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The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm The original negatives of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) were heavily damaged with moisture, mould, and general rot by water damage. It has two more film strips than a normal film. The film is about 140 minutes long, so it is equivalent to a 420 minutes film. Some film restorers described the film as ‘un-restorable’.The film restoration project was finally started…

Taiwan classic gangster film Dust of Angels The restoration of Dust of Angels (1992) began last March. The good condition of the original negative made the restoration much easier.The duration of the negative is 110 minutes, five minutes longer than the theatrical release. After comparison, the restoration team found that the plot and editing of the release are faster and tighter. They believed that these outtakes are coherent with their…

Music reconstruction of Vampyr Carl Theodor Dreyer’s first sound film, Vampyr (1932), will be screened at HKIFF46. Although it is a sound film, very few dialogues are used. It is still in the form of a silent film narrated by title cards. The duration of the film is 73 minutes and the score takes up 71 minutes, which is particularly important in storytelling.Wolfgang Zeller’s score was thought to be lost,…

Rescreened a rarely known title of Iranian New Wave—Cheshmeh A special dispatch from @screen_notes_didi: This year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato rescreened a rarely known title of Iranian New Wave—Cheshmeh (1972). It is the only feature film directed by filmmaker and writer Arby Ovanessian. According to Ovanessian’s introduction at the screening, Cheshmeh was produced between 1969 and 1971. It subsequently premiered at the first Tehran International Film Festival and received polarised reviews.…

The latest restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives Produced by MoMA and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF), the latest restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives (1922) has screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato recently, after the premiere at San Francisco. Robert Byrne (SFSFF) and Dave Kehr (MoMA) attended the festival to talk about the case.The length of the film was at 14 reels for its New York…

Mike de Leon’s cult classic horror ITIM Mike de Leon’s cult classic horror ITIM (aka The Rites of May, 1976) was restored and premiered in Cannes Classics 2022. He won the Best Director at the 24th Asian Film Festival (later restructured as Asia-Pacific Film Festival) in 1978.As the original 35mm negative and optical soundtrack were stored at the British Film Institute National Archive, it provided the restoration with well-preserved source…

Inland Empire Inland Empire (2006) represents David Lynch’s first foray into digital filmmaking. The director supervised the 4K version with a new sound mix for the theatrical release this April.It is a complicated and painstaking process. The film was shot in SD with a Sony DV camera hand-held by Lynch himself. The footage was then up-converted to HD for grading. A digital-intermediate master was completed and output to HDCAM-SR tape…

The Godfather The Godfather was premiered in New York on this day 50 years ago. The epic Trilogy will be released in 4K UHD as a celebration. The theatrical release started on 25 February while Blu-ray boxset will be available from 22 March. The restoration process was supervised by the director. Over 300 cartons of film were scrutinised to search for the best possible resolution for each frame of the…

Nosferatu afterlife Last week we talked about the German court ordered to destroy the film materials of NOSFERATU (1922). There was a myth that only one illicit copy survived, yet there are at least six identified copies preserved by film archives in Suisse, Germany, France and Spain respectively.In the process of restoration, film comparison is an essential procedure to select the suitable film elements to work on. Since 1981, different…