“A true filmmaker can only be one that shows,” wrote Serge Daney about Orphans of the Storm, reflecting on how silent-era grandeur translates to the small screen of broadcast TV. Griffith’s cinema, for Daney, courts “borderline things”: innocence shading into cruelty, faces caught at the instant between execution and deliverance, a “reversal of reversals” that culminates in Robespierre’s gesture and Danton’s charge. Among Hollywood’s revolutions, Daney finds it both “the most staggering” and “the least frivolous”. (Serge Daney, ‘Griffith Shows Us a Thing or Two,’ 1988).
Daney turns a broadcast into a lesson in showing. He salutes the “stubborn showers” who ensured a version that respects the film’s proportions and tempo – the full 1.33:1 image, a cadence nearer to 20fps, and music that accompanies rather than smothers – arguing that care like this separates mere “scheduling” from the ethics of exhibition. In reviving the film from the small to the big screen again, we hope to “show” Griffith’s images so they may astonish us anew.
This programme is presented in collaboration with Arta Barzanji and Gerard-Jan Claes, who edited and compiled for Sabzian the issue ‘Serge Daney and the Promise of Cinema, available in English and French, featuring contributions from critics, academics, and translators from around the world.
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