Tuesday, April 30, 2013

April reading: Multiversions, Spanish Civil War, Chomón, Lang

Esteve Riambau (ed.): Multiversions. Barcelona: Filmoteca de Catalunya, 2013. The book to the Symposium of the 2013 Barcelona Congress of FIAF. In Catalan and English. Articles by Esteve Riambau, François Thomas, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Luciano Berriatúa, Juan B. Heinink, Román Gubern, and Stefan Drössler. - The most ambitious ever undertaking to discuss the question of multiple versions of films, including silent and sound versions, different language versions, censored versions, special cases such as Napoléon, Faust, Metropolis, and Mr. Arkadin, different national versions of co-productions, festival versions, cinema and tv versions, the director's cut syndrome, extended dvd cuts, technical variations (3D and 2D, black and white and colour) - and restored versions. The discussion is intelligent, and the volume is likely to become an indispensable reference into this topic.

Esteve Riambau: Imatges confrontades: la guerra civil i el cinema / Contrasting Images: The Spanish Civil War and the Cinema. Barcelona: Filmoteca de Catalunya, 2011. In Catalan and English - The newest stand of study about the films about the Spanish Civil War, covering the complexity of the terrible topic.

Joan M. Minguet Batllori: Segundo de Chomón. The Cinema of Fascination. Barcelona: Institut Català de les Indústries Culturals / Filmoteca de la Generalitat de Catalunya / Instituto de Estudios Turolenses / Títol, 2010. (In Catalan: 2009). The English version of the most definitive study on Segundo de Chomón, the master of early cinema (of fantasy and special effects and much more), and one of the founding fathers of Spanish and Catalan cinema, although mostly active in France and Italy.

Bernard Eisenschitz: Fritz Lang au travail. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2011. Solid research and analysis by one of the finest Fritz Lang connoisseurs, and a wonderful coffee-table book full of rare and large illustrations from the archival collections of Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin) and La Cinémathèque française and many other sources.

Journal of Film Preservation 88 / April 2013. Published by FIAF (Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film). - Contents include: Esteve Riambau's editorial on the achievements of the FIAF on its 75th Anniversary. - Paolo Cherchi Usai: The Digital Future of Pre-Digital Film Collections. - Jon Wengström: Collection Building and Programming in the Future. The fate of non-national films in archives in the light of the change from 35 mm to DCP in theatrical distribution. - David Walsh: The Restoration Threshold, or When to Apply Grain Reduction. - Mari Sol Pérez Guevara: Challenges for European Film Heritage from the Analogue and the Digital Era. - David Pierce: The Media History Digital Library. - Christophe Dupin: First Tango in Paris: The Birth of FIAF, 1936-1938. - Christian Dimitriu: FIAF Oral History: Robert Rosen - Film Culture Activist at UCLA. - Nikolai Izvolov and Sergei Kapterev: In Search of Post [Potshta, 1929]. - Dylan Cave: Digital Acquisition at the BFI. - Camille Blot-Wellens: Considering the Restoration of Early Films: The Case of the Pathé Negatives. - Martin Koerber: Toute la mémoire du monde - a new film restoration festival in Paris.

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