(Don Siegel, US 1971, 102 min.)

Perhaps no genre of filmmaking changed more drastically during the 1970s than the police drama. While the pre-Dragnet procedurals of the late ’40s frequently took advantage of real-life locations, and cynicism and punchy action had long colored the genre thanks to film noir, the cop flicks of the 1970s looked — and felt — different. The urban landscape had acquired an extra layer of grime, and Hollywood had changed to fit: location shooting was the norm, action was more visceral, scores were funkier, and the line between heroes and villains was thinner than ever. The result was a cycle of exciting, visually striking, and morally complex films that quickly established themselves as modern classics. On Thursdays in May, we’ll be crisscrossing the country to high Cop Movies of the 1970s light some of the best of these films, making stops in San Francisco (Dirty Harry), Los Angeles (The New Centurions), Arizona (Electra Glide in Blue), and, of course, New York City (Across 110th Street and Serpico).
— Lori Donnelly, Film Programmer
Films and Screenings

May/June 2012

Last year, when the Museum’s two bi-monthly publications were merged into one the need to save funds and the wish to make varieties of content available to our many audiences necessitated quick action. Unfortunately there wasn’t a great deal of time to plan. The intent was to make changes as issues progressed and many who receive the publication were quite patient as Films & Events evolved.

For about the last six months, staff from the Communications and Visitor Engagement, Motion Picture, and Development departments have been meeting regularly in a conference room on the 2nd floor of the house to discuss a much-desired overhaul of Films & Events. Discussions centered around what to include (and exclude), the best format for delivery of the most interesting content, and how the publication could best serve our current and potential members as well as the Museum’s mission. All of the discussion was fed by the enormous amount of feedback we’ve received about our publications from members and readers in the extended Eastman House family.

That joint team is pleased to be launching the new version of Films & Events with the May/June 2012 issue. You’ll find that the new publication’s tighter language and more-fluid magazine layout allows for expanded content in the form of features, profiles, behind-the-scenes info, and highlights of recent online posting. The goal of this F&E (as we call it in-house) is to engage our audiences in more creative and interesting ways and increase flexibility of content — all while not significantly increasing the associated costs or adding to staff time.

You can still get Films & Events mailed to your home, a benefit of Museum membership and a subscription to the bi-monthly publication is now included with each purchase of a Dryden Theatre Take-10 pass. Additionally you’ll be able to read e-versions of each issue on the publications page that can be found under “The Museum” in the top navigation bar at www.eastmanhouse.org.

In the mean time, here is a link to the first issue. We welcome your feedback at info@geh.org. And on behalf of the staff thank you, as always, for your interest and support.

Amy Schelemanow is the Publications Manager/Creative Director and is managing editor of Eastman House’s publications Films & Events and Image magazine. Her work for George Eastman House has won numerous regional and national awards. Additionally, Schelemanow has been an adjunct instructor at Rochester Institute of Technology and designs exposure the journal of the Society for Photographic Education.

Empire State Building Construction Worker Touching The Top Of The Chrysler Building
Date: 1930
Photo Credit: Lewis Hine
Property of: George Eastman House

Today the World Trade Center is once again the tallest building in New York surpassing the Empire State building.

(Trois Couleurs: Rouge, Krzysztof Kieslowski 1994, France/Poland/Switzerland, 99 min., French w/subtitles)

Some film trilogies are deliberate creations: meticulous superproductions with elaborate thematic and narrative designs that aspire to the density of novels. Others occur more organically, with filmmakers gradually improvising after an unexpected breakthrough.

An exemplar of the latter type is Abbas Kiarostami’s informal Koker trilogy. The opening feature, Where Is the Friend’s House?, offers a straightforward but meditative fable about a young boy’s search for a classmate’s home. When an earthquake nearly destroyed the village where Friend’s House was shot, Kiarostami embarked on a quest of his own, returning to Koker to learn the whereabouts of the boys who starred in the film. He fictionalized this search in the faux-documentary Life and Nothing More… and further fictionalized the making of that film in Through the Olive Trees. As described by the Pacific Film Archive, “Expecting to find death, Kiarostami found life, and proceeded to transform it into cinema.” The Koker films garnered an enormous reputation but have remained difficult to see, not least because Through the Olive Trees was acquired and then withheld from release by Miramax. At the time, Miramax was focusing its attention on Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy — a multinational monument to the history of art house cinema and a forward-looking dream of a European Union. Crisscrossing the continent and musing on fate, discipline, and love, Kieslowski’s triptych scales impossible emotional heights. It also looks particularly interesting today as the eurozone that Kieslowski celebrates teeters on the economic brink — a fate also shared by Freedonia, the make-believe country inhabited by the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, the beloved conclusion to their informal trilogy of anarchic, animal-inflected comedies conceived directly for the screen.

