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:

2:00 pm: Moi syn (My Son). 1928. Directed by Yevgeni Cherviakov

Moi syn (My Son). 1928. USSR. Directed by Yevgeni Cherviakov. Screenplay by Cherviakov, Nikolai Dirin, Iuri Gromov, Viktor Turin. With Gennadii Michurin, Anna Sten, Piotr Beriozov. Silent. World premiere. Silent. Russian intertitles; English subtitles. 49 min.

Believed lost during World War II until its rediscovery in 2008 as two 16mm reels in Argentina's Museum of Cinema, My Son represents one of the most significant recent archival recoveries in Russian cinema. Yevgeni Cherviakov's masterwork illuminates a crucial but previously obscured strand of Soviet filmmaking: the existential-psychological current that developed alongside the era's dominant constructivist and montage movements.

The narrative, revolutionary for its time, centers on a domestic rather than political crisis: Olga Surina's confession to her husband Andrey that their newborn child belongs to another man. Through this intimate framing, Cherviakov crafts a sophisticated exploration of masculine identity and social transformation in the early Soviet period. The film's treatment of infidelity, jealousy, and forgiveness marks a significant departure from the collective heroics typical of 1920s Soviet production, offering instead a deeply personal meditation on changing social values.

Anna Sten's nuanced performance as Olga-one of her last Soviet roles before Samuel Goldwyn brought her to Hollywood-exemplifies the emerging naturalistic acting style that distinguished Soviet cinema of this period. Gennadii Michurin's portrayal of Andrey's internal struggle similarly reflects Cherviakov's commitment to psychological authenticity over ideological didacticism.

Restored by the George Eastman Museum in collaboration with Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken with funding from the Packard Humanities Institute.

4:00 pm: Adventures of Casanova. 1948. Directed by Roberto Gavaldón

Adventures of Casanova. 1948. Mexico/USA. Directed by Roberto Gavaldón. Screenplay by Crane Wilbur, Walter Bullock, Karen DeWolf. With Arturo de Córdova, Lucille Bremer, Turhan Bey. World premiere. Courtesy Cineverse. 83 min.

Shot at Mexico's newly established Estudios Churubusco, this handsome swashbuckler demonstrates Mexican cinema's ability to match Hollywood production values at their height. The film reimagines Casanova as a Sicilian freedom fighter, with the colonial-era Mediterranean setting allowing the studio to repurpose the extensive period architecture and costumes it typically used for Spanish colonial dramas. Eagle-Lion Films' choice to produce at Churubusco, then emerging as Mexico's premier facility through its partnership with RKO, paired Mexican superstar Arturo de Córdova with Hollywood talent Lucille Bremer and Turhan Bey. Under the assured direction of Roberto Gavaldón, fresh from his masterwork La Otra (1946), and with superb cinematography credited to Poverty Row veteran Jack Greenhalgh, the film exemplifies the technical sophistication of Mexico's Golden Age cinema while offering a unique hybrid of Hollywood adventure and Mexican production craft.

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

6:30 pm: Gunman's Walk. 1958. Directed by Phil Karlson

Gunman's Walk. 1958. USA. Directed by Phil Karlson. Screenplay by Frank S. Nugent, Ric Hardman. With Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Kathryn Grant. New York City premiere. Courtesy Swank. 97 min.

Phil Karlson's widescreen Western continues the psychological and thematic complexity that had been transforming the genre since the late 1940s, particularly in its examination of violence and patriarchal authority in the American West. Van Heflin, one of the first Hollywood stars to embrace the neuroticism of the American male, plays Lee Hackett, a veteran rancher whose mythologized tales of frontier conquest have molded his son Ed (Tab Hunter, in a dark and surprisingly effective performance) into a dangerous reflection of outdated values. Kathryn Grant delivers a nuanced performance as Clee Chouard, a half–Native American woman whose romance with Ed's younger brother Davy (James Darren) catalyzes the film's tragic confrontation with racial prejudice and familial obligation.

Frank S. Nugent's sophisticated screenplay (following his work on The Searchers) deepens the decade's ongoing critique of frontier mythology, while Karlson, celebrated for his taut crime dramas (The Phenix City Story, 99 River Street), applies his characteristic attention to power dynamics and moral compromise to the Western format, creating moments of shocking cruelty.

4K digital restoration by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Restored from the 35mm original picture negative and the 35mm original magnetic mono soundtrack master. 4K scanning and digital image restoration by Cineric, Inc. Sound restoration by BluWave Audio. Color grading, conforming, additional image restoration, and DCP creation (preserving the original Cinemascope aspect ratio 2.55:1) by Motion Picture Imaging with colorist Sheri Eisenberg. Restoration supervised by Grover Crisp.