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Early films by Nathaniel Dorsky, as well as works by Tatsu Aoki and Midwestern feminist filmmakers JoAnn Elam and Kathleen Laughlin will be preserved and made accessible through the 2024 Avant-Garde Masters Grants, awarded by The Film Foundation and the National Film Preservation Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Four early works by renowned filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky will be preserved by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Fool’s Spring: Two Personal Gifts (1966-67), a birthday gift exchange between Dorsky and longtime partner and filmmaker Jerome Hiler, will be made available to the public for the first time. Pneuma (1977-83) and Ariel (1983) are experiments with the material and chemical properties of film, yielding vibrant abstractions of energy and color. Drawing on these experiments, Alaya (1976-87) represents a return to the photographic image in its meditation on sand, wind, and light. Stan Brakhage raved “Alaya manages a perfection of ‘musical’ light across a space of time greater in length than would seem possible…and with minimal means of line and tone—little short of a miracle!”

Known primarily for the landmark feminist 16mm films Rape (1975) and Lie Back and Enjoy It (1982), Chicago filmmaker JoAnn Elam (1949-2009) was also extremely dedicated to 8mm filmmaking. Drawn to the format’s ability to intimately capture the nuances of everyday life, Elam asserted in the “Small Gauge Manifesto” (co-written with Chuck Kleinhans) that “Small gauge film is not larger than life, it’s part of life.” Elam’s interest in the artistry of domestic life is evidenced in her “avant-garde home movies”, Garden & Joe (ca. 1980) and Joe Cutting Tree (ca. 1980), featuring her husband engaged in practical labor. Blizzard of '79 (1979) captures the filmmaker’s snow-covered neighborhood after a legendary storm. A Country Mile (ca. 1973) turns a simple walk down a rural, wooded path into a mesmerizing journey, while Memphremagog (ca.1973) is a frenetic travel montage that ends in a warm, familial destination. 7/4/77 (1977) shows friends enjoying a Fourth of July gathering. Chicago Film Archives will preserve these works as part of the JoAnn Elam Collection.

The Walker Art Center will preserve Opening/Closing (1972) by Kathleen Laughlin. Filmed in a single night in a South Minneapolis laundromat, washer and dryer doors open and close in an animated rhythm, enlivening a monotonous and routine task. With a background in visual arts and animation, Laughlin contributed to the flourishing independent filmmaking community in the Twin Cities as a teacher and graphic designer at Film in the Cities, the landmark media arts center.

Chicago Film Society will preserve four early works by celebrated Chicago filmmaker, musician, educator, and arts advocate Tatsu Aoki. Exploring the confluence between filmmaking and musical performance, Aoki employs in-camera tricks, stop-motion animation, pixelization, inverted colors, and superimpositions to dazzling effect. 3725 (1981) playfully portrays domesticity in the filmmaker’s apartment while Dream Works (1983) considers the inner life of a cat. Through overlapping images of cars, lane lines, and light fixtures, Rapturous (1984) turns an ordinary parking garage into a “a mildly hypnotic kaleidoscope” while Harmony (1991) captures the hustle and bustle of Chicago’s famed Loop.

Now in its twenty-first year, the Avant Garde Masters program, created by The Film Foundation and the NFPF, has helped 34 organizations save 234 films significant to the development of the avant-garde in America thanks to the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The grants have preserved works by 91 artists, including Kenneth Anger, Shirley Clarke, Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Oskar Fischinger, Hollis Frampton, Barbara Hammer, Marjorie Keller, George and Mike Kuchar, and Stan VanDerBeek. Click here to learn more about all the films preserved through the Avant-Garde Masters Grants.

The restored version of Indian auteur Girish Kasaravalli‘s 1977 Kannada-language debut feature “Ghatashraddha” (“The Ritual”) is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

This restoration, a collaboration between Martin Scorsese’s the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), with funding from George Lucas and Mellody Hobson’s Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, brings the Indian classic back to international audiences 47 years after its initial release.

Based on a novella by U.R. Ananthamurthy, “Ghatashraddha” tells the story of Yamuna, a child widow living in her father’s religious school in southern India. After becoming pregnant by a local teacher, she faces ostracism and undergoes a ritual where her father symbolically breaks an earthen pot, representing her outcast status.

