Scorsese Saves The World (Cinema)

The Auteurs’ partnership with the WCF makes four of the film titles immediately available on a global level through a newly dedicated WCF portal on their site. Members of The Auteurs can share ratings and reviews of these and other WCF films with their friends both on the site and other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The Auteurs will also host forums for discussion around the films and filmmakers, video interviews with filmmakers and experts, as well as articles about the films and the restoration process.

In addition to exhibition of the films, B-Side’s partnership with WCF and The Auteurs will focus on re-developing and re-launching the WCF website, making it a full-service destination for information about the WCF titles [del.], a central source of information on where and how the films can be seen, and a destination for social networking among fans of the WCF films.

Titles presented by the WCF at this year’s Cannes Classics Series include Shadi Abdel Salam’s AL MOMIA (The Mummy - The Night of Counting the Years - Egypt, 1969), Edward Yang’s A BRIGHTER SUMMMER DAY (Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian - Taiwan, 1991), and Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gomez Muriel’s REDES (THE WAVE, Mexico, 1936). Previous titles include Metin Erksan’s SUSUZ YAZ (Dry Summer - Turkey, 1964), Djibril Diop Mambety TOUKI BOUKI (Senegal, 1973), Kim Ki-Young’s HANYO (The Housemaid - South Korea, 1960), and Ahmed El Maanouni’s TRANCES / EL HAL (Transes - Morocco, 1981).

“The Auteurs is an online movie theatre where you watch, discover and discuss great films. It’s a community of the most interested and interesting film fans in the world and so a perfect partner for the WCF,” said Founder and CEO Efe Cakarel.  “We are proud to host these films restored by the World Cinema Foundation.”  Partners Eduardo Costantini and Hengameh Panahi added, “We’re very enthusiastic to see The Auteurs becoming the online destination for the WCF films.”

“B-Side is dedicated to using digital technology to connect audiences and films,” says B-Side’s Founder and CEO Chris Hyams.  “By working with the WCF, B-Side puts its expertise in technology, digital marketing and zero-cost exhibition to work promoting a group of beautifully-restored films that deserve to be seen, in a more accessible way than they’ve ever been available before.”

Kent Jones joins the foundation with the mission to take WCF titles to new platforms.  “I’m proud to be joining Marty on the World Cinema Foundation, and excited. There are so many titles around the world in need of restoration and preservation, some of them known to film lovers, many of them little known if at all. They were made in countries which currently lack the resources or the ability to give them the attention they deserve. Our job is to facilitate, to work with filmmakers, to get these titles, selected by the filmmakers on our advisory board, properly restored and then to help get them seen and appreciated. I’m excited to be working with Gian Luca Farinelli and his team at the Bologna Fillm Archive, with Efe at The Auteurs and Chris at B-Side, and most of all with the filmmakers themselves,” says Jones.

Jones served as Associate Director of Programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from 1998 to 2009, and for seven years he served on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival.  He has written on film extensively for publications all over the world, including The New York Times, Cahiers du Cinema, and Film Comment, where he is Editor-at-Large. In 2007 a collection of his work, PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, was published by Wesleyan University Press. He has served on many film festival juries, including at Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam, Thessaloniki, and Buenos Aires, among others. He is also the co-writer of MY VOYAGE TO ITALY, Martin Scorsese’s epic documentary on Italian cinema, and the writer and director of the acclaimed documentary VAL LEWTON: THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS. He and Scorsese are also the co-writers and directors of A LETTER TO ELIA, a documentary on Elia Kazan which is currently in post-production.

All of the distribution deals were structured and negotiated by Endeavor Independent.

# # #