Recent Film Restorations

[Matt]

Marvelous! I was just thinking the other day how I wanted to see this again.

[hearthesilence]

Philip Hartman’s No Picnic was screened as part of MoMA's To Save and Project festival. Per their website:

World premiere of new 2K scan by Negativeland, from original 16mm negatives. DCP courtesy The Film Desk.

I can't remember if MoMA actually restored this - I half-heard a comment in the introduction that sounded like that was the case, but it never came up again. I'm guessing it was restored because it didn't look like a raw scan - even a carefully-preserved negative is going to have some dirt or hairs come up and none of that ever did. I'm guessing they did 2K instead of 4K due to cost and the fact that it was shot in 16mm, and it looked good. The grain wasn't going to have the extra fine texture you'd get from a 4K scan, but it looked completely intact. Peter Hutton actually filmed this for Hartman and for me his cinematography was easily the best reason to see it.

Otherwise, it's a charming artifact that captured a downtown New York scene that would see most of the physical attributes preserved in this movie disappear within a few years (or at least that's what curator Josh Siegel and Philip Hartman discussed - it was all before my time). The film's Wikipedia page lists a lot of name stars, but honestly, nearly all of them appear for only a few seconds, sometimes for one single shot. For example, Steve Buscemi's in it for less than ten seconds across three or four shots but never says a word. Richard Hell is in it for one brief medium shot where he tells his neighbor to turn down the sound.

Also, I had no idea Hartman was the owner and guy behind the counter at Two Boots. And serendipitously, the "Great Jones Street Elvis" that was written about in the New Yorker does indeed make an appearance in this film - it was in the possession of Hartman at the time before it passed down through various hands. Hartman got it from the original owner, and they were the ones who basically tried to take it back in the New Yorker article.

There was only one screening, but it'll appear at Film Forum in a couple of months, and I'm sure Hartman will appear there too.

[hearthesilence]

BASHÚ, GHARIBEH KOUCHAK (BASHU, THE LITTLE STRANGER)
by BAHRAM BEYZAI (Iran, 1986, 120’, Colour)
restored by: Roashana Studios with the support of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (KANOON) - presented by mk2 Films

I'm sorry to say I hadn't seen a single one of Beyzaie's films when he passed away last month, even when owning a copy of Downpour via Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 and even missing the few that screened at MoMA's 2023 program Iranian Cinema before the Revolution, 1925–1979. An enormous lapse on my part, but I finally caught up to one at To Save and Project, which preceded it with an earlier short:

Amou Sibilou (Uncle Mustache). 1970. Iran. Written and directed by Bahram Beyzaie. With Sadegh Bahrami. World restoration premiere. DCP courtesy mk2 Films. In Persian; English subtitles. 28 min.

Bashu Gharibeh Kouchak (Bashu, the Little Stranger). 1986. Iran. Written and directed by Bahram Beyzaie. With Soussan Taslimi, Adnan Afravian, Parviz Poorhosseini, Akbar Doudkar, Farrokhlagha Houshmand. US restoration premiere. DCP courtesy mk2 Films. In Persian; English subtitles. 121 min.

Both films more or less repeat the restoration credit seen above on MoMA's website:

Restoration in 4K at Roashana Studios with the support of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon).

I forgot what a former boss of mine told me when I was still in college - he always visited MoMA whenever he was in NYC because he told me the way they arranged their exhibits was always brilliant, which implied I should always try to see the exhibit in the "correct" order to get the entire conceptual and/or narrative flow on display. So not surprisingly, their film programming will often show the same thought in the way film screenings are grouped or scheduled.

