The World Cinema Project (WCP), formerly World Cinema Foundation, is a non-profit organization devoted to the preservation and restoration of neglected world cinema, founded by Martin Scorsese.
Founded in 2007 as the World Cinema Foundation by American filmmaker Martin Scorsese, [1] it was inspired by the work of The Film Foundation in the United States, a similar venture which Scorsese founded with George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood in 1990.
Trances , a music documentary about Nass El Ghiwane an influential Moroccan music group, was picked by Martin Scorsese as the inaugural release for the foundation; it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007 and at Djemaa el-Fna square in Morocco. [2]
The World Cinema Foundation is backed by an advisory board "Filmmaker Council" which includes Martin Scorsese, Fatih Akin, Souleymane Cissé, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen Frears, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Abbas Kiarostami, Deepa Mehta, Ermanno Olmi, Raoul Peck, Cristi Puiu, Walter Salles, Abderrahmane Sissako, Elia Suleiman, Bertrand Tavernier, Wim Wenders, and Tian Zhuangzhuang. [3]
After leaving his position at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Kent Jones became the foundation's executive director.[ when? ][ citation needed ]
English title | Year | Director | Country of origin |
---|---|---|---|
The Winds of the Aures | 1967 | Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina | Algeria |
Faces of Women | 1985 | Desiré Ecaré [ citation needed ] | Côte d'Ivoire |
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American filmmaker. He emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. Scorsese has received many accolades, including an Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Directors Guild of America Awards. He has been honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1997, the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute in 1998, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2007, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010, and the BAFTA Fellowship in 2012. Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.
Knife in the Water is a 1962 Polish psychological thriller film co-written and directed by Roman Polanski in his feature debut, and starring Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, and Zygmunt Malanowicz. Its plot follows a husband and wife who are accompanied on a boating trip by a young male hitchhiker, who spurs a number of escalating confrontations between the couple.
Titash Ekti Nadir Naam, or A River Called Titas, is a 1973 film that was a joint production between India and Bangladesh directed by Ritwik Ghatak. The movie was based on a novel by the same name, written by Adwaita Mallabarman. The movie explores the life of the fishermen on the bank of the Titas River in Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh.
Indiewood films are made outside of the Hollywood studio system or traditional arthouse/independent filmmaking system yet managed to be produced, financed and distributed by the two with varying degrees of success and/or failure.
Limite is a film directed, written and produced by Mário Peixoto, who was inspired by a photograph by André Kertész. Limite was filmed in 1930 and first screened in 1931. It was restored from 1966 to 1978 from a single damaged nitrate print, and one scene remains missing.
Cinephilia is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in films, film theory, and film criticism. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema and philia, one of the four ancient Greek words for love. A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile, cinemaphile, filmophile, or, informally, a film buff. To a cinephile, a film is often not just a source of entertainment as they see films from a more critical point of view.
The Winds of the Aures is a 1967 Algerian war film directed by Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina. It was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best First Work. It was also entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival.
The Film Foundation is a US-based non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation and the exhibition of restored and classic cinema. It was founded by director Martin Scorsese and several other leading filmmakers in 1990. The foundation raises funds and awareness for film preservation projects and creates educational programs about film. The foundation and its partners have restored more than 900 films.
Soleil Ô is a 1970 French-Mauritanian drama film written and directed by Med Hondo.
David Sterritt is a film critic, author and scholar. He is most notable for his work on Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, and his many years as the Film Critic for The Christian Science Monitor, where, from 1968 until his retirement in 2005, he championed avant garde cinema, theater and music. He has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and is the Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics.
Kalpana (transl. Imagination) is a 1948 Indian Hindi-language dance film written and directed by dancer Uday Shankar. It is his only film. The story revolves around a young dancer's dream of setting up a dance academy, a reflection of Shankar's own academy, which he founded at Almora. It starred Uday Shankar and his wife Amala Shankar as leads.
Ahmed El Maanouni is a Moroccan screenwriter, film director, cinematographer, actor and producer. His films include Alyam Alyam (1978), the first Moroccan film to be selected in Cannes Film Festival and winner of the Grand Prize at the Mannheim Film Festival. He caught international attention when his film Trances was honored and presented by Martin Scorsese at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival to inaugurate the World Cinema Foundation. His film Les Coeurs brûlés (2007) won the Grand Prize at the National Film Festival and was awarded many international prizes. His documentary films consistently interrogate colonial history and its impact on Moroccan memory. He directs study groups and educational programs in Morocco and throughout the world. In 2007, he was honored with the title of Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.
FilmStruck was a film streaming service from Turner Classic Movies which catered to cinephiles and focused on rare, classic, foreign, arthouse, and independent cinema. It launched in November 2016 and succeeded Hulu as the exclusive online streaming home of The Criterion Collection. It was discontinued on November 29, 2018.
Downpour is a 1972 Iranian black and white movie directed by Bahram Bayzai.
Timité Bassori is an Ivorian filmmaker, actor, and writer. His lone feature-length film, The Woman with the Knife (1969), is considered a classic of African cinema, and is slated to be restored as part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative to preserve 50 African films through the collaboration of the groups FEPACI, UNESCO, Cineteca di Bologna, and Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation. The film is earmarked to be shown along with 4 other restored films at the 2019 film festival FESPACO.
Trances is a 1981 documentary film about the influential Moroccan avant-pop band Nass El Ghiwane. It was shot, written, and directed by Ahmed El Maânouni.
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is a 2019 American pseudo-documentary film, composed of both fictional and non-fictional material, covering Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour. Directed by Martin Scorsese, it is the director's second film on Bob Dylan, following 2005's No Direction Home. The bulk of Rolling Thunder Revue is compiled of outtakes from Dylan's 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, which was filmed in conjunction with the tour.
Film Heritage Foundation is a non-profit organization, based in Mumbai, India, dedicated to film preservation, restoration and archiving of India’s film heritage.
Two Girls on the Street is a 1939 Hungarian comedy drama film directed by André de Toth, one of his first features, based on a play by Tamás Emöd and Rezsö Török.
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project.