THE FORBIDDEN ROOM (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, CDN 2014, 2., 3. & 9.6.) For his interactive "Seances" project, Maddin chose a spectacular and convincing method of approaching the huge spectrum of lost works from the early era of cinema: Inspired by the spirit of the lost films, he created his own short versions using different titles. Immediately afterwards, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM developed from this project and a wild and fantastic round dance of plots emerged, inspired by the real or imagined memories of the disappeared films. A tinted, anarchic homage to early cinema that retains all the signs of the image replacement.
METROPOLIS (Fritz Lang, G 1927, with music by Gottfried Huppertz, 3. & 5.6.) For decades, Lang's early science-fiction work existed only as a torso: The film was brutally trimmed after it premiered and the scenes that had been cut out disappeared. Over 80 years later, a version of METROPOLIS turned up in Buenos Aires, in the archive of the Argentinian film museum. It is very similar to the original and enables a new examination of this classic about the futuristic city of Metropolis, in which the enslaved working masses of the dark subterranean city rebel against society above ground which revels in luxury.
GHASHIRAM KOTWAL (K. Hariharan, Mani Kaul, India 1977, 4. & 8.6.) Ever since the first year of its existence, the Forum has created prints of Forum films with German subtitles. Over time, it seems that some of the films have only survived with these German subtitles - in the Arsenal archive, including GHASHIRAM KOTWAL. A digitalized and restored version was recently handed over to the Indian film archive in Pune. The film adaptation of a theater play describes the rule of the Peshwa, at a time when British colonial rule was becoming consolidated.
LES PLAGES D'AGNÈS (The Beaches of Agnès, Agnès Varda, F 2008, 6. & 11.6.) Varda makes an associative trip back through her life - literally in reverse - whose leitmotifs are the beaches and seas that have marked her, as well as excerpts from her films, including short passages from "Nausicaa". Made in 1970, this "fiction documentaire" was never shown because of the criticism of Greece's military regime and it is now considered lost. In one short scene, a very young Gérard Depardieu - a bearded hippy in a hat - can be detected in lively discussion with a student.
THE PLEASURE GARDEN (Alfred Hitchcock, GB 1925, 20. & 27.6., on piano: Eunice Martins) "Rescue the Hitchcock 9" is a BFI donation campaign to restore nine of Hitchcock’s silent films. Five different versions of Hitchcock's debut film have been worked upon and some 20 minutes of new material unearthed. "The Pleasure Garden" is a vaudeville theater in London where legs are kicked, glances thrown, connections made. It’s also the place of melodrama and murder.
JAHRGANG 45 (Jürgen Böttcher, GDR 1966/90, 10. & 18.6.) Böttcher's only fiction movie is one of the 12 DEFA films made in 1965-66 that were banned after the 11th Plenary of the Central Committee of the SED. The ministry of culture denounced the film for its "heroification of those on the margins!" and it promptly landed in the "poison cabinet", where it remained for 25 years. Those "on the margins" are the car mechanic Al and the nurse Li who live in a tiny apartment in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district and whose relationship after two years is in crisis. The two are helpless and restless, driven by an undefined longing for another life that cannot be fulfilled in the society that surrounds them.
KURUTTA IPPEIJI (A Page of Madness, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Japan 1926, 12. & 21.6.) Of the thousand films that were shot in Japan during the 1910s and 20s, only a shockingly small percentage remains. Earthquakes and fires destroyed whole archive collections, including Kinugasa's masterpiece of early experimental cinema. At least, that's what was believed until the director himself found material from his film in the early 1970s, in a seemingly obvious place - his own archive! Featuring radical imagery and no inter-titles, it tells the story of a woman who kills her child in a moment of madness and is then committed to a psychiatric institution. She is followed by her husband who wants to liberate her.
OKTYABR (October: Ten Days that Shook the World, Sergei Eisenstein, USSR 1927, 13. & 19.6.) Eisenstein's bold and experimental depiction of the October Revolution of 1917 was filmed on site with people who had taken part in the historical events. It was soon leveled with charges of formalism and disappeared from the cinemas. Over the following decades, an export version that Eisenstein himself had re-edited and which was subjected to various changes in different countries was in circulation. This 2012 restoration combines the prints from Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam and Moscow. The reconstructed music by Edmud Meisel is also a re-discovery - at the time its strong rhythms and noisy tonalities were also controversial.
TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, USA 1958, 7. & 11.6.) The memo that Orson Welles sent to Universal Pictures after he saw the re-edited version of his rough cut was 58 pages long and included multiple recommendations for editing changes. Universal saw no reason to take the his objections and criticism into account and released the film as it was. This is the version of the legendary film noir that was shown until the 1990s, when the film editor Walter Murch started reconstructing it using the memo as his basis. The complicated thriller focuses on a murder case in a small town on the Mexican border, which leads to a fatal duel between a young Mexican drug enforcement agent and an old American police captain.
HAMLET (Svend Gade, Heinz Schall, G 1921, 25. & 30.6., on piano: Eunice Martins) The actress, auteur and producer Asta Nielsen is considered to be the first film star in history and an artist of international significance who developed a completely new aesthetics of acting that was based on great physical presence. Since there has been more interest in Asta Nielson in recent years, new versions or fragments of lost films featuring her have been found and restored. This is the case for HAMLET,for which an original stencil-colored nitrate print turned up in 2005. This new version shows an outstanding Asta Nielson in the role of the Danish prince.
ISTORIJA ASI KLJATSCHINOI, KOTORAJA LJUBILA, DA NE WYSCHLA SAMUSH(The Story of Asya Klyachina, Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, USSR 1967, 26. & 29.6.) Rural Russia in the 1960s: The ebullient Asya is in the midst of a love triangle and pregnant. She opts for herself. This film pays homage to simple, everyday life and its details, as well as to individuality which defies the constraints of the collective. The portrayal of unembellished and unheroic rural life and a new kind of woman was too much for the state censors, who banished the film to the Soviet archives shortly after it premiered. (mg)
