Film Restored – Workshop report and film – Re-imagining lost films: Two case studies

‘In Search of María’, CO 1985, D: Luis Ospina, Jorge Nieto, 15 min
Video introduction: Henry Caicedo Caicedo (Cinemateca de Bogotá)
In English

‘Âmes de fous’, FR 1918, D: Germaine Dulac, 3 min, stumm
Reading: Émilie Cauquy (Cinémathèque française), Clément Lafite (film archivist)
In French (with English subtitles)

What is the status of a partially lost film? How can such a film be screened? Two case studies present different approaches: firstly, ‘In Search of María’ (CO 1985) is an attempt to recapture the first Colombian feature film, ‘María’ (CO 1921) in the form of a documentary. Secondly, a live reading performance by Émilie Cauquy and Clément Lafite brings back to life a lost film by the avant-garde feminist French filmmaker Germaine Dulac. ‘Âmes de fous’ (FR 1918) is a six-episode series depicting the adventures of the young Marquise de Sombreuse who is threatened by his greedy mother-in-law and a sinister curse that lingers over her family. The surviving film material (roughly three minutes of the original three-hour-long work) and original documentation from the holdings of the Cinémathèque française were used to create this freely inspired reconstruction of ‘Âmes de fous’, long considered lost.

→ Register until 13 Oct 2023 at registration_fr [at] deutsche-kinemathek.de (registration_fr[at]deutsche-kinemathek[dot]de) | Single tickets for all festival screenings are available via the Kino Arsenal website.