MoMA Presents Restored Film Classics

The Museum of Modern Art will present its ninth annual To Save and Project: The  MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, the annual festival of preserved and restored films from archives, studios, and distributors around the world, from October 14 through November 19. This year’s event comprises over 35 films from 14 countries, virtually all of them having their New York premieres, and some shown in versions never before seen in the United States. Complementing the annual festival is a retrospective devoted to filmmaker Jack Smith, featuring 11 newly struck prints acquired for MoMA’s collection and introduced on November 13 by screen diva Mario Montez, star of Smith’s infamous FLAMING CREATURES (1962-63).

Opening this year’s festival is Joe Dante’s digital preservation of THE MOVIE ORGY (1968), a 4½ hour politically edged extravaganza composed of Saturday matinee B-movie trailers, commercials, army training films, sex hygiene films, newscasts, music clips, and Christian kiddie programs that was a popular attraction on college campuses of the period. Dante will also be on hand to introduce his episode “It’s a Good Life” from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983), as well as Roger Corman’s racial shocker THE INTRUDER (1962), starring William Shatner as a white supremacist who foments racial violence in the deep South. Other highlights of the series include a newly restored print of THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1942) by the British directorial team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (to be intro’d by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker); a hand-painted color version of the seminal fantasy film A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) by cinema pioneer Georges Méliès; and a special evening dedicated to Saul Bass, featuring some of the designer’s iconic title sequences and commercials, as well as the New York premiere of his Academy Award-winning short WHY MAN CREATES (1968). For more information, visit: www.moma.org

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