A Diva’s Amazing Grace, A Filmmaker’s Persistence
posted June 13, 2019
In January 1972, a 29-year-old Aretha Franklin, already renowned in soul behind five Grammys and 11 No. 1 singles on the Billboard charts, returned to her roots with two evenings of riveting gospel worship in the run-down New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles. The soaring celebrations of faith became legendary moments in popular-music history. They also produced a long, confused saga of film loss and retrieval.
Denmark Breathes Life into the Original Nordic Noir
posted June 3, 2019
The Danish Film Institute has launched a major effort to preserve and disseminate the country’s silent-film output. With 30 million Danish kroner (about $US4.5-million) from three foundations, the Institute has begun to digitize the whole of the remaining early movie heritage. That amounts to some 415 titles from the “golden age of Danish silent film” — about 350 hours of viewing — that archivists at the Institute are digging out of storage to restore, preserve, and disseminate through screenings and online postings.