Vitaphone Rarities

press release:

USA | 16mm, 35mm | 90 min.

Vitaphone was Hollywood’s first widely adopted recorded synchronized sound technology and this program celebrates the moment when Vitaphone shorts -- and live performances -- were common in theaters across America.  This collection of five shorts features the Midwest premiere of the recently restored Molly Picon, the Celebrated Character Comedienne (1929, print courtesy UCLA Film & Television Archive) and filmed performances by Bob Wills, the Nicholas Brothers, and others. The program will be introduced by Ron Hutchinson, the director of the Vitaphone Project and Henry Sapoznik, Director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture, who will also provide live musical interludes. Co-sponsored by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture.

Special Presentations: Spring 2017 is filled with numerous special repertory screenings. Our lineup includes several new restorations, including new DCPs of Julie Dash’s landmark movie Daughters of the Dust, Juzo Itami’s uproarious food comedy Tampopo, and Julien Duvivier’s terrific thriller Panique. We will also present a new DCP of the long-thought-lost RKO proto-disaster movie Deluge which will screen as part of a “flood and fire” double feature with a 35mm print of another RKO super production, The Last Days of Pompeii. Other 35mm showings include the ultra-rare "Moment in Time" cut of animator Richard Williams' magnum opus, The Thief and the Cobbler; Ingmar Bergman’s film of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and two fine IB Technicolor prints of Francis Ford Coppola’s two 1974 releases (and Best Picture Oscar nominees) The Godfather Part II and The Conversation. Plus an evening of musical Vitaphone shorts and live musical performance; Al Pacino in William Friedkin’s controversial Cruising; and two very different Cannon Films adaptations of an Elmore Leonard crime novel classic (52 Pick-Up), made only two years apart!

All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.