Third Annual Festival of Film Preservation

“Martin Scorsese presents The Sag Harbor Cinema Festival of Preservation” returns for a third year and runs November 17 to 20 at the cinema in Sag Harbor Village. Pre-code comedy, classic western, Salvador Dalí’s collaborations with Hitchcock and Walt Disney, pioneering women filmmakers of the silent era, Warner Bros’ roaring thirties, Mexican musical melodrama, Senegalese visionary Djibril Diop Mambéty and a live presentation of William Castle’s bloodcurdling “The Tingler” are some of the highlights of this year’s program. The festival also includes a special exhibit of rare posters on the cinema’s third floor, a wide variety of guests and the Preservation Panel & Brunch, featuring archivists from the major studios as well as Turner Classic Movies, and a presentation by the Women Film Preservation Fund.

“Creating a strong, original repertory program for the East End has always been an important component of the cinema’s mission,” says Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the cinema’s founding artistic director. “It’s a joy to see how our audience has embraced series like the one devoted to Warner Bros’ centennial; the tributes to Douglas Sirk; as well as rediscoveries like ‘Winter Kills’ and ‘Farewell My Concubine.’

“The Festival of Preservation, of course, in its free form concept, is at the very heart of this effort,” she adds. “I am happy to say the slate this year is rich and adventurous as ever. And we have a great roster of guests.”

A new 4K restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945), which includes a famous nightmare sequence designed by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, will be paired with Dalí’s collaboration with Walt Disney, the short “Destino,” storyboarded by the Spanish artist and Disney’s John Hench between 1945 and 1946, but only completed in 2003 through efforts by Walt Disney’s nephew Roy and French animator Dominique Monféry.

The cinema will honor the great, late William Friedkin with a special screening of “Sorcerer” (1977). Friedkin’s favorite film of his, loosely based on Henry-Georges Clouzot’s “Les Salaires de la Peur” and starring Roy Scheider, will be introduced by writer/director Josh Safdie (“Uncut Gems,” “Good Time”). Recently restored by Warner Bros. under the supervision of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Howard Hawks’s masterpiece “Rio Bravo” (1959), with John Wayne, Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson, will be introduced by the Warner Bros.’ Library Historian George Feltenstein via Zoom from Los Angeles. A Q&A with film and art collector, Bob Rubin, a western specialist, will follow the screening.

Sag Harbor Cinema’s ongoing tribute to Warner Bros.’ centennial will dive into the studio’s glorious 1930s era for the festival with 35mm screenings of Mervyn LeRoy’s trailblazing gangster film “Little Caesar” (1931) and “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang” (1932). Linda LeRoy Janklow, daughter of Mervyn LeRoy and Doris Warner, will join in a Q&A to discuss Warner Bros. pioneering of the gangster genre, and thought-provoking social dramas, against the backdrop of the Great Depression.

The Women’s Film Preservation Fund will be one of the new guests of this year’s Preservation Panel and is behind the restoration of several of the silent shorts in a program devoted to pioneering women behind the camera, which includes seminal works by Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, Grace Cunard and Angela Murray Gibson.

Film Forum’s director of repertory programming and founder of Rialto Pictures, Bruce Goldstein, whose previous programs at the festival include “The Nicholas Brothers Presentation” and “Vaudeville 101: A Night at the Palace,” will return to Sag Harbor with his worldwide famous live show of William Castle’s “The Tingler” with Vincent Price.

Following the success of “Enamorada” in 2021 and of the Steinbeck adaptation “The Pearl” last year, the festival will present — in partnership with Cinema Tropical — another collaboration between the Mexican director Emilio “El Indio” Fernández and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, the noir musical melodrama “Victims of Sin” (1951), featuring an incendiary performance by Cuban-born actress and dancer Ninón Sevilla.

Other programs include a screening of Wesley Ruggles’s pre-code sensation “I’m No Angel” (1933) with Cary Grant and Mae West, who is also credited with the story and the script; a MoMA/The Film Foundation restoration of Henry King’s heartbreaking melodrama “Stella Dallas” (1925) with a new score commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art; and a World Cinema Project restoration of “Touki Bouki” (1973) by the innovative Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, a picaresque adventure of two lovers that combines a naturalistic approach with a strain of surrealism. Writer/director Jonas Carpignano (“Mediterranea,” “A Chiara,” “A Ciambra”) will join via zoom from Italy to introduce the film.

The kids and families matinees for the weekend will be a selection of classic Disney shorts, mostly centered on the 1930’s “Silly Symphonies,” but also including a brand new 4K restoration of the autumnal favorite, “The Skeleton Dance” (1929) and Mickey and Minnie Mouse’s first appearance, in “Steamboat Willie” (1928), directed by Walt Disney and animated by the legendary UB Iwerks.

The annual Sag Harbor Cinema Preservation Panel followed by a brunch open to all attendees will include presentations by Grover Crisp, executive vice president in charge of the Columbia and TriStar libraries at Sony Pictures; Kevin Schaeffer, director of restoration and Library management at the Walt Disney Company; TCM’s director of original productions, Scott McGee; Terry Lawler former executive director of New York Women in Film & Television and member of The Women’s Film Preservation Fund; and Simon Lund, director of technical operations at Cineric.

Archivist, filmmaker and CEO of the Historic Film Archives, Joe Lauro, will share a portion of his rare posters collection focusing on the first 40 years of cinema. In Lauro’s own words, “not always the well-known films, but the striking graphics and genres I enjoy.” The exhibit, on the cinema’s third floor, will stay open through the end of the year.

Tickets and passes for the festival are available on the cinema’s website, sagharborcinema.org. Sag Harbor Cinema is at 90 Main Street, Sag Harbor.