Martin Scorsese will be at the Sag Harbor Cinema Festival of Preservation, on Sunday, November 10th at 8:30pm for an introduction and Q&A followed by a screening of Leave Her to Heaven, John M. Stahl’s Technicolor film noir masterpiece starring Gene Tierney as one of cinema’s most dangerous and sympathetic femmes fatales. The film was restored by The Film Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation and the exhibition of restored and classic cinema that has been leading the cause of film preservation worldwide since Mr. Scorsese established it in 1990.
“Martin Scorsese generously allowed us to use his name when we started this Festival four years ago. Since then, the work of The Film Foundation has been both an inspiration and an important source for my curation of this festival, as well as our repertory programs throughout the year – from films by Michael Powell, Emilio Fernández, Ernst Lubitsch, George Stevens, Marlon Brando, and Djbril Diop Mambéty in past editions of The Festival of Preservation, to John Ford, Sergei Parajanov, John Stahl, and Alfred Hitchock in our 2024 lineup. We are thrilled that he will be joining us in Sag Harbor,” says the Cinema’s Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.
The East End’s annual Martin Scorsese Presents: The Sag Harbor Cinema Festival of Preservation, dedicated to preserving film and its culture, will kick off its fourth edition November 8th, with a packed slate of films, events, Q&As, and special presentations running through Veterans Day Weekend.
A brand new restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest will open the festival on Friday, with a zoom introduction by Warner Bros. Discovery Library Historian George Feltenstein. On Saturday, director Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger, 99 Homes) will visit Sag Harbor to present Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece The Color of Pomegranates. The same day Alexander Payne (The Holdovers, Sideways) will join our audience via zoom to discuss John Ford’s The Searchers.
Among other guests are archivists Kevin Schaeffer (Disney), Grover Crisp (Sony), Katie Trainor (MoMA), and MoMA curators Dave Kehr and Ron Magliozzi. Experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr will host a special program of recent films.
The annual Preservation Panel, followed by a brunch on the third floor, will include presentations and a discussion with archivists, historians, curators, and top preservation experts. Featured this year are: filmmaker and artist Alan Berliner, whose work is exhibited in SHC’s new third floor art show “Think Like a Filmmaker”; Joe Lauro, CEO of Historic Films Archive, who will discuss his recent discovery of The Heart of Lincoln (1922), a lost film by John Ford’s filmmaker brother Francis; Cassandra Moore, Vice President, Mastering and Archive at NBCUniversal, who will expand on the restoration of cartoons by Walter Lantz, creator of Woody Woodpecker; and David Schwartz, independent curator and writer, will be representing The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, the oldest and largest distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the world.
