Annual Museum Of Modern Art International Festival of Film

Our annual To Save and Project festival returns in 2025 with a rich selection of newly restored treasures from archives around the world. This year's program spans nearly a century of cinema, from pioneering German Expressionist works like Robert Wiene's Raskolnikow (1923) to groundbreaking independent films of the 1970s like James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971). Films from Argentina, Thailand, India, Syria, the Czech Republic, and beyond highlight cinema's global diversity and the work of film preservation institutions worldwide.

Highlights include the rediscovery of Yevgeni Cherviakov's forgotten Soviet masterpiece My Son (1928), found in Argentina and restored by GEM; the racy pre-Code Hollywood comedy The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932) from the Library of Congress; and Andre Bonzel's Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By, a powerful repurposing of home movies from Janus Films. The program features restorations by major archives and funders, including The Film Foundation, UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Cinemathèque française, and Filmmuseum München.

The series opens on January 9 with the world premiere of MoMA's newly upgraded restoration of Frank Borzage's transcendent romance 7th Heaven (1927), and concludes on January 30 with the world premiere of MoMA's new reconstruction of the long unseen, original 1918 version of Charles Chaplin's World War I comedy Shoulder Arms.

Schedule of Events:

1:30 pm: Raskolnikow. 1923. - Directed by Robert Wiene

Raskolnikow. 1923. Germany. Directed by Robert Wiene. With Grigorij Chmara, Jelisaweta Skulskaja, Alla Tarassowa. North American premiere. Silent. 142 min.

In this haunting adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's masterwork, director Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) melds German Expressionist aesthetics with the naturalistic performance style of exiled Russian actors from the Moscow Art Theater. Shot in Berlin during the tumultuous inflation of 1922, the film represents a unique cultural fusion-its jagged, anti-naturalistic sets providing an externalized landscape for Raskolnikov's tortured psyche, while the Russian ensemble delivers performances of devastating psychological realism.

Grigorij Chmara embodies the murderous student Raskolnikov with harrowing intensity, moving through Andrej Andrejew's distorted architectural spaces like a man trapped in his own fevered conscience. Wiene's revolutionary decision to cast actual Russian emigres-part of Berlin's burgeoning exile community-lends the production an authenticity that transcends its experimental visual style, creating what contemporary critics called "not acting, but: living!"

This new digital restoration, undertaken by Filmmuseum München, reconstructs the film's original tinting and incorporates previously lost footage from surviving prints in the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, and the United States. Though significantly shorter than its original release length, this version represents the most complete assembly of this landmark collaboration between German Expressionist cinema and Russian theatrical tradition.

2K digital reconstruction by Filmmuseum München.

4:30 pm: Mulher de Verdade (A Real Woman).1954. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

Mulher de Verdade (A Real Woman). 1954. Brazil. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. Screenplay by Oswaldo Molles, Miroel Silveira. With Inezita Barroso, Cole Santana, Jose Sanz. North American premiere. Courtesy Maristela Filmes. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 98 min.

After decades of celebrated work in Europe, Alberto Cavalcanti returned to his native Brazil to make this sophisticated satire of class and gender relations. What begins as a seemingly light comedy about a woman caught between two marriages-one to a reformed petty criminal, another to a wealthy playboy-develops into a pointed critique of Brazilian society. Popular singer Inezita Barroso, in an early film role, brings remarkable complexity to Amelia, a character who becomes a reluctant bigamist simply because society never allows her to say no. Cavalcanti's refined visual style, developed through his work with the French avant-garde and Britain's Ealing Studios, creates telling contrasts between Amelia's humble domestic life and the artificial world of São Paulo's elite. This restoration rescues a key work-long overlooked in discussions of Brazilian cinema-from one of world cinema's most cosmopolitan directors.

The 4K digital restoration was conducted for Locarno Heritage by Cinegrell Postproduction GmbH in Zurich by Nicole T. Allemann (Project Coordination and Colour Grading), Ursula Deiss (Digital Restoration), Peter Matthies (Film preparation and Scanning) and Daniel Nestler (Sound Restoration). The project was carried out in collaboration with Cinemateca Brasileira – Sociedade Amigos da Cinemateca, Heritage Online Partner, and Cinematografica Maristela.

7:00 pm: Et j'aime a la fureur (Flickering - Ghosts of Loves Gone By). 2021. - Written and directed by Andre Bonzel

Et j'aime a la fureur (Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By). 2021. France. Written and directed by Andre Bonzel. With Bonzel, Anna Bonzel, Raymond Expedit-Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde. New York premiere. DCP. Courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 96 min.

From Andre Bonzel, co-director of the audacious Man Bites Dog (1992), comes this haunting meditation on love, memory, and the tactile power of cinema. Bonzel draws from a vast archive of amateur films-scenes of courtship, marriage, and domestic life captured on Super 8 and 16mm between the 1920s and 1970s by ordinary people. These flickering fragments of forgotten romances are woven together into a bittersweet reflection on the ephemeral nature of both love and celluloid. In restoring and reanimating these intimate moments, Bonzel creates not just a history of amateur filmmaking but a deeply moving exploration of how we preserve-or attempt to preserve-the most precious moments of our lives.