Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022 – Opening Speech

Screening of Vittorio De Sica's Sciuscià [Shoeshine] at Arlecchino cinema

Among the whole range of trigger warnings that tend to appear at the beginning of films nowadays, there was one I saw recently that I found genuinely moving. 

It was a warning that only Aussie viewers are likely to be familiar with, addressing as it did the Australian Aboriginal peoples. It read: "This film contains images and voices of people who are no longer alive."

I needed to catch my breath. It awakened something in me in connection with this festival. What we do very often involves looking at and listening to the images and voices of the dead. Are we breaking taboos, upsetting long-lost souls?

And that’s not to mention film restoration, which brings those sights and sounds even closer to their origins, heightening the resemblance. 

Australian Aboriginal peoples reminded me of how we enter a zone, a purgatory of light, carefully controlled by frame rate and optical-mechanical precision, in which there's a sense of responsibility in looking. 

This means that when it comes to films by Erich Von Stroheim, Nosrat Karimi, and Mikko Niskanen – to name only a few of this year's actor-directors – one needs to approach with care. It's a different kind of care from switching the phone off, or avoiding snoring during the show. The care must be taken in the way we perceive and memorise the images and sounds.

It's true that the majority of us, when looking at a film from the past, are not looking at images of people whom we once knew in real life. But there'll be moments we can share secondhand; as when, for instance, a former child actor, Babak Karimi will see The Carriage Driver for the first time in a cinema in 51 years at Sala Scorsese on July first. The film features both him and his now deceased father. Being in that cinema and feeling his presence, we might get an idea of how exhilarating or painful that could be.

There's another case from the early days of cinema, this time in North Africa, where for the indigenous people a film was a form of representation that went against their religious beliefs. 

French colonialists used to force the tribal chiefs to attend the screenings. Shortly after the screening began, they would close their eyes to avoid committing a sin. Now if you watch the first few seconds of any film, and then close your eyes, you'll still see the film, or your reconstruction of it, in your head. There's no way to stop the image being projected at the back of the brain once it enters, even if for only a few frames.

Becoming overly conscious, I realised that even when I am looking at images that do not originate from my past – as no film here does, fortunately – I am still dealing with memories of seeing the films themselves. A good number of films I'll be watching here for at least a second time. And I'll find myself at times searching for what a scene meant to me two months ago, two years ago or twenty years ago. As Peter Lorre says in M, "Someone's endlessly following me, it's me."

Cinema has surpassed and overridden thousand-year-old traditions in its brash, reckless and carefree movement of images and ideas. But I wish to borrow that sensitivity and sacredness in looking from Aboriginal peoples, who I guess would call us "people cursed with images". 

Now that we have learned to live with this unholy cult, I hope you enjoy the delightful blasphemy we call Il Cinema Ritrovato. – Ehsan Khoshbakht