00:00Welcome back to the 44th edition of Les Giornati da Cinemamuto, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival.
00:24Today we're showing three films, two of which form part of a section that's very close to my heart, which we've called The World That Was, The World To Come.
00:34And this sprang out of a number of travelogues that were sent to me by various archives, particularly the National Library of Oslo by Tina Ankerman.
00:46For many of you who maybe have followed my programming over the years, you know that I like very much to build connections between the past and the present.
00:54I think it's important to understand where we are now by looking at the past.
00:59And it dawned on me, given the number of locations that we were seeing and what was happening in them, that I could put together a program called The World That Was, The World To Come.
01:10The first film that we're going to be seeing is Aleppo.
01:13It was a discovery made at the I-Film Museum in Amsterdam from 1916.
01:18It's an extraordinary look at a city which has changed completely.
01:23At one time, one of the jewels of the Middle East, one of the jewels of Syria, it had been for some time a war zone quite recently.
01:30So to see Aleppo in its glory, in its Ottoman days glory, shall we say, that is really an extraordinary opportunity.
01:39And not just for us, those of us who don't know Aleppo, but I would say particularly for people from Syria, to be able to give this, to remind them of their culture and their heritage,
01:49notwithstanding the fact that this was shot by a Western cameraman, is of utmost importance because in many cases, these are the only images, the only moving images that survive of these places.
03:02We still don't know who the director is, we know very little about this, but it is stunning.
03:06It begins coming into the city from the water.
03:10You see the glories, not just of the landscape of Rio de Janeiro, but also its downtown area, the municipal theater,
03:17the section of the city known as Cinelandia, where all of the great movie palaces still are actually.
03:23And then it moves into sporting events.
03:26And what's remarkable for me is seeing at the very end this fantastic polo match, the elite of Rio de Janeiro is there.
03:33And this is so important, I find, and so striking to see these members of the elite who are ethnically diverse.
03:40In almost every other place that we can think of at this time, it would have been basically just white people.
03:45Here it's marvelous to see that there is a mix of people.
03:48Clearly it's still the elite, you can still talk about class, but there's something else that's going on that one finds rarely anywhere else.
03:56Do check out the catalogue note, I'm particularly proud because the marvelous Brazilian director Cleber Mondansofio has written the catalogue note for us.
04:04And of course he won Best Director at Cannes this year.
04:07The third film that we're screening is Sketches of a Soviet City, 1929, directed by Dimitro Dalski.
04:14Now the previous two films we will be seeing form part of the world that was the world to come section, as I explained.
04:21As you're probably already familiar, we also have a program of Ukrainian children's films.
04:26But Sketches of a Soviet City, which is a Ukrainian film, I want to underline, is part of our restorations and rediscoveries section.
04:33It's the perfect place for it because this is a true discovery.
04:37City symphonies in general are quite well known. We've done quite a number of programs of city symphonies over the years at the Giornate.
04:44And this is one that's escaped most people's attention.
04:48The print comes from the Dovzenko Center in Kiev, we're very grateful to them, and also to Ivan Kozlenko,
04:53who as always has written an excellent catalogue note for the film.
04:57It captures all of the excitement, the avant-garde tendencies, cutting-edge montage,
05:04all of that that we expect from Soviet cinema of this period and from the city symphony.
05:10You can very much see the influences of Mikhail Kaufman and Jiga Vertov.
05:16The film was originally five reels, so longer than the film that we're going to be seeing today,
05:23which runs just under half an hour.
05:25And it's all shot in Kharkiv, one of the major cities in Ukraine.
05:31And once again, in a way, it ties into our earlier film of Aleppo.
05:35What you're seeing in this film has changed significantly thanks to the war.
05:39So much of Kharkiv has been bombed in a way that Aleppo has been bombed.
05:44So again, for me it's very important that we be talking about this, that we be showing what was.
05:49Not to indulge in any kind of false nostalgia, it's something that I'm very, very much against.
05:55There were bad times always, but it's important for us to underline what's been happening.
06:01And one of the best ways to do that is to show what was.
06:05How far have we come? Have we come far?
06:08These are things that I hope that we can all be talking about,
06:11and that these films will be an impetus to further that kind of conversation.
06:17On top of it all, we have the wonderful accompaniment of Mauro Columbus.
06:22I know that this is something that's going to inspire you all.
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