SAG HARBOR CINEMA ANNOUNCES THIRD ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
“Martin Scorsese presents The Sag Harbor Cinema Festival of Preservation” to take place November 17 – 20
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Sag Harbor Cinema’s Festival of Preservation –the East End’s only Festival dedicated to preserving film and its culture– returns for a third year, November 17th through the 20th. Pre-Code comedy, classic western, Salvador Dalí’s collaborations with Hitchcock and Walt Disney, pioneering women filmmakers of the silent era, Warner Bros’ roaring Thirties, Mexican musical melodrama, Senegalese visionary Djibril Diop Mambéty and a live presentation of William Castle’s bloodcurdling The Tingler are some of the highlights of this year’s program, together with a special exhibit of rare posters on the Cinema’s third floor, a wide variety of guests and the Preservation Panel & Brunch, featuring archivists from the major studios as well as TCM, and a presentation by the Women Film Preservation Fund.
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“Creating a strong, original repertory program for the East End has always been an important component of the Cinema’s mission. It’s a joy to see how our audience has embraced series like the one devoted to Warner Bros’ centennial; the tributes to Douglas Sirk; as well as rediscoveries like Winter Kills and Farewell My Concubine. The Festival of Preservation, of course, in its free form concept, is at the very heart of this effort. I am happy to say the slate this year is rich and adventurous as ever. And we have a great roster of guests,” says SHC’s Founding Artistic Director, Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.
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A new 4K restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), which includes a famous nightmare sequence designed by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, will be paired with Dalí’s collaboration with Walt Disney, the short Destino, storyboarded by the Spanish artist and Disney’s John Hench between 1945 and 1946, but only completed in 2003 through efforts by Walt Disney’s nephew Roy and French animator Dominique Monféry.
SHC will honor the great, late William Friedkin with a special screening of Sorcerer (1977). Friedkin’s favorite film of his, loosely based on Henry-Georges Clouzot’s Les Salaires de la Peur and starring Roy Scheider, will be introduced by writer/director Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time). Recently restored by Warner Bros. under the supervision of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Howard Hawks’s masterpiece Rio Bravo (1959), with John Wayne, Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson, will be introduced by the Warner Bros.’ Library Historian George Feltenstein via Zoom from Los Angeles. A Q&A with film and art collector, Bob Rubin –a western specialist– will follow the screening.
Sag Harbor Cinema’s ongoing tribute to Warner Bros. centennial will dive into the studio’s glorious Thirties era for the festival with 35mm screenings of Mervyn LeRoy’s trailblazing gangster film Little Caesar (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). Linda LeRoy Janklow, daughter of Mervyn LeRoy and Doris Warner, will join us in a Q&A to discuss Warner Bros. pioneering of the gangster genre, and thought provoking social dramas, against the backdrop of the Great Depression.
The Women’s Film Preservation Fund will be one of the new guests of this year’s Preservation Panel and is behind the restoration of several of the silent shorts in a program devoted to pioneering women behind the camera, which includes seminal works by Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, Grace Cunard and Angela Murray Gibson.
Film Forum’s Director of Repertory Programming and Founder of Rialto Pictures, Bruce Goldstein, whose previous programs at the festival include The Nicholas Brothers Presentation and Vaudeville 101: A Night at the Palace, will return to Sag Harbor with his worldwide famous live show of William Castle’s The Tingler with Vincent Price.
Following the success of Enamorada in 2021 and of the Steinbeck adaptation The Pearl last year, the festival will present –in partnership with Cinema Tropical– another collaboration between the Mexican director Emilio “El Indio” Fernández and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, the noir musical melodrama Victims of Sin (1951), featuring an incendiary performance by Cuban-born actress and dancer Ninón Sevilla.
