October 10, 2011

New Zealand Film Archive Honored At 2011 Pordenone Film Festival

NZFA shares the Jean Mitry Award with US National Film Preservation Foundation

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the internationally renowned festival of silent film held annually in Pordenone, Italy, has honoured the New Zealand Film Archive with the 2011 Jean Mitry Award, the annual international prize established by the Province of Pordenone in 1986 to single out individuals or organizations “distinguished for their contribution to the reclamation and appreciation of silent cinema.”

The New Zealand Film Archive shares the award with the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Archive's partner in the collaboration to preserve and make available American silent-era films identified in New Zealand. This is the first time that the Jean Mitry award has been shared by two organisations.

The festival bestowed the award on Friday 7 October before a screening of the preserved reels of The White Shadow (1923), the earliest surviving feature credited to Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). The opening 35 minutes of this British production were found at the New Zealand Film Archive by Leslie Lewis, a National Film Preservation Foundation researcher, and preserved at Park Road Post in Wellington through the NZFA and NFPF collaboration.

Film Archive Chief Executive Frank Stark said from Pordenone that it was an extraordinary night. "The award has really brought home to us what an impact the work of the Film Archive has made on the international cinema community. All week, people have been coming up to me to thank us for what we have done."

Among the many rarities recovered through the multi-year repatriation initiative is the only known print of the John Ford comedy Upstream (1927). In total, over 100 American silent-era titles have been identified for preservation. More than eighty percent are thought to exist nowhere else.

Only a fraction of the American films created during the first four decades of the motion picture still exist in the United States. American silent films, however, had a worldwide popularity, and many works discarded in the United States survive internationally as distribution prints that were salvaged decades ago at the end of theatrical runs. Most of the films recovered in New Zealand owe their survival to far-sighted collectors such as Jack Murtagh, in whose collection both Upstream and The White Shadow were unearthed.

As these “lost” films are preserved they will be made available for New Zealand audiences to rediscover for themselves.

ENDS

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