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Il Museo dei sogni |
Wednesday, 4 June 2025
Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025: Twenty Recommendations
Tuesday, 3 June 2025
Safar (Bahram Beyzaie, 1972)
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Safar |
Written for the world premiere of the brand new restoration (from the camera negative) at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025. – EK
A 12-year-old orphan with a habit of seeking out his potential parents takes his friend along on a journey through the wastelands on the outskirts of Tehran. Seemingly a children’s folk tale, Safar is so visually singular that it evades easy breakdown. It is allegorical, but allegory is the engine; visual density the result.
Sunday, 1 June 2025
Online with SFFP—Discussing the Work of Lewis Milestone
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Lewis Milestone with Joan Crawford during the shooting of Rain (1932) |
On Thursday, June 5, SFFP Board President Rob Byrne will be joined by Ehsan Khoshbakht to discuss Lewis Milestone’s incredible body of work, including—of course—The Garden of Eden, which SFFP restored!
This event is free and open to everyone. Simply register below to attend.
Friday, 23 May 2025
Cecil Taylor à Paris (Gérard Patris, 1968)
The brand-new restoration of Cecil Taylor à Paris, courtesy of INA, will be premiered at the 2025 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato. – EK
“He doesn’t come from my community,” replies avant-garde jazz pianist Cecil Taylor, hidden deep behind dark glasses, when asked by the interviewer about Stockhausen. The same response follows for questions about Bach and John Cage. In a style characteristic of 1968, the African-American musician, filmed for Cecil Taylor à Paris in an old French palace with oversized chimneys, dismisses European traditions in favour of “across the track” culture – the lived experiences of African-Americans.
Monday, 19 May 2025
Ida Lupino: The Best of Her Television Work
My selection of Lupino's TV work as a director will play at Close-Up Cinema on May 25. – EK
The London-born Hollywood movie star Ida Lupino, known as one of the screen’s 'tough girls', found acting insufficient for her intellectual and social ambitions. In 1949, she ventured into directing, “investigating the social condition of women in contemporary society.” With Dorothy Arzner retired, Lupino became the only active female director in Hollywood at the time. Her remarkable directorial output has been restored and widely screened in recent years. However, her rich, and fascinating body of work for television – usually individual episodes within ongoing series – remains largely unexplored. These works encompass proto-feminist stories, genre pieces, and tightly knit dramas. This programme features some of Lupino’s most outstanding television work from the 1950s and 1960s.
Monday, 12 May 2025
Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025 | Which Films Play in Each Strand
Sunday, 11 May 2025
Lewis Milestone Retrospective at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025
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Milestone (left) on the set of Rain with Joan Crawford |
Lewis Milestone: Of Wars and Men
A milestone of visual flair and virtuosity in American cinema, the career of Lewis Milestone – a Russian Jewish émigré – bridged silent cinema and the 70mm spectacles of the 1960s. Renowned for having one of the most distinctive and eclectic styles of his generation, his popular and dazzlingly original work ranged from the anti-war magnum opus All Quiet on the Western Front to the popular-front musical Hallelujah, I’m a Bum!. As dense, dark, and daunting as his films could get, they were often laced with wit, camaraderie, and bravery amid mass atrocities. Yet, he barely survived the Hollywood blacklist, which forced him to drift into mediocre assignments. This programme, covering his silent films up until the blacklist, features new restorations and archive prints, aiming to recover the artistry of a man who fought many battles of humanity in the 20th century with a sense of wisdom and poetry that can still shake us.
Monday, 24 March 2025
Centenary screening of Grass (1925) with live music by Payman Yazdanian
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Grass |
Screening at Kings Place, London, on May 25, 2025. I'll be introducing the screening. Book here.
Grass (1925), one of the canonical greats of the silent era by the directorial team of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack—today mostly remembered for their iconic sound-era cult film King Kong—is a documentary on the heroic annual migration of the nomadic Bakhtiari tribes of Iran. It is an epic film about people who live epic lives. The restless filmmakers identify with the people they follow, transforming their journey into some of the grandest vistas of silent cinema ever captured on film.
Saturday, 22 March 2025
British Postwar Cinema: Five Personal Favourites
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The Passionate Friends |
Five personal favourites from the upcoming British Postwar Cinema 1945-1960 retrospective at Locarno.
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Understanding the Dark Edge: British Postwar Cinema at Locarno – A Conversation
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(c) Locarno International Film Festival |
A conversation with Locarno’s Christopher Small about my new curatorial project for the festival's 2025 retrospective, Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945-1960. A slightly different edit of the conversation can be accessed here on Locarno’s website.
Locarno: Was there a single film that catalysed the idea for this retrospective in your mind?
Ehsan Khoshbakht: A Diary for Timothy (1945) by Humphrey Jennings. It is a remarkable film made during the final stages of World War II, with the knowledge that the war would soon end. The film then asks, 'What next?' It shows a child being born and poses the question: What will happen to this child? How can we make the world a better place for Timothy? I immediately thought of doing a retrospective to explore what happened to that child, following his life and the lives of the people around him.