A still from the animated short “It’s the Greatest Little City (1970),” produced at Ohio State. Credit: Courtesy of Sarah Hartzell
Films will be brought back to life at the Wexner Center for the Arts as its annual Cinema Revival festival returns, spotlighting newly restored classics and archival treasures from overlooked filmmakers and the university’s collections.
The event runs from Thursday at 4:30 p.m. through Monday at 4 p.m. Festival passes cost $15 for students, $30 for members and adults 55 and older and $42 for the general public. Passes include access to all Cinema Revival talks and screenings, as well as entry to the passholder lounge, according to the center’s website.
Beyond the screenings, organizers say the festival highlights film preservation’s importance. Dave Filipi, head of film/video at the Wex, said restoration brings recognition to filmmakers whose work may go unnoticed.
“It brings new attention to filmmakers and films from the past that maybe have been overlooked in film history,” Filipi said.
In addition to features such as Erich von Stroheim’s 1929 “Queen Kelly,” a director’s cut of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and Flora Gomes’ “Mortu Nega,” the festival highlights the archivists and preservation experts who make these revivals possible. This year’s programming emphasizes materials within Ohio State’s own collections, drawing attention to cinematic history preserved on campus, according to the Wex’s website.
University Libraries will open the festival weekend with a free screening presentation, titled Film Treasures from The Ohio State University Library, from its own audiovisual archives.
?“[We’re] thinking in the back of our heads, ‘Oh, this would be great to show to an audience,’” said Tim Lanza, audiovisual preservation and digitization lead for University Libraries. “Throughout the year, we kind of keep track of those things in order to put together about a 90-minute program of things that we are really excited about.”
Lanza and Sarah Hartzell, audio visual preservation and digitization specialist at University Libraries, said the selected films serve as visual, historical records of their time.
“There’s a lot of really interesting local and regional history and culture that is going to be showcased,” Hartzell said.
Beyond historical content, Lanza said the festival represents multiple genres. Some short films showing at the Film Treasures event are “Porgy and Bess in Wein” from 1953 and “Kids on Brimmer Street,” a 1927 home movie featuring Admiral Richard Byrd.?
“It’s a pretty wide range of things,” Lanza said. “I think people will really enjoy [the festival], it’s entertaining.”
Hartzell said she hopes the festival not only entertains and informs audiences, but also encourages them to explore the archives themselves.
“A lot of people don’t know that this stuff exists in the library, and especially for students and OSU faculty — this is their library,” Hartzell said.
Lanza also said the archives host more than students would think and he encourages people to go through them.
“There are things hiding in the archives and in the special collections … it’s all in their backyard and they can access it,” Lanza said.
Hartzell said preservation is important in connecting past and present artists.
“The people in them really do come to life,” Hartzell said. “I think that’s really important for people, to kind of feel that there is a connection between us and the past — the people of Columbus, of Ohio and of Ohio State throughout the years.”
