In 2007 the World Cinema
Foundation was launched in Cannes. Three unforgettable films were presented
and the event attracted considerable media coverage world-wide.The event
in Cannes was extremely significant and reverberated internationally.
>>TRANSES (1981, directed by Ahmed El Maanouni)
Morocco
Ahmed El Maanouni’s
1981 documentary records concerts, interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses
of the pioneering group, Nass El Ghiwan, who were credited as an inspiration
for his Last Temptation of Christ and have been famously described
by Martin Scorsese as ‘the Rolling Stones of North Africa’. Nass
El Ghiwan emerged from the impoverished city limits of Casablanca, combining
elements of traditional Moroccan music - Sufi chants, Berber rhythms and
the mystical dances of the Gnawa - to create a sound all of their own, introducing
a new generation of North Africans to their roots, and the rest of the world,
to a musical revolution. The film has been restored by the Cineteca
di Bologna.
“It was in 1981 while I was editing a film, The King of Comedy. We worked at night so no one would call us on the telephone and I would have television on, and one channel in New York at the time, around 2 or 3 in the morning, was showing a film called Trances. It repeated all night and it repeated many nights. And it had commercials in it, but it didn’t matter. So I became passionate about this music that I heard and I saw also the way
the film was made, the concert that was photographed and the effect of the music on the audience at the concert. I tracked down the music and eventually it became my inspiration for many of the designs and construction of my film The Last Temptation of Christ. The music was also the basis for Peter Gabriel’s music in the film. I would play the music for most of the musicians I knew, Robbie Robertson of The Band…What you see here is a mix of the poetry, the music and the theatre that goes way back to the roots of the Moroccan culture. And I think the group was singing damnation: their people, their beliefs, their sufferings and their prayers all came through their singing. And I think the film is beautifully made by Ahmed El Maanouni; it’s been an obsession of mine since 1981 and that is why we are inaugurating the Foundation with Trances.”
Martin Scorsese
>> LIMITE (1931, directed by Mário Peixoto)
Brazil
Mário Peixoto’s visually entrancing Brazilian classic was the director’s only film. A stunning silent poem inspired by a photograph by André Kertesz, Limite was described by Peixoto as ‘a tuning fork’ to capture the pitch of a moment in time, recounting a simple story of three people adrift on a boating trip.
The first screening
took place on May 17th 1931 in the Cinema Capitólio in Rio
de Janeiro, a session organized by the Chaplin Club, which announced Limite as
the first Brazilian film of pure cinema. It received favorable reviews from
the critics who saw the film as an original Brazilian avant-garde production,
but never made it into commercial circuits and over the years was screened
only sporadically, as in 1942 when a special session was arranged for Orson
Welles who was in South America for the shooting of his unfinished It’ s
all true and for Maria Falconetti, lead actress of Dreyer’s The
Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Due to various facts, Limite,
sometimes referred to as the "unknown masterpiece" - an expression
derived from Georges Sadoul who in 1960 had made an unsuccessful trip to
Rio de Janeiro just to see the film - along with Mário Peixoto, became
quite legendary subjects. The celebrated Brazilian
director Walter Salles rediscovered the film a decade ago and
was inspired by it to found the Mário Peixoto Archive.
Restoration in progress in cooperation with the Cinemateca
Brasileira.
>>
PADUREA SPANZURATILOR (1964, directed by Liviu Ciulei)
Romania
Romanian actor and director
Liviu Ciulei’s Padurea Spanzuratilor (The Forest of the
Hanged) adapted from a novel by Liviu Rebreanu, appeared in competition
at Cannes in 1965 where it received the Best Director award. The thrilling
historical masterpiece takes place during the First World War, presenting
a little-seen portrait of Romanian society at the turn of the century as
it tells the story of a Romanian officer in the Austro-Hungarian army who
refuses to fight against his own.
Following the presentation
in Cannes of Liviu Ciulei’s Padurea spânzuratilor (Forest
of the Hanged), in direct co-operation with the Romanian Film Archive, the
long version of the film was rediscovered and is currently undergoing restoration.
The third film that we screened in Cannes, Mario Peixoto’s Limite,
has been now registered by the Brazilian Committee of UNESCO’s
Memory of the World Program as a part of our documentary
heritage. This program was established to “guard against collective
amnesia, calling upon the preservation of the valuable archive holdings” which
is perfectly in line with the idea behind our mission.
Restoration in progress in cooperation with Centrul
National al Cinematografiei under the auspices of Liviu
and Thomas Ciulei.