Other programs include a screening of Wesley Ruggles’s pre-code sensation I’m No Angel (1933) with Cary Grant and Mae West, who is also credited with the story and the script; a MoMA/The Film Foundation restoration of Henry King’s heartbreaking melodrama Stella Dallas (1925) with a new score commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art; and a World Cinema Project restoration of Touki Bouki (1973) by the innovative Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, a picaresque adventure of two lovers that combines a naturalistic approach with a strain of surrealism. Writer/director Jonas Carpignano (Mediterranea, A Chiara, A Ciambra) will join via zoom from Italy to introduce the film.
The Kids and Families Matinees for the weekend will be a selection of classic Disney shorts, mostly centered on the 1930’s Silly Symphonies, but also including a brand new 4K restoration of the autumnal favorite, The Skeleton Dance (1929) and Mickey and Minnie Mouse’s first appearance, in Steamboat Willie (1928), directed by Walt Disney and animated by the legendary UB Iwerks.
The annual Sag Harbor Cinema Preservation Panel followed by a brunch open to all attendees will include presentations by Grover Crisp, Executive Vice President in charge of the Columbia and TriStar libraries at Sony Pictures; Kevin Schaeffer, director of restoration and Library management at the Walt Disney Company; TCM’s Director of Original Productions, Scott McGee; Terry Lawler former Executive Director of New York Women in Film & Television and member of The Women’s Film Preservation Fund; and Simon Lund, Director of Technical Operations at Cineric.
Archivist, filmmaker and CEO of the Historic Film Archives, Joe Lauro, will share a portion of his rare posters collection focusing on the first 40 years of Cinema. In Lauro’s own words, ”not always the well known films, but the striking graphics and genres I enjoy.” The exhibit, on the Cinema’s third floor, will stay open through the end of the year.
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Additional guests and details will be announced in the coming weeks.
Tickets and passes will be available on the cinema’s website, sagharborcinema.org. Passes and Member pre-sale tickets go on sale Friday, October 27th. Tickets will be available to the general public starting November 3rd.
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The annual Sag Harbor Cinema Festival of Preservation is made possible with the generous support of our presenting sponsor, Warner Bros-Discovery, and with additional support from the Suffolk County Film Commission.
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THIRD ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
Films & Programs
See the full list of programs below:
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SILENT ERA WOMEN’S SHORTS
“Mixed Pets” (Dir. Alice Guy-Blaché, 1911)
“Matrimony’s Speed Limit” (Dir. Alice Guy-Blaché, 1913)
“A Fool and His Money” (Dir. Alice Guy-Blaché, 1912)
“The Adams’s Boys” (Dir. Angela Murray Gibson, 1923)
“That Ice Ticket” (Dir. Angela Murray Gibson, 1923)
“Suspense” (Dir. Lois Weber, 1913)
“The Hazards of Helen” (Dir. Helen Holmes, 1915)
“The Purple Mask” (Dir. Grace Cunard, 1917)
A collection of silent shorts from a forgotten era in which women were major players in the film industry in charge of constructing their own narratives, this program will be introduced by Barbara Moss, a founder of the Women’s Film Preservation Fund, which has supported some of the restorations. The selection, curated by SHC Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, features documentaries, comedies, and action packed films, in which the leading ladies are also behind the camera and occasionally perform their own stunts.
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SORCERER
Dir. William Friedkin
USA, 1977; 121 mins, in English
Rated PG
With a title derived from a Miles Davis album and a story loosely based on George Clouzot’s 1953 action-adventure The Wages of Fear, William Friedkin’s film about an existential struggle with fate took him decades to get made. Sorcerer was Friedkin’s favorite of his own movies, but was largely overlooked during its initial release. Led by Jackie Scanlon (Roy Scheider), four men on the run from the law set off on a hazardous journey, during which they must contend with dangerously rocky roads, unstable bridges, and attacks from local guerillas. They fight for their lives as they struggle to complete their dangerous quest to transport a shipment of unstable nitroglycerin to an oil well 200 miles away in return for $10,000 and legal citizenship.
