Presenters: Robert Byrne and Céline Ruivo
Céline Ruivo discusses PHONO-CINÉMA-THÉÂTRE
Curator of the film collection at the Cinémathèque française, Céline Ruivo has been instrumental in the restoration of the sound components of Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, an attraction at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 that featured live and synchronized music to moving images of actors, dancers, singers of opera and operetta, and stars of the music hall famous at the time. A holder of two master’s degrees from the Sorbonne and a Certificate of Film Preservation from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House, Ruivo is currently finishing her Ph.D. She has done extensive research on the history of Technicolor and been involved in maintaining the collections of the Associated Press, the National Gallery of Art’s 16mm educational films, Gaumont’s silent films, and the Centre Pompidou’s avant-garde works. She has written film notes for the Cinémathèque française’s public programs and Lobster Films’ Europa Film Treasures online releases, as well as provided subtitle translations for the Cinematheque Ontario (since renamed the TIFF Cinematheque).
Robert Byrne on restoring THE HALF-BREED
An independent film preservationist and president of the board of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Robert Byrne discusses the recent restoration of Douglas Fairbanks’s The Half-Breed, directed by one of Hollywood’s most prolific directors, Allan Dwan, for Triangle Film Corporation. Specializing in silent-era film restoration, Byrne has worked in conjunction with EYE Film Institute Netherlands, the Cinémathèque française, Photoplay Productions, and the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum on restoration projects that include: Shoes (1916), The Spanish Dancer (1923), Twin Peaks Tunnel (1917), and most recently The Last Edition (1925) and The Half- Breed (1916), all of which have shown at the Silent Film Festival. His articles and reviews have been published in the Journal of Film Preservation, The Moving Image, and Nisimazine. He has also contributed program notes for the Silent Film Festival and le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy. He holds a master’s of arts in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image from the University of Amsterdam and was the 2011 recipient of the Haghefilm Foundation Fellowship and a 2010 preservation grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Presented at SFSFF 2013 with live music by Stephen Horne
Image credit: Pamela Gentile