The restoration for the short Amou Sibilou (Uncle Mustache) is beautiful, looking like they had access to original and well-preserved film elements. Besides the picture, the soundtrack is clear enough that it's fairly obvious everything had to be dubbed in after the movie was shot, from the dialogue to the sound effects. Often times it has an eerie, unnatural effect that adds to the more "suspenseful" moments - the same quality can be heard on Carnival of Souls where the soundtrack was also completely recorded after the fact. But I only use the word suspenseful in describing quiet moments of anticipation and anxiety - the film is actually a comedy. Given the story, it would be a lighthearted comedy except quite a few moments are portrayed in surprisingly dark and unsettling ways. One particular moment juxtaposes an action with an incongruous sound that's especially violent, and this soon gives way to more violent imagery. Given the country's history and how much turmoil it had and continued to experience when this film was made, one wonders if this is the natural result of living through such times, where even the film's children must be familiar with such violence.

This impression soon found physical manifestation in the very opening of Bashu Gharibeh Kouchak (Bashu, the Little Stranger) - it begins with a series of bombings, revealing its setting during the Iran-Iraq war, and it follows the one surviving member of a family that was basically wiped out by it. In hindsight, the plot and story would feel right at home in a Hollywood film, the kind of prestige picture Spielberg might make, but this is also a cultural depiction of Iran that would never have happened in Hollywood in the 1980s (or the next few decades for that matter) and it's also done with a beautiful sense of poetry. The opening minutes depict a child that's been thoroughly traumatized by war, and when the light is just right (specifically when they're outdoors and the aperture has to be closed down to accommodate the bright midday sun), the boy looked like a charred corpse running in terror, and indeed after this thought came to mind, someone tells him he's as black as coal, not knowing he was covered in soot from the horrors he escaped. (FWIW, it's later revealed that even when washed, his complexion is much darker than everyone else's in his new surroundings, something that they constantly point out in teasing fashion.)

I noticed Jonathan Rosenbaum described Beyzaie as someone who was much more influenced by Hollywood filmmaking than, say, Kiarostami or Panahi, and again the story does evoke Spielberg and (per MoMA's description) Chaplin, but the filmmaking at times recalled Scorsese in terms of the blocking, the camera movements and editing. With few exceptions nearly every Iranian film I had seen until now was made by Kiarostami or Panahi, so it was startling to see so many quick montages, ostentatious juxtapositions, and dynamic tracking shots briskly keeping pace with its moving subjects.

Even Beyzaie's use of sound stood out as an ambitious progression from what he accomplished in the preceding short (which tbf was made almost 20 years earlier). It was the film's most potent depiction of this boy's continuing trauma - maybe it's just me, but I feel like the abstract nature of sound can be more convincing than something as concrete and literal as a visual depiction of mental turmoil. I think hearing a sound immediately puts us in the character's mindset, like we're naturally experiencing it from their perspective, whereas if we see a visual, we're too aware of the filmmaker's hand, that it feels too much like someone trying to impose on us some kind of visual translation of what the character is experiencing. (To use a real life example, when Brian Wilson passed away last year, the obituaries would inevitably discuss his mental struggles which often included hallucinations. In terms of anything he might've seen, it was something I could only process in an abstract sense, uncertain what that experience would actually be like. It may have very well been like Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, but when I try to picture it that way, it feels far too neat, like I'm still missing some vital aspect to the real life experience. But when Wilson described his aural hallucinations as whisperings, of unknown voices telling him awful things, it was disturbingly easy and convincing to imagine what that could be like, and it made it all the more unsettling.)

So besides the aural component, there did appear to be visual depictions of traumatic hallucinations, at least initially, and for the reasons stated above, it played like a less powerful device. But as these visual hallucinations recur, it became clear that these weren't necessarily visual manifestations of mental trauma, especially when we see them in the presence of a different character in the boy's absence. (I should add the first instance of these visuals played more like a dream descending on the boy as he drifted into sleep.) A surprising development, I got the impression there was a spiritual component, as if it was reflecting some cultural idea of the deceased and what happens to them after death, but given my limited familiarity with the religion and the culture at hand, this was all conjecture.

