The film series “Cinema: Restoration and Preservation” focuses on film heritage as a cultural asset to be restored and preserved for the cinema of tomorrow. It aims to provide an opportunity to rediscover the seventh art through restored films from historical archives, national film libraries, and private collections.
In particular, we draw upon the L’Aquila Film Archive, which in 2018 was recognized by ministerial decree as Italy’s leading archive in terms of the type of material it preserves—a significant collection of over 100,000 items accumulated over more than thirty years of activity and enriched by major private donations; and the Luce Historical Archive, one of the richest archives in the world and unique among Italian audiovisual archives, which in 2013 was inscribed on UNESCO’s prestigious Memory of the World Register with the following rationale: “The collection constitutes an unparalleled body of documentation for understanding the process of the formation of totalitarian regimes, the mechanisms of creation and development of visual material, and the living conditions of Italian society…”.
The scheduled events offer a journey of discovery into what archives are, what they preserve, and what their objectives and purposes are, with the aim of highlighting the challenges involved in restoring a film and the related technical methods of restoration.
When we talk about restoration and conservation, we inevitably think of memory, history, and memories—and all the emotions that a work of art is capable of evoking in us.
In a city like L’Aquila, which is constantly focused on reconstruction and the preservation of its heritage, there is a growing interest in telling the story of the past—to reexamine memories and emotions and to rebuild a new imagination—through cinema, the art of the moving image.
This exhibition was created with the aim of helping to rebuild personal and collective spirituality—that human spirituality capable of producing the works of art of the future.