Films and Screenings

— Kyle Westphal, Chief Projectionist

(Leo McCarey, US 1933, 68 min.)

13) Honors for Eastman House and the  Photo and Film World

Dresden Engle, public relations manager:

During Tony’s tenure Eastman House received top honors for motion picture preservation from the International Documentary Association and Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, plus the Briggs & Stratton “Top Ten Lawns” for the estate’s landscaping. The Museum has also earned the Gold Award for podcasts from the American Association of Museums as well as numerous awards for publications and public relations from the American Marketing Association and Public Relations Society of America. Bannon himself also has been honored for his work. He was named CEO of the Year by the Public Relations Society of America, Rochester Chapter, in 2008, and in 2007 Tony earned the Golden Career Award from the FOTOfusion Festival of Photography & Digital Imaging. In 2010, Tony and an exhibition he curated that year – Roger Ballen: Photographs 1982-2009— were ranked among the top five finalists for Curator/Exhibition of the Year by the Lucie International Photography Awards. A total 26 prestigious awards were given by Eastman House to filmmakers and actors and celebrated citizens over the last 16 years, including the George Eastman Award, title of Eastman Honorary Scholar, Eastman Medal of Honor, and Eastman House Honors. Recipients include Meryl Streep, Dennis Hopper, Ken Burns, Kim Novak, Richard Gere, Tony Curtis, Jessica Lange, John Landis, Graham Nash, and Jeff Bridges.

Tony Bannon, left, with musician/photographer Graham Nash, when Nash received the title of George Eastman Honorary Scholar. At right is Trustee Lisa Brubaker.

14) National Accomplishments:

Pamela Reed Sanchez, director of strategic planning and resource development:

While Tony would be too modest to share this himself, he has accomplished much nationally during his tenure. He enlarged and diversified the Board of Trustees, which has more of a national focus with most members from outside the Rochester area, and helped enlarge our bases of support in cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Chicago. Museum efforts under his direction garnered lead stories in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Variety, Popular Photography, and Forbes, to name only a few. He has increased Eastman House’s face globally through his world travels, serving as a guest judge for major awards and festivals, and collaborations, such as teaming with Kodak and leading artists to present Photo Week at Chautauqua in summer 2010. Tony has lead fundraising campaigns resulting in tens of millions of dollars for the Museum’s endowment and urgent capital needs.

15) Alliances

Roger Bruce, Director of Interpretation (retired): George Eastman House announced and forged a formal alliance with International Center for Photography in New York City in 2000, making collections and programs more accessible to the public. Our most aggressive joint project to date was the critically acclaimed exhibition and book titled Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes, featuring the Southworth & Hawes archive at Eastman House as well as 37 additional institutions. In December 2010, Eastman House announced a formal alliance with the University of Rochester, across all disciplines, which the American Association of the Museums called it the most extensive museum and university alliance in existence.

10) Outreach and Community Engagement

Eliza Kozlowski, Director of Communications and Visitor Engagement:

Tony has encouraged a heightened visitor experience and established the Museum’s first visitor services program. And he has spearheaded community collaboration to present socially conscious exhibitions and programs, such as the Picturing What Mattersexhibition one year after the Sept. 11 attacks, which hosted more than thousands of public photo submissions and 3,000 people on the Eastman House lawn for a candlelight vigil. Tony has served the community on the boards of Arts & Cultural Council, Rochester School for the Deaf, and High Falls Film Festival. And he championed the creation of the Eastman Young Professionals organization, which today is 2,000-members strong.

Eastman House coordinated a community vigil during the exhibition "Darfur, Darfur."

11) Camera Technology Collection

Todd Gustavson, Curator of Technology:

We adopted an aggressive collecting policy during Tony Bannon’s tenure, during which time he appointed me curator of the Technology Collection. He’s like the Energizer Bunny; he just keeps going and going. The technology vault has doubled in size and the collection is now the world’s largest collection of cameras and related equipment. Tony also has encouraged the publishing of books to showcase the collection, including the best-selling 2009 book Camera, out in paperback this September, and the 2011 book 500 Cameras, now available as an e-book, plus an upcoming book on snapshots.

Todd Gustavson, left, signs copies of the 2009 book "Camera."