I'm tempted to say the back half became a bit predictable when the story appeared to head down familiar conventions, which made it a little less compelling, but the filmmaking itself never flagged, particularly the way he opened the film's final scene (a beautiful moment that involved a scarecrow, two different jackets and a flute).

The only other thing I have to add is that there's also a beautiful conversation that ditches subtitles for a long stretch, a surprising choice that pays off well. (It culminated in a charming joke that I was able to understand without any fluency for the languages involved. It revealed a surprising phonetic similarity two words had with their counterparts in modern Romance languages.)

The restoration looked amazing - I sincerely hope it finds its way on Blu-ray, a UHD if possible, and I did see Bruce Goldstein on the way out, so I'm hoping he was impressed enough to book this at Film Forum. Beyzaie lived long enough to see the restoration go to Cannes, and I imagine he must've been pleased with the results - it's still sad he's no longer with us, it would've been great to see him present the restoration in-person and introduce it to a whole new audience.

[Stefan Andersson]

Los Olvidados, 4K:
"Restored by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with Fundación Televisa, Televisa, Cineteca Nacional de Mexico, and Filmoteca de la UNAM. Restoration funding provided by the Material World Foundation."
https://www.tiff.net/events/los-olvidados

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Los Olvidados, 4K:
"Restored by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with Fundación Televisa, Televisa, Cineteca Nacional de Mexico, and Filmoteca de la UNAM. Restoration funding provided by the Material World Foundation."
https://www.tiff.net/events/los-olvidados

This is the same restoration that played at the Academy Musuem a few months ago and looks absolutely marvelous.

[Stefan Andersson]

El río y la muerte, Bunuel, 2K restoration by Unam, French theatrical re-release by Les Films Camélia:
https://www.cinematheque.fr/seance/42881.html
https://lesfilmsducamelia.com/films/le- ... e-la-mort/

[Stefan Andersson]

Perf Damage Podcast, on restorations, aspect ratios etc. Hosted by Adam and Charlotte Barker, film restoration specialist. Videos on To Catch a Thief, White Christmas, The Country Girl, Danger Diabolik, Sunset Bldvd., Jade Director´s Cut.
https://www.youtube.com/@PerfDamagePodcast

[Stefan Andersson]

The Lady in White restoration, see screenshot in post 16:
https://www.hometheaterforum.com/commun ... ry.387151/

[Stefan Andersson]

Die Augen der Mumie Mâ, Lubitsch, restored by Deutsche Kinemathek; see the first 5 minutes here, including restoration info:
https://www.filmportal.de/node/45725/video/2238779

https://www.stummfilm-magazin.de/termin ... pola-negri

[Stefan Andersson]

From Tamasa, France, in 4K:
Tu ne tueras point, Autant-Lara, 1961
Noir et blanc, Devers, 1986
https://variety.com/2025/film/global/ta ... 236550899/

A Seconde Vague Chabrol box - Nada, Docteur Popaul, Les Innocents aux mains sales, La Décade prodigieuse
https://www.dvdclassik.com/test/blu-ray ... gue-tamasa

[Stefan Andersson]

Metropolis 4k restoration to premiere January 2027; monies granted for restoration and digitization (=new master?):

https://www.ffa.de/pressemitteilungen-d ... laeumsjahr

[Stefan Andersson]

Maya Deren, 2K restorations including the longer version of Private Lives of a Cat:
https://expcinema.org/site/es/dvd/maya-deren-collection
https://midwestfilmjournal.com/2020/03/ ... ollection/

"According to the included booklet, most of these films were sourced from the printing negatives that were created in the ‘80s and were provided by Tavia Ito. The exceptions to this are The Private Life of a Cat, which came from a 16mm print provided by Pola Chapelle. And Divine Horsemen, which came from the 1977 negative. It also says that frame-by-frame clean-up was done by Kino Lober."
https://firstchoiceforlastplace.com/202 ... on-review/

[Stefan Andersson]