The source element for the restoration is the original camera negative preserved at the National Film Development Corporation-National Film Archive of India. “‘Ghatashraddha’ had always been on Film Heritage Foundation‘s restoration wishlist,” Dungarpur told Variety. “I was aware that the negative was not in great condition and I was concerned that it would deteriorate further if we did not restore the film soon.”

The restoration faced numerous technical challenges. “The original camera negative was affected by mold and was damaged with broken and fragile splices, tears, broken perforations, old tape residues and scratches,” Dungarpur explained. L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna tackled the extensive repair work.

“Ghatashraddha” features cinematography by S. Ramachandra and a score by B.V. Karanth. The film stars Meena Kuttappa and Narayana Bhat.

“We involved Girish Kasaravalli right through the process especially with the grading of the black and white film, the subtitling and the sound as the sound design of the film is so layered and nuanced, not to mention the compelling score by the legendary B.V. Karanth,” Dungarpur said.

“I have been working closely with Film Heritage Foundation on the restoration of ‘Ghatashraddha’ for several months now. Shivendra and I have been speaking nearly every day about the grading, the density of the blacks, the sound and the subtitling,” Kasaravalli told Variety. “When we began the process, I knew the original camera negative was not in the best of condition and I was very worried about the sound as there was a disturbing hiss all through the film.”

When the 35mm dupe sound negative proved unsuitable due to distortion issues, the team sourced a 35mm print from the Library of Congress with higher quality audio.

“I was so overwhelmed to see the restored ‘Ghatashraddha’ when Shivendra sent me the final version. It has been a revelation to see the film come back to life again with such astonishing beauty after almost 50 years,” Kasaravalli said.

“I’m delighted that the restoration of my debut feature ‘Ghatashraddha’ will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this year, 47 years after its release,” Kasaravalli added. “It will be a matter of great pride for me to be in Venice to present the film.”

The restored “Ghatashraddha” plays at the Venice Classics strand.

Looking ahead, FHF is set to restore Pradip Krishen’s 1989 cult film “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones,” written by and starring Arundhati Roy, and Mani Ratnam’s 1997 masterpiece “Iruvar.”

Exclusive: The mythical feature was restored by Janus Films and Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation.

Bahrām Beyzaie‘s iconic feature “The Stranger and the Fog” is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a 4K restoration.

The Iranian New Wave filmmaker released his sophomore film, also titled “Gharibeh va Meh,” in 1974. Set around the northern coast of Iran, “The Stranger and the Fog” begins with a boat drifting onto the shore of a small village. The official synopsis reads: “The beautiful Rana (Parvaneh Massoumi) hopes the stray vessel has brought back her husband, who disappeared a year ago out on the sea. But the only passenger is Ayat (Khosrow Shojazadeh), a wounded stranger with no memory of how he ended up in this land. After gradually proving himself as a member of the community, Ayat upsets the locals by marrying Rana, and then grows increasingly paranoid about intermittently glimpsed figures that vow to avenge his misdeeds from a forgotten past.”

Manouchehr Farid also stars.

The restoration was made possible by Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation through its World Cinema Project, along with Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with writer/director Beyzaie. The funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The digital restoration is courtesy of Janus Films, which is distributing the film theatrically.

Beyzaie’s follow-up feature “The Ballad of Tara” was banned in Iran upon its 1979 release. Other films include “Bashu, the Little Stranger” and his debut “Downpour,” which ushered in the New Wave. “Downpour” was added to the Criterion Collection in 2020 through Scorsese’s World Cinema Project selections. “Bashu, the Little Stranger” also received a re-release in Tehran theaters in 2015.

Beyzaie is also known for “When We Are All Asleep” and “Killing Mad Dogs.” He was inducted as an Academy member in 2024. Since 2010, Beyzai has taught at Stanford University as a Daryabari Visiting Professor of Iranian Studies; the filmmaker teaches courses in Persian theatre, cinema, and mythology, and has directed several plays, such as his nine-hour-long “Tarabnameh.”

