Scorsese Saves The World (Cinema)

Eugene Hernandez by Eugene Hernandez (May 15, 2009)
Scorsese Saves The World (Cinema)
Efe Carakel from The Auteurs, Martin Scorsese, new World Cinema Foundation head Kent Jones and B-Side's Chris Hyams at the Cannes Film Festival today. Photo by Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE

Making a powerful statement in support of international cinema, Martin Scorsese stepped into the spotlight at the Cannes Film Festival this afternoon to launch an array of partnerships and news aimed and preserving and promoting films from around the world.

Kent Jones is joining Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation as its new executive director as the organization announced alliances with Criterion, The Auteurs, and B-Side to support international cinema.

The Cannes Film Festival, center of international cinema for two weeks each year, aimed considerble awareness at the Foundation today in France, giving Scorsese, WCF’s Kent Jones, Peter Becker from Criterion, Efe Cakarel from The Auteurs, and Chris Hyams from B-Side an opportunity to stump for saving aging international films and promoting movies for discriminating audiences.

“We can make a difference,” Scorsese said this afternoon, “If we can make these films available.”

“Restorations and preservation are meaningful only if people can see the work,” Scorsese added, saying, “Preservation is always an uphill battle. In America, the distribution venues are changing, the models of exhibition are changing.”
Martin Scorsese (center) with Kent Jones, Chris Hyams, and Efe Cakarel at a Cannes fest photo op. Camera phone photo by Liesl Copland.

The Foundation, which has four films in this year’s Cannes Classics section at the Festival de Cannes, will use its alliances to take films from the fest in France to other festivals and museums, followed by a roll out to universities, film clubs, online at The Auteurs, via iTunes and Netflix, through to Criterion DVDs.

“These are considered to be the best films to have ever been made,” praised Cakarel from The Auteurs, adding that the films need to be made available worldwide, for free, so that they can be discovered by international audiences. His site has launched four preserved WCF titles online today.

The Auteurs, a virtual Internet-based cinematheque, will present a World Cinema Foundation portal on their emerging international platform online, incorporating discussion forums, video interviews and editorial content built around the films themselves. B-Side will re-launch and re-develop the WCF website. Criterion will create special DVDs of WCF titles.

“Film culture is richer now than fifteen years ago,” proclaimed Becker from Criterion, saying that these alliances can arm engaged audiences while also reaching out to new moviegoers.

Endeavor Independent, which brokered the deals between the World Cinema Foundation with Criterion, The Auteurs, and B-Side, is on board as a consutant to the organization.

For the full press release, check out the next page.

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posted on May 15, 2009
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