Film series: Restorations & Rediscoveries
This spring, Cornell Cinema continues its long tradition of showcasing recent film restoration projects and rediscovered masterpieces.
For much of cinema history, movies were made on 16mm and 35mm film stocks, which are susceptible to damage from heat, moisture, light, general use, and neglect and exist in a finite number of copies. This material reality leaves many films at risk of being lost and makes film restoration an important part of collections care and cultural preservation.
Film archives and preservation institutions around the world identify and preserve at-risk films, working with filmmakers, surviving film materials, and the latest digital technologies to restore the vibrancy, clarity, and depth of an original film print.
Our ongoing Cornell Cinema series serves as a reminder of the complex, technological history of cinema and the degree to which preservation can be an important, political act.
Our spring series features 4K restorations of Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, one of the most important films in Ukrainian film history; Wong Kar-Wai’s volatile queer relationship drama Happy Together; Carol Reed’s enigmatic postwar noir The Third Man; and The Annihilation of Fish, a long-lost 1999 feature, which remained unreleased until 2024, from celebrated independent filmmaker Charles Burnett, among other films!
