Martin Scorsese Presents: The Sag Harbor Cinema Festival of Preservation will return for its fourth consecutive year from tomorrow through Monday with an eclectic program of 15 films.
Mr. Scorsese will be at the cinema on Sunday at 8:30 p.m. to take questions and introduce “Leave Her to Heaven,” John M. Stahl’s film noir masterpiece starring Gene Tierney as one of cinema’s most dangerous and sympathetic femmes fatales. “Heaven” was restored by the Film Foundation, which was founded in 1990 by Mr. Scorsese together with other leading filmmakers.
This year’s festival will cover a wide range of cinematic genres, eras, and artistic visions, and will explore different notions of preservation, with special attention to the importance of home movies and the contributions of private film collectors to the cause of preservation.
“I am very grateful to the archivists, preservation specialists, organizations, and filmmakers that have enriched this special weekend with their presence and their work,” said Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the cinema’s founding artistic director. “As a curator, private collectors have always been personal heroes of mine, the people to go to when all hopes for a print were lost. I am thrilled that we can shine a special light on their role.”
Program highlights include new 4K restorations of John Ford’s 1956 monumental western “The Searchers,” with John Wayne and Natalie Wood, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 “North by Northwest” with Cary Grant, James Mason, and Eva Marie Saint, one of the director’s most iconic films about an innocent man unjustly accused.
Sergei Parajanov, a Soviet film director and screenwriter who is widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was considered subversive during his life, because his films eschewed the didactic socialist realism approved by the authorities. On the centennial of his birth, the cinema will show “The Color of Pomegranates” (1969), a portrait of the Armenian troubadour Sayat-Nova. Of that film, Mr. Scorsese has said, “I didn’t know any more about Sayat-Nova at the end of the picture than I knew at the beginning, but instead, what Parajanov did was he opened a door into a timeless cinematic experience.”
The cinema’s exploration of classic popular Mexican cinema will feature “Take Me in Your Arms,” a 1954 melodrama by Julio Bracho. The director and his cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa, “bring exquisite atmospherics to each shot with carefully calibrated lighting and meticulous compositions — on location in Veracruz or via stunningly designed and choreographed musical sequences,” says the cinema.
Dorothy Arzner was one of Hollywood’s only female directors in the early 20th century, and the first to direct a film with sound. Her film “The Wild Party” (1929) was the first chance for cinephiles to hear the voice of the silent film star Clara Bow, who plays a college student navigating compromising situations with one of her professors.
Another star from the silent era, Lillian Gish, appears in Victor Sjostrom’s “The Wind” (1928) as a frail young woman from the East, who is thrust against her will into the desert of western Texas.
The cinema’s ongoing tribute to Columbia Pictures will include new restorations of Phil Karlson’s 1958 western noir “Gunman’s Walk,” which was written by Frank Nugent, who a year earlier had written “The Searchers,” and Gus Van Sant’s 1995 black comedy “To Die For,” which stars Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix, Matt Dillon, and Casey Affleck.
Other notable restorations include a 35mm print of “The Gang’s All Here,” Busby Berkeley’s 1943 musical extravaganza that starred Carmen Miranda, and Franklin Schaffner’s 1968 “Planet of the Apes,” starring Charlton Heston in the first of a franchise that keeps on giving.
The avant-garde filmmaker Ernie Gehr, who recently had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, will travel to Sag Harbor to introduce a program of recent shorts he has chosen specifically for the festival.
A new digital restoration of Harmony Korine’s “Gummo” (1997) will also be shown. The director’s debut feature, it evokes this country’s rural underbelly in the Southern Gothic tradition of William Faulkner, according to the cinema.
The festival will also present a program of newly restored classic cartoons from Walter Lantz, the animator and producer known for creating Woody Woodpecker, Chilly Willy, Buzz Buzzard, and others.
The Museum of Modern Art has contributed a program of home movies from Hollywood icons including Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jr., as well as artists such as Aaron Copland, Edward Steichen, and Salvador Dalí.
The festival is timed to coincide with the opening of a new exhibition on the cinema’s third floor. “Think Like a Filmmaker” will showcase film objects, art pieces, and multimedia installations by the independent filmmaker Alan Berliner.
Over the weekend, the festival will host introductions, conversations, and panels with distinguished guests from the preservation world. Among them: Grover Crisp, executive vice president in charge of the Columbia and TriStar libraries at Sony Pictures; Cineric Laboratories; Kevin Schaeffer, director of restoration and library management at the Walt Disney Company; Scott McGee, director of original productions for Turner Classic Movies; Dave Kehr, film curator at the Museum of Modern Art; Joe Lauro of Historic Films Archive, and David Schwartz from the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.
