The Museum of Modern Art Announces The 2023 Line-Up For TO SAVE AND PROJECT

The Museum of Modern Art announces To Save and Project: The 19th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, the latest edition of the annual festival dedicated to celebrating newly preserved and restored films from archives, studios, distributors, foundations, and independent filmmakers from around the world.

Running from January 12 to February 2, 2023, this year's program will open and close with the restoration premieres of two major silent films from MoMA's archive: Paul Leni's horror comedy The Cat and the Canary (1927) and Ernst Lubitsch's comedy The Marriage Circle (1924), respectively. To Save and Project is organized by Dave Kehr, Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Cindi Rowell, independent curator, with special thanks to Olivia Priedite, Film Program Coordinator, and Steve Macfarlane, Department Assistant, Department of Film.

The 2023 program includes the highly anticipated new version of Tod Browning's insidious silent horror film The Unknown (1927), from the George Eastman Museum, which features 10 minutes of newly discovered footage of Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford. Other festival

highlights include two upgrades of American classics from the Library of Congress: the 1929 version of The Letter, with the legendary Broadway star Jeanne Eagels, and René Clair's supernatural screwball comedy I Married a Witch (1942), featuring Veronica Lake and Fredric March.

This year's lineup will showcase a selection of foreign films, including two Mexican films: Él (This Strange Passion) (1953), Luis Buñuel's classic study of the delirium of desire, and, from Janus Films, Felipe Cazals's harrowing docudrama Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976). The program will also feature two films from Asia: the Thai drama Choo (The Adulterer) (1972) and Aravindan Govindan's warm comedy of Indian village life, Thamp̄ (The Circus Tent) (1978). Other foreign titles include Kaze no naka no mendori (A Hen in the Wind) (1948), by Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu; the German Weimar-era musical Die Privatsekretärin (Private Secretary) (1931); and Muriel Box's This Other Eden (1959), the first feature film directed by a woman in Ireland.

The Academy Film Archive will present Reform School (1939), a rare 1939 Black-cast film starring Louise Beavers. From the Women's Film Preservation Fund comes One Hand Don't Clap (1988), Kavery Kaul's documentary about the calypso music of Trinidad and Tobago.

In addition, a program of LGBTQ shorts will include Lucy Winer's Greetings from Washington, D.C. (1981), a record of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights; Tricia's Wedding (1971), a farcical re-enactment of the wedding of Richard Nixon's daughter, performed by the San Francisco drag troupe The Cockettes; and Death by Unnatural Causes (1992), Karen Bellone and Lisa Rinzler's experimental film about the impact of AIDS.

Other festival highlights include special related programming:

Scott MacQueen will host a film preservation workshop on Saturday, January 14, at 4:00 p.m. in Titus Theater 2. With over three decades of experience, including 10 years as the former head of preservation at UCLA Film and Television Archive, MacQueen will discuss two of his most recent restoration projects: William Dieterle's All That Money Can Buy

(1941) and William Cameron Menzies's Invaders from Mars (1953).

As part of MoMA's long-running Modern Mondays series, To Save and Project will welcome legendary Bay Area experimental filmmaker Greta Snider for a special evening on Monday, January 23, at 7:00 p.m. A selection of Snider's found-footage collage films and punk infused auto-fictions will screen in 16mm restorations from the Academy Film Archive, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker in a rare New York City appearance. Organized by Sophie Cavoulacos, Associate Curator, Department of Film.

On Saturday, January 28, at 4:00 p.m., this year's festival will include an illustrated lecture about Hollywood's first widescreen boom in the late 1920s, titled The Bigger Picture: Widescreen before CinemaScope. James Layton, manager of MoMA's Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center, and David Pierce, assistant chief and chief operations officer of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, will discuss the 20 years before CinemaScope successfully transformed the movies, including examples of Fox's pioneering Grandeur format.

See accompanying screening schedule for full program details and guest appearance dates.

As the first cultural institution to collect film as an art form, The Museum of Modern Art has long been at the forefront of the preservation and restoration of moving-image material. Founded in 2003, MoMA's annual To Save and Project festival has become the Museum's showcase for presenting new restorations from our archive, as well as work from colleagues around the world-archives, foundations, studios, and others-engaged in maintaining and presenting precious audiovisual heritage.