CF festival 2026 w/ restorations such as:
Anno Uno, Rossellini
La raison le plus fou, Reichenbach
Pierre ou les ambiguités/Pola X, 180 mins.
La magique image, Musidora
Le Maître et Marguerite, Petrovic + other Petrovic films
https://www.cinematheque.fr/cycle/festi ... -1550.html

Artists and Models, Tashlin:
"All 22 reels of the original VistaVision negative were scanned in 6K. A Phoenix pass on the opening reels, balanced the image and brought out the rich color. The final restoration preserves the original Perspecta sound mix, delivered alongside a standard mono track."
https://cinemareborn.com.au/Artists-and-Models

[Stefan Andersson]

Restoring Mysterious Skin:
https://filmmakermagazine.com/132817-in ... ious-skin/

[Stefan Andersson]

Goddess of 1967, Clara Law, 4K:
https://metrograph.com/film/?vista_film_id=9999004664

Le goût des autres, Agnès Jaoui, 4K:
https://www.acaciasfilms.com/wp-content ... Autres.pdf
https://www.acaciasfilms.com/film/le-gout-des-autres/

[onedimension]

Metropolis 4k restoration to premiere January 2027; monies granted for restoration and digitization (=new master?):

https://www.ffa.de/pressemitteilungen-d ... laeumsjahr

Google translation: "The projection quality of this 4K version, produced for the first time with funding from the Film Heritage program, will largely match the original 1927 premiere version."

!!!

[Stefan Andersson]

The Last Witness, 1980,South Korea, Lee Doo-yong:
"Originally running nearly three hours, the film was heavily censored by the Chun Doo-hwan regime, though recent scholarship suggests Lee's production company may have made strategic cuts to appease exhibitors. The Korean Film Archive's restoration reinstates much of the excised footage."
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/11178

[Calvin]

The Last Witness, 1980,South Korea, Lee Doo-yong:
"Originally running nearly three hours, the film was heavily censored by the Chun Doo-hwan regime, though recent scholarship suggests Lee's production company may have made strategic cuts to appease exhibitors. The Korean Film Archive's restoration reinstates much of the excised footage."
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/11178

This is already on KOFA Blu-Ray released in 2017

[hearthesilence]

Gumby, dammit, with less than a month to catch them at MoMI.

[Stefan Andersson]

Details on restoring Pabst´s Secrets of a Soul:
https://www.murnau-stiftung.de/node/9072

Restoring Egyptian films:
https://variety.com/2025/film/global/ca ... 236582996/
https://www.ciff.org.eg/evt/?mvcat=24136
including The People and the Nile, Chahine (1972 re-edit of Un Jour, Le Nil)
https://notesoncinematograph.blogspot.c ... ahine.html
https://variety.com/2024/film/festivals ... 236218189/

[Mark L.]

Gumby, dammit, with less than a month to catch them at MoMI.

Anybody have any insight on the chances of getting this old Gumby material in HD on disc? I know Fox bought the IP a bit ago, but not sure if that extends to these original cartoons as well.

As a side note, these restored shorts look fantastic and the Tut theater screen is surprisingly large. I realized I’ve paid to see stuff on a smaller screen at IFC!

[beamish14]

Gumby, dammit, with less than a month to catch them at MoMI.

I hope Clokey’s brilliant experimental film Mandala also gets restored

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, they do have an Instagram account (with yesterday's post showing a photo of the Tut theater too) - I'm not sure if they will respond to DM's but if they're asking people to send photos via DM, someone must be checking the inbox.

[Stefan Andersson]

TransPerfect Media (formerly Hiventy) buys German post-production/restoration house Omnimago:
https://www.boerse.de/nachrichten-amp/G ... o/38133235

[Stefan Andersson]

Len Lye restorations:
A Colour Box
Color Flight Test Film
Kaleidoscope
Rainbow Dance
https://filmpreserve.org/restorations/