Restoration Summit

The second annual HFPA Restoration Summit culminated with the screening of the newly restored print of Federico Fellini’s Roma. The pristine print has been brought back to life by the world-renowned labs at Cineteca di Bologna which, as Gianluca Farinelli, the Cineteca’s founding director explained in his introduction, had an object to restore the original brilliance of the film’s color as filmed by Fellini’s long-time DP Giuseppe Rotunno, while also preserving the “sense of fragility” inherent to 35 mm film.

In our second annual Restoration Summit, presented at the American Cinematheque, the HFPA is proud to present two days of films, conversations and lectures surveying the latest developments in film preservation and restoration. The HFPA, whose recent contributions include the restoration of the 1926 silent film THE BLACK PIRATE (spearheaded by director Alexander Payne and currently in progress), is committed to preserving film heritage and supporting restorations of films worldwide.

The first Film Restoration Summit convened by the HFPA was held on March 9  at the historic Theater at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The building erected by United Artists founders Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks and specifically its flagship theater, with its ornate a baroque and Hollywood Spanish revival decorations, could not have been more appropriate for a discussion about the crisis facing film heritage around the world.