MoMA to host film preservation festival

New York City’s Museum of Modern Art has announced the line-up for To Save and Project: The 20th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, which will be held from Jan. 11-Feb. 4, 2024.

This year’s edition includes more than 80 newly preserved features and shorts from 18 countries, with many of the film being presented in either their North American or world, along with original versions that have not seen since their initial theatrical releases.

The opening feature is the 1926 Douglas Fairbanks epic “The Black Pirate,” which is being screened in a newly restored version that reconstructs the film’s Technicolor Process Two visual style. Also included in the festival the 1927 “Man, Woman and Sin” starring John Gilbert and Jeanne Eagels (which has not been publicly screened for nearly a century), the world premiere of John Ford’s “Arrowsmith” (1931) in its original theatrical release version, Andy Warhol’s never-before-seen 1965 short film “Bitch,” and a special offering by archivist Rick Prelinger of corporate sponsored films from the 1930s through the 1950s in unique vintage prints.

More information is available on the museum’s website.

Photo of Douglas Fairbanks in “The Black Pirate” (1926) courtesy of MoMA.