Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

visited. On the contrary, James Quandt from Cinematheque Ontario says:
“There is a feeling that complete retrospectives belong in the past – an
ideal that the cinematheques once maintained. This is obviously due to the
difficulties that all cinematheques have in finding lesserknown
films, and also the high costs of offering complete
retrospectives. But it was in this way that I got to know
marginal works by famous directors… so I’m still somewhat
in favour of the complete retrospective.”
At cinematheques outside Europe, there is a tendency to
create limited retrospectives, whereas several European
cinematheques still practise complete retrospectives.
Several add an angle (a theme or a period) to a director’s
career: for example, the American Cinematheque’s
series “Ford at Fox”, featuring six John Ford films. The
Cinematheque has two large theatres (the Egyptian Theatre
in Hollywood with 616 seats and the Aero Theatre in Santa
Monica with 425 seats) and needs at least 250 viewers per
show and considerable financial contributions. Experience
has shown that public interest in the Cinematheque’s
retrospectives can only be maintained for longer than two
weeks if they feature very popular directors such as Alfred
Hitchcock and Billy Wilder.
Filmmuseeum Wien, Hitchcock Series.
Alexander Horwath in Vienna is on principle not interested
in limiting the size of a retrospective. Even though the
Austrian Film Museum has only one cinema (with 165
seats), they still presented a Western series in 2007 with
almost 80 films, whereas BFI Southbank (with 3 cinemas)
only showed 16 classics in their latest Western series. “It
would be unsatisfactory for us not to present the richness
of the genre at a time where anti-Americanism is high and
where we have been warned against making a
Western programme. At the moment, this genre
has a lot to tell us,” says Horwath.
Larger retrospectives are often characterized
by extensive projects including restorations
and publications. The Austrian Film Museum,
for example, has undertaken larger projects
involving directors as different as James
Benning, Dziga Vertov, and Jean Epstein. Each
year the Filmoteca Española co-operates
with the San Sebastián Film Festival on one
large retrospective and publishes related and
extensive monographs on selected directors –
the latest concern Henry King and Mikio Naruse.
And Cinematheque Ontario, as mentioned
above, presents several “touring exhibitions”.
Alfred Hitchcock visiting the Danish Film
Museum with the former director Ib
Monty, Copenhagen 1968.
In Copenhagen we have obviously showcased
many classical director series and have most of
the time attempted to make them as complete as possible. However, we also
discuss the scope of the retrospectives, for along with other cinematheques
we must face the “Mona Lisa syndrome”, with audiences only seeking out
11 Journal of Film Preservation / 81 / 2009