing, I can vouch for
Alice in the Cities looking better than ever, and
The American Friend looks drop-dead beautiful, with a new stereo mix to boot. All the restorations will be indicated at the beginning of the screening, with notes attached before the credits. Here's a sample of two:
Alice in the CitiesALICE IN THE CITIES was shot on 16 mm black and white negative in the summer of 1973. For 15 years all copies in circulation worldwide were made from the original negative. When a 35 mm dupe negative was finally made in 1988, the original material was already damaged by countless scratches, vertical lines and cracks.
The digital restoration of the film was done in 2014. For this purpose, the original negative was scanned in a resolution of 4K using the wetgate method and retouched and color-corrected in a resolution of 2K. Individual sequences that were too heavily damaged in the original 16 mm negative were replaced with sections from the 35 mm dupe negative.Although shot in the 1:1.37 format commissioned by WDR, Wim Wenders and his cameraman Robby Müller composed the shots for the widescreen format 1:1.66 during the shooting. At the director’s request, the film was also screened in cinemas as such. In the course of its digital restoration, ALICE IN THE CITIES was now finally framed in this preferred format.
Wim Wenders on Reframing Alice:
“As Robby Müller and I were preparing to film ‘Alice in the Cities’ in 1972, we were hoping to be able to shoot in 35 mm with the Arri BL, which had just come out at the time.But then it turned out that the camera was still too hard to come by and our budget was too small anyways. But since we still wanted to shoot with the original sound on location, we were left with no other option than to switch to 16 mm, which we then did, grudgingly. We did stick with the 1:1.66 wide-screen format which was common at the time though and drew it on the viewfinder. That was the format we preferred. But back in those days the TV folks absolutely had to have the 3:4 full frame format, even though I never really knew how you were supposed to frame it. My desire to see it on the big screen was simply only satisfied by the 1:1.66 cinema format… For the restoration – in which the black and white image finally no longer looks like it’s been run through a meat grinder (unbelievably over 100 copies were printed from the original film negative!), although it has of course preserved its 16 mm film grain – I decided to honor my original wish. The film can now be seen in the 1:1.66 format, just as we dreamt it and also framed it at the time. And since television has also become willing to show films in wide-screen in the meantime, and since most devices offer the 16:9 format anyways, we even decided to completely forego providing the old unpopular 3:4 format. I’ve taken the time to describe this in such detail so that no one will think that we messed with the film arbitrarily during the restoration process. We didn’t. The only arbitrary thing was the 3:4 format back then.”
The American FriendThe American Friend was filmed in the fall and winter of 1976/77. The digital restoration of the film was done in 2014. For this purpose, the original 35 mm negative was scanned, retouched and color-corrected in a resolution of 4k. The original cut of the film was not altered in any way. The sound was originally mixed in mono and was remixed in Dolby Stereo from the original tapes. All work was carried out at ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin and supported by funding from FFA German Federal Film Board for the Digitization of Content.
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