Criterion in Bologna

Two of Criterion’s 2010 releases were honored at last week’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, organized by the Cineteca di Bologna: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two won the top prize for DVD of the year, while Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy won best box set. Naturally, we were at the annual celebration of restored and rediscovered films, as we are every year. “It’s one of our favorite festivals to attend,” says Criterion executive producer Kim Hendrickson. “We love going because it’s an opportunity to see films you don’t often get to see in the theater.” This year, these screenings included restorations of early works by John Ford (including the 1925 Kentucky Pride, told from the point of view of a horse, intertitles and all), Delmer Daves’s 1956 western Jubal , Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning , and a selection of Stanley Donen films, with the eighty-six-year-old director in attendance.

This year, there were even more reasons to attend than the terrific screenings: Kim and executive producer Fumiko Takagi spoke on a panel called DVD Productions: Collaborations with Film Archives; plus, we are working with the Cineteca (and the Charlie Chaplin estate) on restorations of some Chaplin films that we will be releasing over the next couple of years. (Check out Fumiko in the image below, looking at an original camera negative of The Kid.)