cine, registro vivo de nuestra memoria (film the living record of our memory) (w&d inés toharia)

This is one of those films that if you are a cineaste, you have to watch. There will always be this contradiction about cinema, in that it is an art that is inherently technological, but this is something which works against its longevity. Cinema exists in the dark, in cans or hard drives or clouds or DVDs. It is projected from these spheres of existence onto a screen, but when the projector is switched off, the film has to live on somehow. Toharia’s film opens by explaining how the vast majority of cinema from the silent era is lost forever, victim of recycling for the silver, or fire, because nitrate is highly flammable, or just decay, because film itself is an unstable substance. The film goes on to reveal how the art or science of restoration has evolved, referring to lost classics that have been rediscovered in the most unlikely of places (the lost footage from Metropolis which turned up in Buenos Aires, for example). It also addresses the fact that much of the great cinema of earlier eras is lost forever, and in amongst that is the work of great cineastes whose names we shall never know. The film is wide ranging in its remit, looking at the lost films of Africa, Asia and South America, as well as the more obvious spheres of North America and Europe. Toharia manages to cram a vast amount of information into the film’s two hour running time. The ghost images from lost films which have been partially recovered are inexplicably moving. The film constantly reminds us of the curious magic that is the moving image, a means of cheating time and capturing memory which humankind has never enjoyed before. This is a glorious film which should be seen by anyone with an interest in looking at screens.