Blur-ray Release of Treasures from the Golestan Film Studio

For the first-time ever on home video, this collection presents the complete output of the iconoclastic independent Iranian film studio founded in the late 1950s by a towering figure of Iranian culture, Ebrahim Golestan. The studio’s earliest productions were documentaries that helped bring Iranian cinema to international attention, including The House Is Black, directed by the poet Forough Farrokhzad. From 1961, the studio turned to fiction. Two feature films were completed, including the pivotal Brick and Mirror – both of which are presented here. After years of circulation in compromised versions, sometimes altered by censorship, these classics, which map the origins of the Iranian New Wave, are now presented in restored and definitive versions. The nine films in this set move fluidly from prose poetry to political allegory, achieving remarkable results that have inspired generations of filmmakers from Abbas Kiarostami to Jonathan Glazer.

Red & Black: The Hollywood Blacklist Podcast

 

This six-part series on the Hollywood Left and the Blacklist is my first foray into the world of podcasting.

Written and produced for the Locarno Film Festival – where I have also curated a major retrospective on the same subject for the forthcoming 2026 edition – the series is narrated by Eve P. Thompson and sound-edited by Rob Szeliga.

The episodes are:

1. The Left on the Rise

2. From Hot War to Cold War: Years of Anxiety

3. The Cinema of the Left and the Radical

4. HUAC Attacks!

5. Blacklisted and Rejected: Fronts and Exiles

6. The New Left and Coming Out of Darkness

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 | The catalogue

A Man on the Beach (Joseph Losey, 1955)

Restored in 4K in 2026 by Hammer Films at Silver Salt Restoration laboratory, from the original 35mm elements. Note written for the world premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato. — EK

What at first seems to be a genteel story of an Englishwoman abroad being driven around in an antique Rolls-Royce by the Mediterranean Sea – all in calm, saturated Eastmancolor – is in fact a coldly executed heist plot that descends into murder.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 | Films on Film (16mm & 35mm)

This year, Il Cinema Ritrovato will present more than 120 titles on celluloid, the majority in 35mm and a dozen in 16mm. These are the films to be screened on film:

Newspaper ad for Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (1974)

Newspaper advertisement for the second theatrical run of Ebrahim Golestan’s Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (1974), which opened on 27 June 1978. (The film’s original release was on 10 December 1974.) In the atmosphere of mounting revolutionary fervour, it was this time promoted under the subtitle “The Secrets of the Nouveau Riche Society.” The film played for two weeks at the Moulin Rouge cinema.

The new restoration of the film, based on the shorter cut prepared for its 1978 reissue, will be screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part IV)

Eight Girls in a Boat

Final part of my recommendations from Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. — EK

31

Tol'able David

Dir: Henry King | USA, 1921

We dedicated a retrospective to Henry King’s sound films in 2019, and this is the perfect opportunity to catch up with what both King and his admirers regarded as his first true masterwork. The film bears touches of autobiography in its depiction of the pre-industrial rural milieu from which King himself emerged. It tells the story of a shy country youth who is branded a coward but ultimately proves his courage. To be screened in 35mm.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part III)

Tallinna Turg

Part three of what I – and, in some cases, colleagues I have spoken to – recommend from the 2026 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato. Parts one and two can be accessed here.

21

La Grève des bonnes

Dir: Charles Lucien Lépine | France, 1906

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Les Effets de la foudre

Dir: Gaston Velle | France, 1906

For the Century of Cinema: 1906 series, Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko watched approximately 500 films and ultimately selected 64 to be screened across six programmes. The screenings are closely modelled on the way exhibitors of the period organised their programmes, recreating a rich variety of emotional and aesthetic effects by combining different forms of production, including comic sketches, dramas, féeries, and topical films.

Two major highlights are La Grève des bonnes and Les Effets de la foudre, both produced by Pathé Frères. In La Grève des bonnes [The Strike of the Housekeepers], working-class women fight against exploitative labour conditions, going so far as to beat up policemen. Les Effets de la foudre [The Effects of Lightning] is particularly remarkable for its inventive use of experimental techniques, including scratching the filmstrip with a sharp tool to create striking visual effects.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part II)

Mudar de Vida

My favourite things: Personal recommendations and favourite discoveries from among the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. Part one here. – EK

11

Anémic cinéma

Dir: Marcel Duchamp | France, 1926

The only film directed by Marcel Duchamp – the early Dadaist, later Surrealist, and, much later, solitary painter and chess player – this classic of the weird consists of two alternating sets of images: one of rotating and interlocking geometric forms, amounting to a kind of cinematic pop art avant la lettre; the other of words and sentences inscribed on spinning discs. The film offers an opportunity to confront one of cinema’s most fundamental questions: what are space and time in film? The restored 35mm print may contain the answer.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part I)

La Dérive

A selection of personal tips, recommendations, and favourite discoveries from the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026.

1

La Dérive

Dir: Paula Delsol | France, 1964

Biased historiography haS long buried the work of this suppressed member of the French New Wave, who, alongside Agnès Varda, was one of the movement’s few female directors. Time to rediscover this favourite of Godard and Truffaut.