First Case, Second Case (Abbas Kiarostami, 1979)

Abbas Kiarostami, circa mid-70s

Programme notes written for the world premiere of the restored version of the film at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019. — EK


GHAZIEH-E SHEKL-E AVVAL, GHAZIEH-E SHEKL-E DOVVOM
First Case, Second Case
Abbas Kiarostami, 1979

Written by Abbas Kiarostami. Shot by Houshang Baharlou. Edited by Abbas Kiarostami. Cast: Mehdi Azadbakht, Mohammadreza Barati, Hedayat Matin Daftari, Nader Ebrahimi, Gholamreza Emami, Mahmoud Enayat, Ezzatolah Entezami, Ali Mousavi Garmaroudi, Ali Golzadeh Ghafouri, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh.

First Case, Second Case

This banned and rarely seen pseudo-documentary by Kiarostami is a testimony to his seldom acknowledged political shrewdness and his objective, complex perspective on the tumultuous events of the late 70s in Iran, culminating in the revolution. Remarkably, he achieved this without leaving his comfort zone, the classroom setting, and by staying faithful to his inquiring style, with its subtle, imaginative manipulation of recorded reality. Here, he also mastered the interview format (recently introduced into his body of work by Tribute to Teachers,1977), putting his finger on the pulse of Iranian society by collaging conflicting viewpoints.

Georgian Short Documentaries at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019

Arabesques on a Pirosmani Theme

This programme, composed of four short Georgian documentaries, was cherry-picked by me from a larger number of newly restored films made available to Il Cinema Ritrovato by Central Archive of Audio-Visual Documents of the National Archives of Georgia. Thanks to their hard work and generosity, you'll be able to see some of the most dazzling,  hauntingly poetic films of this year's festival in Bologna. The title of this programme, "Beyond Soviet Propaganda", is suggested by curator of Georgian Archive; a very apt title if you watch the films. — Ehsan Khoshbakht

Tudzhi

Tudzhi [Cast Iron] (1964) by Otar Iosseliani

In this early Iosseliani, the last of the Georgian masters, shows a fascinating combination of influences – from his own background in music, to Soviet documentaries about heavy industry. He records a day in the life of the workers at a steel mill, where the juxtaposition of vulnerable flesh and raging, smelting iron creates striking images. It opens with city symphony style shots of industrial chimneys. From there, in a movement from light to darkness – repeated elsewhere in the film – it’s off to the mill. The post-production sound, although realistic, adds an eerie dimension. There are humorous touches, however: during a lunch break a gigantic fan is used by the workers to dry their sweat-soaked clothes and the air blowing around the shirts turns gives them new sculptural forms. And later, when the workers are seen barbecuing by simply holding the skewers close to the ground, where the temperature is high enough to grill their daily meal.

Way of a Gaucho (Jacques Tourneur, 1952)

Written for the catalogue of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019 to accompany a June 25 screening of the film from a vintage BFI print. — EK


This year's Il Cinema Ritrovato offers some of the most eclectic westerns ever made: Henry King's realist, anti-violence drama The Gunfighter, Budd Boetticher's austere and minimalist Ride Lonesome and Tourneur's Argentinean western, Way of a Gaucho. Interestingly, the latter was meant to be directed by King, too, whose wife's illness prevented him from accepting an assignment which demanded shooting entirely in Argentina.

Gauchos are a "special breed of men answering only to their laws and codes," the opening sequence voice-over clarifies with its clear analogy to cowboys, setting the tone for a classic western narrative. The film follows the story of gaucho Martín Penalosa, from imprisonment, after killing a man in a duel, to agreeing serve in the militia which he eventually deserts. This gives the film its dramatic core, especially after Martín's commander, Major Salinas, embarks on a long chase to capture the deserter who by now has become a hero bandit.

Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian, 1935)

Becky Sharp

A restored version of Becky Sharp will be screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2019. For the screening date, check the Cineteca's website mid-June. -- EK


Becky Sharp, the protagonist of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, is a golden-haired gold digger, a flirt and social climber of early 19th-century England. Mamoulian’s portrayal of Becky in this satire of aristocratic life shows her not as an opportunist but a woman mischievously reversing gender power relations, a bon vivant – with three-strip Technicolor advocating her excessive world. This colour process, previously used only in shorts or for certain sequences in black and white features, was used here for a feature film for the first time. Shooting began with actor and (rather dull) part-time director Lowell Sherman handling the project. When Sherman died during the production Mamoulian was brought on board, starting from scratch. Having made a succession of great films since 1931, the Tbilisi-born Armenian had one of the most consistent bodies of work in post-sound American cinema, known for his ability to encode his vision in light, movement, and now colour. Technicolor wished to seduce the viewer; Mamoulian wanted to tell the story via the colour. The continuity of colour temperature was of no concern. In the ball sequence, a sudden shot from above also marks a shift like that from an oil painting to a watercolour, with colours leaking from the edges of the figures. The palette is dominated by pale blues, tawdry yellows, royal reds and light greys mostly for backgrounds. Critic Tom Milne notes how the colours define Becky's moods with “soft blues for melting ingenuousness, bright yellow for moments of triumph,” or more generally, when in the ball sequence “the blues, greens and yellows are gradually drained away to leave the screen suffused by a crescendo of red.” The initial box office failure and later availability of poor prints only (using the inferior two-colour Cinecolor process) created the impression that Becky Sharp wasn’t worthy of its director’s name. This definitive restoration finally reveals it as one of Mamoulian’s finest works of the ’30s.

Ehsan Khoshbakht

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019

Cinema, which never fully leaves Bologna throughout the year, is about to reclaim the streets of the city as it plays host to one of the greatest motion picture parties in the world, offering some 500 films (no typo, the figure is correct!), talks, presentations and countless other events celebrating cinema in all forms, shapes and sizes. With a brilliant array of great films, masterpieces and rarities lined up, the past has never been so close to us and the projections so entwined with our daily life. In our uncompromisingly internationalist approach to film history, you’ll see films from five continents including works from Mali, Morocco and Mexico.

This year, we have two rich programmes focusing on mega-stars Musidora and Jean Gabin, two striking examples of the ways in which actors can shape national or international culture. Get ready also to discover the genius of Eduardo De Filippo, a towering, multifaceted figure of Italian culture. Two further programmes will look at the cinematic output of two countries recovering from the effects of war and geopolitical division: Germany and South Korea. Themes of national identity and political consciousness are faced head-on in the films of Arab cinema’s greatest director, Youssef Chahine, the subject of another retrospective. Other
directors in the spotlight include Henry King (an overview retrospective), Felix E. Feist (celebrating his film noir output) and Georges Franju (his documentaries).

Also, we recently added an extra day to the festival – the final day – during which only one cinema operates, showing a festival ‘best of’. This offers the perfect way to come back down to earth after eight days of celluloid, espresso, delicious cuisine and conversation into the wee hours of the morning.