Film Lectures by Robert Gitt

October 16 and 18, 2006

Together with the Viennale, the Film Museum presents one of the most entertaining and knowledgeable film educators and archivists in the world. Robert Gitt's legendary "lectures" are actually films: brilliantly restored and compiled film materials which are intricately combined with his live commentary.

Gitt, a film historian and the Senior Film Preservation Officer at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, was one of the initiators of the current boom in classic film restoration. In Vienna he will be presenting his two most famous lectures.

The History and Preservation of Color in Motion Pictures is a treasure chest of film clips in a kaleidoscope of colours, from the earliest methods of handcolouring (around 1900) to Agfacolor, Eastmancolor and above all Technicolor, one of the most influential media technologies of the 20th century. Gitt's second lecture is based on a find which goes far beyond anything encompassed by the term "treasure chest", at least for the many fans of the film involved here.

Charles Laughton Directs "The Night of the Hunter" is a rare, detailed glimpse of the directorial work which went into the making of this classic. It is the only major work in film history for which the complete takes, outtakes and director's on-camera instructions have survived.

Laughton the director once again becomes an actor as, together with Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish and the child actors of The Night of the Hunter, he "carves" out sentence after sentence, and image after image in his sole directorial effort.