Strona Filmoteki Narodowej

Serge Bromberg Presents: Saved From the Flames - Incredible Discoveries

Serge Bromberg, a French populariser of silent movies, often referred to as the “Indiana Jones of lost films”, will be a special guest of the 16th Silent Movie Festival.

Bromberg discovers and renovates films to bring what was left on the margins of film archivists’ interests back for the audience. Since 1985, when he has started his journey, he has managed to pass his passion for discovering, preserving and facilitating film treasures of various film forms and genres on the following generations.

In 1992, he has started to travel around the world with a series of authorial screenings known under the name of Retour de Flamme (English: Saved from the Flames; Polish: Ocalone z płomieni). This year, he is going to visit the Iluzjon Cinema.

The program of the festival includes the oldest silent movies. Some of them are exceptionally beautiful, hand-painted and reconstructed short films that have never been shown in Poland on big screen before. On a special request of Serge Bromberg, the full program of the festival will not be published until its first day. He will have a chance to demonstrate himself not only as a film historian and showman but also as an exquisite musician, accompanying screenings on the piano.

For his contribution, Bromberg was granted the Jean Mitry Award in 1997 and the Knights Cross of the French “Arts et Lettres” distinction in 2002. He has built up a catalogue of rights to over 150 feature films and a collection of world-famous old films. For 14 years he was the artistic director of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival (from 1999). The Polish audience may also recognize him for directing, together with Ruxandra Medrea, the documentary “Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno” (2009), for which the pair received a César Award.

April 7 | 13:00

Serge Bromberg presents:

Saved from the Flames – Incredible Discoveries

„Those Awful Hats”, USA, dir. D. W. Griffith, circa 1909, 3’

„La poule merveilleuse”, France, prod. Pathé, dir. Ferdinand Zecca, 1902, 2’

„Un duello allo schrapnell”, Italy, prod. Itala Films, 1912, 7’

„Sinking of the Lusitania”, dir. Winsor McCay, 1918, 8’

„The Masquerader”, USA, dir. Charles Chaplin, 1914, 12’30’’

„Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me”, cast: Gus Visser, 1922, 1’30’’

„Male Order”, cast: Zarek and Zarina, 1941, 3’

„Laurel et Hardy – MGM Convention”, 1930, 2’30’’

„Musical Memories”, Fleischer 3D, 1935, 7’