An International School on the Cinema Heritage
To mark the close of the 20th century and the 2nd millennium, the Giornate
del Cinema Muto has this year organised a "Collegium Sacilense"
an international school dedicated to the understanding of the world
film heritage. The Festival has always seen its primary mission as to
promote knowledge, understanding and appreciation of this heritage.
The 20th century has been the first era in history to possess the great
communal audio-visual memory that the cinema provides, and its true
value, potential use and the problems of conservation are even now only
imperfectly understood, certainly by the larger public.
We are very conscious that our 600 visitors include practically all
the leading international personalities involved with film history and
heritage - archivists, historians, researchers, academics, museologists
and those individual, private enthusiasts whose work has so often proved
particularly invaluable to scholarship. With this in mind we have formed
the plan for to bring together a small group of students from around
the world, who will be given the opportunity to meet and learn from
the worlds finest authorities on film history and film conservation.
In this way we hope to contribute to the formation of a new generation
- missionaries to the next century and the third millennium, equipped
to carry on the work of promoting understanding of the unique cultural
heritage of the moving image.
The overall theme of the Collegium - given the strategic timing of the
1999 Giornate, as the last major international event of the century
dedicated to the film heritage - is the definition of an overall philosophy
of cinema as the universal memory, along with the way that this philosophy
affects and is affected by the more practical issues of conserving the
cinemas vast patrimony. Some themes for discussion will be the
nature of the audio-visual memory; the value of this memory for future
generations and the perceived fin-de-siĄcle urge to extinguish it; the
problems of conservation and the principles of selection; the traditions,
continuity and development of expertise.