Cinema Ritrovato 2016 and Alma-Tadema coming up
Neron essayant des poisons sur les esclaves (Georges Hathot, Lumière 1897)
The new Cinema Ritrovato festival is coming up. Jacques Becker, the last phase of the Cinema of the Thaw, Japan in Colour, Mario Soldati, The Films of 1916, Buster Keaton, 1896 Lumière , Marie Epstein etc. Too much themes to mention. After a gap in last year I will collaborate once more to a workshop with Maria Wyke and Pantelis Michelakis (and probably Jon Solomon and David Mayer) on Antiquity and Cinema, most probably on Thursday 30 June and Friday 1 July. We’ll have Griffith’s Intolerance of course, but also pre-1900 films on Antiquity, early films on Nero including a newly restored version of the 1901 Quo vadis? by Pathé, and Feuillade’s films La fille de Phidias and Le pretresse de Carthage – to which I am looking forward as I am a fan of Feuillade’s Antiquity films Héliogabale/ L’orgie romaine and Le fils de Locuste, which will probably play a role in the upcoming exhibition Lawrence Alma Tadema. Classic Charm for which I am co-curator for the film section.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Entrance to a Theatre (1866), recently bought by Fries Museum, Leeuwarden.
The Tadema exhibition will open at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, Netherlands, on or around 1 October this year. It will then move on to the Belvedere museum in Vienna in early Spring 2017, and finally be visible at Leighton House, London, in Summer 2017. Prestel will publish what promises to be a very outstanding and fascinating accompanying publication, including one article by me on Alma-Tadema and film, and curated by my fellow co-curators Peter Trippi and Elizabeth Prettejohn. I am much obliged to have been able to recently talk to Arthur Max and Janty Yates, production designer and costume designer of Sir Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000). Both were very helpful in realizing in which ways Alma-Tadema has been important for the envisioning of Gladiator and partly Scott’s Exodus as well. In accordance with Fries Museum I also compiled an appetiting film programme, ranging from early cinema to recent films like Gladiator, while I will give a lecture on Alma-Tadema and cinema at Fries Museum on Saturday 26 November. On 18 December I will give an introduction at EYE, Amsterdam, to the showing of the 1913 Quo vadis? by Guazzoni at EYE, which will be a specal Sunday Concert screening with live music conducted by Martin de Ruiter, possibly with the music by Jean Nouguès for his homonymous opera.
Gladiator (Ridley Scott 2000)
Ivo Blom 