Criterion and Janus Films are both owned by Indian Paintbrush founder Steven Rales. Indian Paintbrush also owns Galerie, an online film club and subscription service that launched in November 2023 with auteur curators like Wes Anderson, Pablo Larraín, Mike Mills, and Karyn Kusama as guest programmers.

“The Stranger and the Fog” 4K restoration premieres August 30 in New York at Film at Lincoln Center, with a national rollout to follow courtesy of Janus Films. Check out the trailer below.

Most audience members probably haven't sat down to watch a film and thought, "Wow, imagine if this film weren't here anymore." Sadly, that can be the case, particularly with older films. The Mountain Eagle, the second film Alfred Hitchcock made, has been lost to the scourge of time. So, too, has The Patriot, an Ernst Lubitsch film from 1928 that was nominated for Best Picture. The most famous example is Jerry Lewis' 1972 Holocaust film The Day the Clown Cried, unseen by audiences not by luck but because Lewis was ashamed of his work and refused to let the film see the light of day. Then, there are films presumed lost but that have eventually been found. Carl Theodor Dreyer's totemic The Passion of Joan of Arc of 1928 was an incomplete film until a full, original copy was found in 1981 by a cleaner in a Norwegian mental institution. Metropolis, the magnificent and highly influential science fiction film from 1927 by Fritz Lang, only had its complete version discovered in 2008 in Argentina. And we wouldn't even have Toy Story 2 after a computer bug wiped most of Pixar's servers if it weren't for one technical director having a backup copy on their home hard drive.

There is one more dramatic reason we have a certain film to watch nowadays: the last surviving copy was snuck out of its country during a coup d'état.Law of the Border is a 1966 dramatic western from Turkey whose survival today is down to a few hardy fans who sought to preserve the film for its artistic merits. The Turkish government was cracking down on artistic productions with a political edge, including Law of the Border. The background to this film seems more like a film by Costa-Gavras than anything else. The film's star, Yılmaz Güney, fled the country in the 1970s after he was convicted of murdering a judge, and so his films were sought for destruction. He was also a controversial figure in Turkey because he was of Kurdish origin. His supporters helped smuggle the last extant copy of the film out of the country, and it remained in Europe safe from Turkish authorities until it was picked up for restoration by the World Cinema Project, Cannes Film Festival in 2011, which is no surprise as this little film packs a significant punch with a serious political message underneath.

Why Did They Want to Destroy 'Law of the Border'?

Turkey has often, unfortunately, been a country that has suffered from political unrest and violence. The 1960s and 1970s in the country were marked by significant turmoil, characterized by military coups, political instability, and social upheaval. The decade began with the 1960 military coup, which overthrew the democratically elected government, leading to a period of military rule and the execution of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in 1961. The 1970s saw a rise in political violence, with clashes between leftist and rightist groups, labor strikes, and student protests. Economic difficulties and social inequality fueled widespread discontent, further destabilizing the political landscape. This period of unrest culminated in the 1980 military coup, which aimed to restore order but led to severe repression, human rights abuses, and the establishment of a repressive military regime.

It was in this world that Law of the Border was born, emerging in 1966, from director Lütfi Ömer Akad. His oeuvre focused on social realism more than anything, depicting Turkish life as it was. He was never involved in political turmoil, but Law of the Border brought him as close to that as possible because of its star. Güney. He had always been involved in leftist causes during his emergence as an actor and filmmaker, with his films of urban poverty and hopelessness drawing the vicious attention of the Turkish censors. His films stylistically took influence from the Italian neo-realism popularized by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica in the 1940s and 1950s.

Güney was arrested and imprisoned for a week in 1971, thus leaving Istanbul to move inland away from the authorities that sought to put an end to his career. He was arrested the following year and imprisoned for two years. After release, Güney made two more films before being arrested for the murder of a conservative judge, a charge against which he always maintained his innocence. During this imprisonment, Güney wrote scripts for The Herd and Pol, and the latter won the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. He was able to attend this award ceremony because he escaped from prison by, apparently, walking out the front door. Not quite a Clint Eastwood prison break, then. Güney's films were characterized similarly by their social realism and depiction of impoverished people, often subliminally criticizing the powers that be. His work was ordered to be destroyed, but one ardent supporter found a copy of Law of the Border and snuck it across the border, thus preserving the film for posterity.