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SPELLBOUND
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
USA, 1945; 111 mins, in English
Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a psychiatrist whose understanding of human nature is called into question when the mysterious Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck) becomes the new chief of staff at her institution. The bookish and detached Constance plummets into a whirlwind of tangled identities and feverish psychoanalysis, where the greatest risk is to fall in love. A transcendent love story replete with taut excitement and startling imagery, Spellbound is classic Hitchcock, featuring stunning performances, an Academy Award®-winning score by Miklos Rozsa, and a captivating dream sequence by Surrealist icon Salvador Dalí.
Restored by Walt Disney Studios in association with The Film Foundation, with the participation of the Academy Film Archive. Special thanks to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
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VICTIMS OF SIN
Dir. Emilio Fernández
Mexico, 1951; 84 mins, in Spanish with English subtitles
Rarely screened in the United States and long due for rediscovery, Victims of Sin is famed Mexican director Emilio Fernández’s unique blend of film noir, melodrama, and musical. Acting-dancing sensation Ninón Sevilla plays Violeta, a cabaret performer who adopts the abandoned child of Rita (Rita Montaner) and Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta), her murderous pimp. Motherhood forces Violeta to give up her career, but the kindhearted club owner Santiago (Tito Junco) saves her from a life of poverty and prostitution—until Rodolfo, freed from prison, seeks to reclaim his son. Best known for the award-winning María Calendaria (1944) and The Pearl (1947), Fernández infuses Victims with impassioned songs and performances by Sevilla, an icon of Mexican cinema and a purveyor of African, Caribbean, and Cuban dance styles.
Victims of Sin was fully restored in 4K from the original 35mm nitrate camera negative, which had been damaged from mishandling over the decades, by Peter Conheim (Cinema Preservation Alliance/USA) and Viviana Garcia-Besné (Permanencia Voluntaria/Mexico). Permanencia Voluntaria and Cinema Preservation Alliance co-produced the preservation effort with further assistance from IMCINE and the Academy Film Archive, bringing Victims of Sin back to the screen with a clarity and depth not seen since its original release.
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RIO BRAVO
Dir. Howard Hawks
USA, 1959; 141 mins, in English and Spanish
This classic western directed by Howard Hawks features an all-star cast, led by John Wayne. There’s a showdown at Rio Bravo when Sheriff John T. Chance (Wayne) throws the brother of evil cattle baron, Nathan Burdette, in jail for murder (the Burdette brothers played by John Russell and Claude Akins). When Burdette’s men lay siege to his jailhouse, Chance holds on until the arrival of a U.S. Marshal with the help of his drunken deputy, Dude (Dean Martin), cranky old man Stumpy (Walter Brennan), a young gunfighter (Ricky Nelson) and the beautiful widow Feathers, played by Angie Dickinson in her first major film role.
Restored by Warner Bros. in collaboration with The Film Foundation.
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I’M NO ANGEL
Dir. Wesley Ruggles
USA, 1933; 87 mins, in English
The last of her Pre-Code films, Mae West writes and stars as a circus performer turned socialite named Tira who seduces wealthy New York men. A cousin of one of her married suitors, played by Cary Grant, turns up to convince her to end the affair. When the two end up falling for each other, her career with the circus is threatened and her boss intervenes with a plot to keep her shackled to the stage forever.
Restored in 4K by NBCUniversal Content Management at NBCUniversal StudioPost in collaboration with The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg for their consultation and guidance on the restoration of this film.
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STELLA DALLAS
Dir. Henry King
USA, 1925; 110 mins
Stella Dallas, the working-class mother who makes the ultimate sacrifice for her socially ambitious daughter, became one of the most resonant figures in American culture from the moment Olive Higgins Prouty’s novel appeared in 1923. A stage adaptation soon followed, as did this film version in 1925 (the first of three). Produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by Henry King, the film is a powerful indictment of the rigid class barriers then emerging in the prosperous, postwar America of the 1920s, but the emotional center of the film is Stella (a brilliant portrayal by Belle Bennett, one of 73 actresses tested for the role), who marries “above her station” (to a temporarily embarrassed banker’s son) but is unable to adapt her dress and behavior to the bourgeois standards of her new husband. When her daughter becomes engaged to a fashionable country-clubber, Stella’s dilemma becomes painfully clear: Only by leaving her life can she ensure her daughter’s happiness.
