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:

4:30 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 Cordova, 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.

7:00 pm: Maria Candelaria. 1943. Directed by Emilio Fernandez

Maria Candelaria. 1943. Mexico. Directed by Emilio Fernandez. Screenplay by Fernandez, Mauricio Magdaleno. With Dolores del Rio, Pedro Armendariz, Alberto Galan. New York premiere. In Spanish; English subtitles. 98 min.

Winning both the Palme d'Or and Best Cinematography awards at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, Maria Candelaria marked Mexico's entry into the highest ranks of world cinema. The floating gardens of Xochimilco provide a lyrical background to a self-consciously mythological tale of a pair of lovers (Dolores del Rio and Pedro Armendariz) menaced by a covetous shopkeeper (Miguel Inclan, Mexican cinema's Man You Love to Hate). Cameraman Gabriel Figueroa brilliantly finesses that most difficult of lighting situations: nighttime on water. Director Emilio Fernandez captures the spirit of Mexico's great muralists with his epic vision of a noble peasantry exploited by the petty bourgeoisie. This new restoration, based on the camera negative preserved by Filmoteca UNAM, returns this work to its original visual splendor.

Restored by the Academy Film Archive, Televisa-Univision, Filmoteca UNAM, and The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project, with funding provided by the Material World Foundation. This project was initiated by Fundación Televisa and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.