So, What is 'Law of the Border' About?

Hıdır's life takes a turn when an old friend, a teacher named Ali (Pervin Par), arrives in the village. Ali tries to convince Hıdır and the villagers to abandon smuggling and seek legitimate livelihood, believing that education and honest work can offer a way out of their dire circumstances. Despite his respect for Ali, Hıdır is skeptical. The local police, led by a harsh and corrupt commander, intensify their efforts to stamp out smuggling. The villagers, including Hıdır, are caught between the relentless pressure from the authorities and their desperate need to provide for their families.

Tragedy strikes when Hıdır's son is killed in a skirmish between the smugglers and the police. Devastated and driven by a desire for justice, Hıdır takes a stand. He joins forces with Ali and other villagers to confront the authorities and demand better conditions and opportunities for their community. The climax of the film is a powerful confrontation between the villagers and the government forces, highlighting the themes of resistance, sacrifice, and the quest for dignity. Hıdır's transformation from a resigned smuggler to a determined leader, quite similar to the plot of one of Akira Kurosawa's best films, symbolizes the broader struggle of the oppressed against systemic injustice.

Is 'Law of the Border' Any Good?

Absolutely. Law of the Border is a hearty, intense Western-style film about a desperate father who will stop at nothing to do what's right for his children, like Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird or Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness. The film's realistic portrayal of life in a border village captures the struggles and resilience of its characters, making the narrative compelling and having a greater impact at an emotional level. Güney's performance as Hıdır is praised for its depth and realism. His portrayal brings a strong emotional resonance to the film, supported by a more than capable cast. The stand he takes against local police corruption isn't dissimilar from that taken by a masked English vigilante in the near future.

Akad's direction, combined with Ali Uğur's bracing, harsh cinematography, creates a visually striking and immersive experience. The use of the stark landscape enhances the film's themes and mood. It is very reminiscent of The Great Silence, one of the great European spaghetti Westerns from the 1960s, in how it depicts barrenness and deserted space. The powerlessness the local villagers feel is reflected in the desolate nature of their landscape and the world. The film addresses significant social issues such as poverty, oppression, and the impact of government policies on marginalized communities. Its critical perspective on systemic injustices adds layers of meaning and relevance. Law of the Border chooses to stand up against its societal system, even if the creators were painfully aware of the consequences of their actions.

What is the Legacy of 'Law of the Border'?

Law of the Border paved the way for Turkish cinema, landing it on the world stage and letting all other corners of the cinephilic world know Turkish cinema was arriving. It is a landmark in Turkish cinema, representing a shift towards more socially conscious filmmaking. It played a pivotal role in the careers of Akad and Güney, who are key figures in Turkish film history and whose successes have opened the doors to artists like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose 2014 film Winter Sleep too won the Palme d'Or. Turkish films are being produced by Netflix and are appearing on screens worldwide now, all thanks to Akad and Güney.

The background story to Law of the Border is almost as interesting as the film itself, but don't let that take anything away from the film. It can be tough to find because the restoration by the World Cinema Project was only able to do so much, working off the scratched and damaged copy of the film that was snuck out of the country. It is screened at retrospectives, film festivals, university film clubs, and art-house cinemas. The Criterion Collection also released the film on DVD as a double feature with Edward Yang'sTaipei Story. It is worth mentioning that copies of the film can be requested from the World Cinema Project's website, which it must be said is a fantastic initiative and a brilliant way to bring these smaller, lesser-known films to wider audiences.

Any fan of cinema who likes to explore new horizons will get a lot out of Law of the Border and will discover for themselves the magical and fascinating world of Turkish cinema. The film is considered a must-watch for its powerful storytelling, strong performances, and significant social commentary, making it a highly regarded film in Turkish and international cinema. No fan who manages to view the film will regret it. It is these exact films that can make us all remember why we love the art form in the first place.

Law of the Border is available to watch on The Criterion Channel in the U.S.