This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice: Film Restoration Labs with Tiago Ganhão

Screening: Visita ou memórias e confissões/Memories and Confessions by Manoel de Oliveira (PRT, 1982, 68’, 35mm)
Guest: Tiago Ganhão (Restorer at the film laboratory of the Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon)
Public lecture series devoted to notable projects in the fields of film restoration and film heritage, varying from found footage documentary films to the restoration and presentation of 70mm Hollywood classics. This session will conclude with a screening of Memories and Confessions by Manoel de Oliveira.
Each session will cover a different topic and feature an introductory lecture by Giovanna Fossati (Chief Curator at EYE and Professor of Film Heritage at the UvA), followed by an extended Q&A with an invited (inter)national expert on the theme and a film screening.
The sixth and final lecture of the series will focus on the work of film restoration laboratories, the decline of commercial laboratories and the rebirth of artist-run film laboratories. Many traditional film laboratories have gone out of business since the so-called digital rollout in 2012 when, in most Western countries, the production, distribution and projection of film prints was replaced by a digital film workflow. Only a few specialized laboratories have survived. One of these is the ANIM (Arquivo Nacional das Imagens em Movimento) photochemical laboratory, part of the Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema in Lisbon.
EYE has invited Tiago Ganhão, a 13-year veteran film restorer at ANIM, to discuss the laboratory’s history and expertise. Ganhão will address the different workflows used to preserve and restore films, demonstrate fragments of recent projects and focus on ANIM’s experiences collaborating with artist-run film labs. The session will conclude with a screening of Memories and Confessions (1982), one of ANIM’s recent restoration projects.
In 1982, director Manoel de Oliveira made Memories and Confessions in his home in Porto, where he had lived for many decades. The film never made it to cinemas, as Manoel de Oliveira requested that the film be shown only after his death. In 2015, de Oliveira passed away at the age of 106. The film is a personal document of the director’s life, a self-portrait containing home videos, photographs, confessions and anecdotes.