The Film Archive acquires the last photochemical laboratory in the State

When Esteve Riambau He stepped down last year as director of the Filmoteca de Catalunya, explaining that his only "major regret" upon leaving the center was not having been able to save the last remaining photochemical laboratory in Catalonia, Image Films. "After two years of studies and political struggle, I couldn't get the project valued enough," he confessed. That's why it's such important news that the Filmoteca has acquired the hardware from the Iskra photochemical laboratory in Madrid, the last one of its kind in Spain. This was announced on Wednesday by the Filmoteca's director, Pablo la Parra, during the center's annual review. "We have completed the installation and commissioning of a photochemical duplication laboratory that will guarantee the survival of cellulose nitrate films," explained La Parra, who asserts that with this acquisition, the Filmoteca's Conservation and Restoration Center becomes "an international benchmark in the photochemical preservation of film." Nitrate film was the most common stock for films in the early days of cinema and the beginning of the 20th century, but it is a very unstable and extremely fragile material. The new equipment will allow these works, which are the oldest and most valuable part of the Film Archive's collection, to be preserved in optimal condition. "Not only will we be able to guarantee the preservation of the images, but we will also be able to project them in photochemical format," La Parra emphasizes. "That is to say, we are preserving the art of projection and the way in which these images were achieved." Instead of passively and defeatistly witnessing the private sector's neglect, La Parra insists that, "as a public institution, the Film Archive must regain the initiative in matters of technological sovereignty." From Fritz Lang to Mia Hansen-Løve

Regarding programming, for the first half of next year the Filmoteca will host a major Fritz Lang retrospective focused on his silent film period, which will be screened with musical accompaniment. "Lang transformed silent cinema into an unprecedented laboratory for formal and moral experimentation," notes La Parra, who affirms the enduring relevance of the director of Metropolis As a filmmaker who "reflects on the technological and political changes and the contradictions of the time he lived through, a moment of democratic crisis, war fervor, and totalitarian rise." The Lang retrospective will continue in the summer with the sound period of his filmography.

Other important retrospectives this season will be those dedicated to Barbara Hammer and her vision queer on the United States, the classic Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Shimizu, the Mexican collective Cine Mujer and the essential Dutch documentary filmmaker Johan van der Keuken, the latter in parallel to the CCCB project inspired by his first book of photographs, We are 17 years oldAmong the confirmed guests are the names of the Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude And, in collaboration with the D'A Festival, French director Mia Hansen-Løve and German director Christian Petzold. As part of the Americana section, brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross will also visit the Filmoteca.

The Filmoteca has also modernized its visual communication with the signing of the cartoonist Nadia Hafid, who has illustrated the image for the new season ticket campaign. "Nadia has allowed us to imagine a film library rooted in the neighborhood but open to the world, focused on the individual gaze of the viewers but capable of weaving community," says La Parra, who can boast of the audience figures: with two weeks left in the year, the Film Library has received more than 100,000 visitors.