My third day at the festival began with a selection of short films shot in Italy in 1912, and they did not disappoint.\u00a0 La Cineteca Bologna had restored all of these films, and they gave an amazing insight into what this country was like a century ago.\u00a0 Not only were the films beautiful (is it possible to make Italy look unattractive on film?), but the tinting done to the film to add color to it was nothing short of stunning.\u00a0 The blues of the ocean were unlike anything I\u2019d ever seen before.\u00a0 Most of the shorts were travelogues or shorts showing Italian life (people making straw hats), but a couple of them told stories of courtship and love, and they were quite entertaining.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-includes\/js\/tinymce\/plugins\/wpgallery\/img\/t.gif\" "\\"gallery")
<\/p>\n
After the screening, I made my way over to something rather unusual for this festival: a discussion of the Criterion Collection.\u00a0 Why would that be odd?\u00a0 Well, Criterion\u2019s releases are Region 1 only, which means America.\u00a0 Italians, British, and the French, who made up the majority of the people at the festival, can\u2019t watch these Blu-Rays and DVDs without a region free player, but since this is a festival for cinephiles, most of the people here either have a region free player or follow the company anyway.\u00a0 For those of you who aren\u2019t familiar with Criterion, they release about 50 films a year on Blu-Ray and DVD, both older and contemporary films that are incredibly important to film history.\u00a0 At the panel were Kim Hendrickson, Lee Cline, and Liz Helfgott, and for about an hour, they simply took our questions about their company and talked about what their company does and what we have to look forward to.\u00a0 They told us about a release that\u2019ll be out either late this year or early next that they haven\u2019t announced yet, something that you wouldn\u2019t expect to see on Criterion considering how it was massacred when it was released.\u00a0 That being said, the film has been restored and will be having its premiere at the Venice film festival this year, where its reclusive director will introduce it (ok, cluesters, go figure out what it is).\u00a0 After that was Sailor\u2019s Luck<\/em>, another Raoul Walsh film about three sailors on shore leave.\u00a0 Following that was Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Murder!<\/em>, one of his first talkies.\u00a0 Even though the film is very talky and the camera is, for the most part, stagnant, the film moves along really well and is very enjoyable.\u00a0 After that would normally be the screening in the Piazza Maggiore, but it was cancelled due to the football match for Euro 2012 between Italy and Germany, which ended up with Italy winning 2-1 in a shocker.\u00a0 They\u2019re playing Spain tonight and the winner wins the tournament (It\u2019s going to be crazy tonight whether Italy wins or loses).<\/p>\n My final two days in Bologna seemed to focus more on lectures than on screenings, not because the movies weren\u2019t good (there were plenty of great movies), but rather because the talks intrigued me so much.\u00a0 The day started with a talk by Andrea Kalas of Paramount, who discussed the studios recent restorations of both Samson and Delilah and Wings, both of which were showing at the festival.\u00a0 She talked about the difficulty of restoring the three-strip Technicolor of Samson and Delilah (which is essentially three restorations in one) but spent more time talking about Wings, which was the first film to ever win Best Picture.\u00a0 The restoration of Wings was extensive, from restoring the film from the best copy they had (a dupe negative from the 1950s) to re-recording the original score, and adding sound effects to the final product.\u00a0 When I saw the film the next day, it did not disappoint.\u00a0 It looked amazing and is now easily one of my favorite silent films ever.\u00a0 After that, I went to the 9th<\/sup> annual DVD awards hosted by the festival, in which a panel of five film historians\/DVD enthusiasts gave out several awards.\u00a0 It was interesting because most of the winners were films I\u2019d never heard of before, but they\u2019re definitely on my map now.\u00a0 Following a lovely lunch, I returned to the theatre to see Raoul Walsh\u2019s Me and My Gal<\/em>, a truly fantastic comedy starring Spencer Tracy that is, unfortunately, unavailable on DVD.\u00a0 After that was an intense round-table discussion of digital vs. film stock in terms of both storage, presentation, and preservation.\u00a0 While one of the panelists was totally against digital, most agreed that the use of both, for the time being, is the best way to go in terms presentation, but in terms of storage and preservation, all the panelists agreed that digital was drastically inferior and that it will make future restorations of films shot digitally incredibly difficult, if not impossible.\u00a0 Once a digital file of a film is corrupted, you pretty much have to delete it.\u00a0 As we\u2019ve seen with film, even if the camera negative is damaged, it can still be repaired and fixed, but most of the world doesn\u2019t seem concerned with this dilemma, although I hope they soon will be.\u00a0 After a nap and dinner came my most anticipated screening of the entire festival: the brand new restoration of David Lean\u2019s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia<\/em>.\u00a0 Grover Crisp, who oversees restorations at Sony, got up and spoke before the screening in the Piazza, telling us that this was the official premiere of the new restoration (it had screened at Cannes, but was not finished at the time).\u00a0 With that, the lights went down and Maurice Jarre\u2019s majestic score began.\u00a0 From the Columbia logo alone, I knew that we were in for a treat.\u00a0 The movie has never looked better, and with each viewing, I come to love the film even more (it\u2019s now certainly in my top five favorite films of all time).\u00a0 Even though the movie ran nearly four hours (the intermission was a mere five minutes as opposed to the normal ten to fifteen), it flew by.\u00a0 It was truly an amazing experience.\u00a0 For those of you who\u2019d like to see it, it\u2019s playing at the Academy theatre in Los Angeles on the 19th<\/sup> and the screening is open to the public (you can find tickets online).\u00a0 I highly suggest you go.<\/p>\n As great as Lawrence<\/em> was, I did find one fault: because the screening ran so long, I overslept the next morning and missed Grover Crisp\u2019s discussion of the restoration.\u00a0 Several of the other Chapman students here did go and told me that it was a fantastic discussion filled with lots of insight into the restoration process.\u00a0 I did, though, make it in time for Kevin Brownlow\u2019s talk about David Lean and the film.\u00a0 Brownlow, who wrote Lean\u2019s biography, spent about an hour discussing the film\u2019s production and the troubles that led up to it (there had been numerous attempts to make a movie about T.E. Lawrence before Lean\u2019s, but all of them fell apart before production).\u00a0 His talk gave us some fascinating insight into the creation of this epic film.\u00a0 After that, I saw my final Raoul Walsh film of the festival: Band of Angels.\u00a0 <\/em>All I will say is even though the film has Clark Gabel and Sidney Poitier, stay away from it at all costs, it\u2019s terrible.\u00a0 That night, in the Piazza, we saw three Chaplin shorts: Easy Street, The Immigrant, <\/em>and The Rink<\/em>.\u00a0 Sitting around with a couple thousand people laughing at the genius of Chaplin was a perfect way to finish off the festival.<\/p>\n Even with the terrible heat and humidity, I could not have enjoyed this trip any more.\u00a0 I want to thank Dean Bassett, Professor Emily Carman, and Dodge College for making this trip possible.\u00a0 If this trip happens again next year, I cannot recommend it enough to all of you out there, and to anyone who might read this who doesn\u2019t attend Dodge College, you too should seriously consider going.\u00a0 It\u2019s an unusual, but fantastic film festival in the food capital of Italy.\u00a0 What\u2019s not to love?!<\/p>\n Ciao for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello everyone.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m packing up and getting ready to head out from Bologna tomorrow after an amazing week.\u00a0 Before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":19923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,23],"tags":[150,151,152,153,159],"class_list":["post-19881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-dodge","category-film-studies-programs","tag-film-studies","tag-international","tag-italy","tag-travel","tag-travel-course"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}