Films Calendar Specials Expat Information Venues
NL
EN

Another Eight Treasures Unveiled

Eight almost forgotten film gems revisited

Throughout cinematic history, countless wonderful films have been made, but unfortunately many of them are no longer shown on the silver screen. A simple reason for that is often that no decent copies of them exist anymore. And that’s a terrible shame, a sentiment shared by Martin Scorsese, the American director with masterpieces such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Wolf of Wall Street to his name.

In order to rescue all those magnificent classics from oblivion, Scorsese started the World Cinema Project in 2007 – a project aimed at restoring and preserving precisely these films, especially films from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and the Middle East. Once restored, each of them could be re-released in cinemas. The project has salvaged 65 films to date.

Rialto fully endorses the special, valuable nature of the project, which is why it presented Eight Treasures Unveiled in December 2023, a programme featuring eight gems that are again available to the public thanks to the World Cinema Project. Since then, over a year has passed and it is now time to display more of these treasures. Starting 21 February, Rialto will again present eight classics from the World Cinema Project catalogue, under the title Another Eight Treasures Unveiled. The films will screened at Rialto De Pijp as well as Rialto VU.

The programme features the following titles (in alphabetical order):

1. After the Iranian Revolution, Bahram Beyzaie’s masterful feature debut Downpour was shelved. Fortunately, Beyzaie still had one privately-owned copy, be it a badly damaged one, that has since been fully restored.

2. In Dry Summer, Turkish director Metin Erksan illustrates the fact that envy and greed are pernicious traits. The first Turkish film to win a Golden Bear and thus a milestone in Turkish cinema.

3. Having already made many films, Filipino director Lino Brocka surprised friend and foe with Manila in the Claws of Light, an unpolished portrait of Filipino society. It was his breakthrough.

4. In 1946, groundbreaking Spanish director Luis Buñuel moved to Mexico. Here he made Los olvidados, a raw, realistic portrait of a group of underprivileged street kids. Where lies the origin of immoral behaviour?

5. What is it like to live on China’s seamy side? Director Jia Zhang-ke shows it in Pickpocket, a story about a pickpocket who realizes more and more that his life has reached a dead end.

6. In Soviet films, Russian was decreed the only language to be spoken. Khrushchev was more liberal, however, as is evidenced by Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a Ukrainian-language Romeo-and-Juliet story by Sergei Parajanov, director of the acclaimed The Colour of Pomegranates.

7. Alas, racism has always been around. It was also rearing its ugly head in the 1970s, how ugly can be seen in Soleil Ô, Mauritanian director Med Hondo’s debut film about the misadventures of an African migrant in Paris.

8. Edward Yang is an important representative of the 1980s’ Taiwanese New Wave. His film Taipei Story, a “neorealist” tale of stagnation and progress, clearly shows why.