Film jewels restored by Scorsesse arrive on a movie streaming platform

It is a truth of Perogrullo that every film director must be, by principles, regulations and mandate of being, a cinephile. One could not conceive, of course, that a filmmaker (one of those men or women who, according to Andrei Tarkovsky's definition, dedicate themselves to “sculpting in time” —and whose main tool is light—) is devoid of images from films that marked, influenced or hated him enough to film against them. However, not every film fan is a film director (another obvious truth, but it is never too bad to fall into truisms, at least in honor of families, since it happens in the best of them).

But film buffs can become filmmakers: remember the case of Francois Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard and other members of the magazine Cahiers du Cinema who, after presenting their aesthetic positions on the most contemporary cinema on their pages, showcasing their preferences for cinema, for example, by Alfred Hitchcock or the Hollywoodman himself, they had no choice but to act and film and from there masterpieces such as The 400 strokes or Breathless and thus just change the cinema once and for all. Or that employee of a video store who watched the entire catalog of the store again and again and took the VHS to see them once more at home and who one day filmed Violent Times and from the counter where he attended customers stood in front of the cameras and gave the public and eternity Pulp fiction, god have it in the restored holy glory?

With this introduction we have come to the heart of the matter, ladies and gentlemen, since the words “filmmaker”, “cinephile”, “Truffaut”, “films”, “restored” have been cited, and was “Truffaut” already said? It is that there is a gentleman, legendary since now, who combines all this: Martin Scorsese. Amen.

You probably remember him from movies like Taxi Driver, Wild Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Good Boys, Casino, New York Gangs, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, among other gems of world cinematography. Well, Marty (as his friends call him), in addition to continuing filming several years ago, decided to organize a foundation that would take care of rescuing and restoring copies of old, lost or unusual films that would otherwise have been lost forever. Just one fact: more than half of the 35mm copies of films made before 1950 in the United States were lost. It's a monstrous figure about how a historical cultural legacy can get rid of like dust between your fingers. The Film Foundation, started by Scorsese in 1990 and whose board was joined by filmmakers from the most diverse backgrounds such as Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Robert Redford and later Peter Jackson, Wes Anderson and Christopher Nolan, among many others, is responsible for restoring films, preserving those copies for posterity and raise the necessary funds for the task. Which recently opened up a new dimension.

If half of the original American films prior to 1950 no longer exist, better not to mention the countries of the capitalist periphery, the so-called Third World. In Argentina, for example, there are collectors and specialists who are dedicated to rescuing these copies from the ravages of time and oblivion. And this is often the case in every other peripheral nation, but these destinies are left to the initiative, usually, of these stubborn and wonderful people who, on top of that, lack the funds required to bring those ends to a successful conclusion.

Now, the World Cinema Project, promoted by The Film Foundation, defined as its objective to rescue and restore these films of diverse national origins. And for this, it partnered with MUBI, a streaming film platform, to make it happen. For those who do not know MUBI, it should be noted that it is a platform to which all cinephilia should subscribe without strings attached. Originally, MUBI was called Les Auteurs (The Authors), which gives an imprint to its founding purposes. They are still standing today, but developed in a much better way, in terms of aesthetics and operation. Auteur cinema, cinema qualité or whatever it wants to be called comes together in an overwhelming way on the platform with classic films in black and white to films of the most current contemporaneity. As an example, the Japanese Drive my car, which was only shown on the big screen in the Leopoldo Lugones room for a few days, can now be seen in high quality on MUBI. So, Marty and MUBI. An M&M, treat for moviegoers.

They recently jointly announced the screening of the first eighteen restored films that will be progressively uploaded to MUBI.

They are already found for the pleasure of the audience:

Muna moto (The child of another), a 1975 Cameroonian film in which the black and white camera stops on facial closeups of great beauty, with an aesthetic use of the overwhelming image that tells a huge drama that happens when a young couple must face society and family rule when she gets pregnant, all washed down with many drums and percussion. It is a very beautiful film that we would know nothing about if it were not for this initiative, most likely.

Pixote. This film is best known to Argentines because, despite having been shot in Brazil and recreating the barbarism and criminality to which young people are taken from spaces where poverty and inequality reign, it was directed by Argentinean Hector Babenco (who would later film The Kiss of the Spider Woman in Hollywood). The quality that the images recover makes it possible to watch in a new way a movie that was achieved on VHS or DVD with diminished aesthetic efficiency. As everything remains the same, watching Pixote's drama today has the same relevance as it was forty years ago, when it was filmed.

The Iranian Chess of the Wind is the last hung to date on MUBI. The restoration of this 1976 film recovers a dramatic and exquisite aesthetic that Peter Greenaway could have envied. The plot takes place in a mansion in which a legacy is in dispute between several aspirants and who move cold between theatrically lit environments (even the protagonist's wheelchair has a powerful design).

Korean, Syrian, Bangladeshi, Thai films Apichatpong Weerasethakul, African films from different nations will compose the origins of the films that will gradually be seen on the platform. Well, it won't be on the big screen, but it will be streaming and it can be known, with certainty, that the restoration and preservation of the tapes will allow, when possible or necessary, their screening in theatres. And since films come from so many different and strange places when it comes to visiting cinematographies, it is not impossible for the famous saying “Cinema is bigger than life itself” to become “Cinema is bigger than the universe itself”, with the respective forgiveness that astrophysicists should give to the bold ones who make this premise.

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