New York City”™s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has announced the line-up for its 19th Annual International Festival of Film Preservation, which presents a slate of newly preserved and restored films spanning multiple genres, era and countries.
This year”™s festival, which runs from Jan. 12 to Feb. 2, includes the restoration premiere of two major silent films from MoMA”™s archive: Paul Leni”™s horror comedy “The Cat and the Canary” (1927) and Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy “The Marriage Circle” (1924). Another silent offering is Tod Browning”™s devastating “The Unknown,” which is presented with 10 minutes of newly discovered footage of Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford.
Other festival highlights include the 1929 version of “The Letter” starring Broadway legend Jeanne Eagels in her only surviving sound film; Luis Buñuel”™s Mexican-based 1953 drama “Él
(This Strange Passion)”; Muriel Box”™s “This Other Eden” (1959), the first feature film directed by a woman in Ireland; “Reform School” (1939), a once-lost 1939 Black-cast film starring Louise Beavers as a crusading parole officer; and “Death by Unnatural Causes” (1992), Karen Bellone and Lisa Rinzler”™s experimental film about the impact of AIDS.
Photograph of Jeanne Eagels in “The Letter” courtesy of MoMA and the Library of Congress.
