Wim Wenders will be a special guest of Italy’s Cinema Ritrovato Festival dedicated to cinematic treasures of the past where a freshly restored copy of his “A Trick of the Light” (“Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky”), which pays tribute to forgotten pioneers of the moving image, will have its world premiere.
Shot by Wenders with a group of students from the Munich Film Academy in 1995 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, the film is about the origins of cinema and its German inventors: the Skladanowsky brothers who On Nov. 1, 1895, presented a show of eight film loops at Berlin’s Wintergarten, six weeks before the more famous Lumiere freres’ exhibition in Paris.
“A Trick of the Light” uses stylistic devices from silent cinema, including a hand-cranked camera from the 1920s that produces 16 frames per second. The film’s score by French composer Laurent Petitgand also pays homage to the silent film era.
The world premiere of the restored version of “A Trick of the Light” on June 22 will be the occasion for a special viewing and listening experience: Petitgand, who wrote the music for ten Wenders’ films, including “Tokyo-Ga”; “Faraway, So Close!” and “The Salt of the Earth” will personally perform and accompany the screening live with electric piano, saxophone, harmonica, and guitar at Bologna’s Cinema Modernissimo.
On Saturday evening, Wenders and Alexander Payne will introduce John Ford’s 1956 epic Western “The Searchers” in a new 70mm restoration on Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore.
During the following days Wenders will be in Bologna to hold a masterclass and present several of his other films, including “Paris, Texas” and “Buena Vista Social Club” as well as works by filmmakers who have exerted a deep influence on his work such as Anthony Mann’s Western “Devil’s Doorway” and Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 silent film “I Was Born, But…”
The 38th edition of Cinema Ritrovato will run June 22-30.
Source Agencies