Restored by The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
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TOUKI BOUKI
Dir. Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal, 1973; 89 mins, in Wolof, Arabic, and French with English subtitles
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamor and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical. Characterized by dazzling imagery and music, the alternately manic and meditative Touki Bouki is widely considered one of the most important African films ever made.
Restored in 2008 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the family of Djibril Diop Mambéty. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.
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WALT DISNEY CLASSIC SHORTS
A collection of early Disney shorts centered around the 1930s Silly Symphonies. Includes “Babes in the Woods” (1932), “The Band Concert” (1935), “Elmer Elephant” (1936), “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (1934), “The Old Mill” (1937), “Wise Little Hen” (1934), “The Ugly Duckling” (1939), “Thru the Mirror” (1936), “Three Blind Mouseketeers” (1936), “Steamboat Willie” (1928), “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), and “Ferdinand the Bull” (1938).
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THE TINGLER
Dir. William Castle
USA, 1959; 82 mins, in English
Vincent Price stars as Dr. Warren Chapin, a pathologist whose experiments prove the human response to fear is caused by a parasitic creature, a “tingler,” attached to the spine. When the doctor’s friend, a silent movie theater owner, and his wife become entangled with Chapin’s experiment, the tingler threatens to break free to menace the population at large.
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I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG
Dir. Mervyn LeRoy
USA, 1932; 92 mins, in English
Returning from World War I, Sergeant James Allen decides to go into construction work to build something positive after the destruction of the war. There are not enough jobs, however, and soon he unsuccessfully tries to pawn his war medals. By accident, Jim gets involved in a robbery in which the actual thief is killed, and he gets sentenced to ten years in a Southern chain gang. Brutal conditions drive him to attempt an escape, but the outside world further complicates his life.
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LITTLE CAESAR
Dir. Mervyn LeRoy
USA, 1931; 79 mins, in English
In a critically acclaimed performance, Edward G. Robinson plays Rico Bandello, a petty crook who ultimately schemes his way to the top of a Chicago mob. His newfound status, however, puts him at odds with his boyhood friend Joe (played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), and the resulting conflict leads to his downfall. With a face curled into a perennial scowl and his “School of Hard Knocks” charisma, Robinson’s Rico (known to intimates as Little Caesar) epitomized the contemporary urban gangster stereotype.
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PRESERVATION PANEL
Presentations by Grover Crisp, Executive Vice President in charge of the Columbia and TriStar libraries at Sony Pictures; Kevin Schaeffer, director of restoration and Library management at the Walt Disney Company; TCM’s Director of Original Productions, Scott McGee; Terry Lawler, former Executive Director of New York Women in Film & Television and member of The Women’s Film Preservation Fund; and Simon Lund, Director of Technical Operations at Cineric. The Panel will be followed by a brunch open to all attendees.
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Sag Harbor Cinema
As a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), community-based organization, Sag Harbor Cinema is dedicated to presenting the past, present and future of the Movies and to preserving and educating about films, filmmaking, and the film-going experience in its three state-of-the-art theaters. The Cinema engages its audiences and the community year-round through dialogue, discovery, and appreciation of the moving image – from blockbusters to student shorts and everything in between. Revitalized and reimagined through unprecedented community efforts to rebuild the iconic Main Street structure after a fire nearly destroyed it in 2016, SHC continues a long historic tradition of entertainment in the heart of Sag Harbor Village. SHC Members enjoy discounts on tickets and merchandise and can purchase food and drink at our concession stand, cafe, as well as our member-only rooftop lounge, The Green Room.
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AAQ / Resource: Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects
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