12) Entrepreneurship

Peter Briggs, Manager of Commercial Development:

Tony realizes the importance of a staff position focused on commercial development. With this as a focus, Eastman House has entered into agreements to showcase the collection and raise funds through sale of prints, image-licensing, and publishing of books, including Getty Images, New York Times Store, Sterling Publishing, and Orange Logic. We have partnered with the company Levenger to sell reproductions of George Eastman’s reading desk and with Marshall Field’s to sell framed prints of the “First Photograph of Lighting” from our collection. We are continually looking for opportunities to showcase our collections while realizing the benefit of monetization for our non-profit museum and the millions of photo and film artifacts we preserve.

7) The Eastman Legacy

Kathy Connor, Curator of the George Eastman Legacy Collection, and

Amy Kinsey, the Nancy R. Turner Landscape Curator

Public access to the personal and business archives of George Eastman was opened in 1999 with the creation of the George Eastman Archive & Study Center, which is open to the public on site and can be accessed worldwide on the Internet. That same year the first endowment for the historic house and surrounding grounds was established, following the successful House & Garden Campaign. Key restoration projects include the bedroom of Eastman’s mother and the front lawn and backyard fence was rehabilitated using original plans. Eastman’s contributions to Rochester and the world were highlighted in 2004 with the exhibition The Remarkable George Eastman, much of it on view today on the mansion’s second floor. And the Eastman Archive has been made richer with the acquisition of the Kodak advertising collection as well as original artifacts from his niece’s family, with whom Tony and the Museum have fostered close ties.”

Eastman House acquired the Kodak advertising collection, totaling more than 100,000 print ads, during Tony Bannon's tenure.

8 ) Photography Acquisitions

Dr. Alison Nordström, Senior Curator of Photographs, Director of Exhibitions, and USA Director of the George Eastman House/Ryerson University MA in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management:

Major acquisitions in the last 16 years for which Tony played a key role include Kodak’s Colorama collection, the Roger Merton collection, the last roll of Kodachrome from Steve McCurry, and the Edward Steichen estate — including two rare Steichen autochromes personally acquired for the collection by Tony . Also, during Tony’s time the Museum has experienced its highest-attended exhibitions in its 64-year history.

A 1908 autochrome by Edward Steichen, acquired for the collection by Tony Bannon.

9) Online Global Reach/Education

Roxana Aparicio Wolfe, curator of education and online communities

In these 16 years, we have reinforced our dedication to arts-in-education partnerships and services. In Rochester, this has been through our long-standing involvement in the V.I.T.A.L. (Visual Integration of Technology Arts and Language) program and a focus on teacher training, as well as our summer photography camps. We’ve seen the impact of technology as a means to shape and increase how our audiences access our resources far beyond our doors, even earning top honors from the American Association of Museums for our podcasts. Tony has enthusiastically supported our web and social-media efforts, recognizing the role the Museum has to interpret, serve, and engage.

4) Library Collection

Rachel Stuhlman, Librarian and Curator of Rare Books for The Richard and Ronay Menschel Library:

There’s never been a dull moment since Tony arrived. He is so full of vitality and ideas. Combine the concepts “pragmatic” with “Utopian” and there you have Tony. Under Tony’s leadership the library collection has grown by several thousand volumes. All healthy growing libraries eventually outgrow their space, and our biggest challenge has been realizing a major vault expansion, now under construction. In 2007, the Eastman House and Steidl co-published a critically acclaimed book about the library collection from the pre-history of photography to the advent of Modernism, entitled Imagining Paradise,which is now a standard reference book on the photographic literature of the 19th century.

Eastman House's critically acclaimed 2007 book "Imagining Paradise" showcases the library's treasures.

5) Motion Picture Acquisitions and Preservation

Ed Stratmann, associate curator of motion pictures

Significant collections have been acquired into the motion picture collection in the last 16 years, including the Technicolor corporate archive, the archive of Merchant Ivory Productions, and continued deposits by filmmakers such Martin Scorsese, Ken Burns, Spike Lee, and Kathryn Bigelow. Key restoration projects during Tony’s tenure include the films Lost World, Big Parade, Ten Commandments, Sherlock Holmes, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, and Huckleberry Finn. Eastman House continues to be a world-leader in preservation and a respected leader and partner in the field.

A three-strip Technicolor camera, which is on view in the Eastman House camera gallery.

6) Digitization of Collections
Roger Bruce, Director of Interpretation (retired)

Together Tony and I introduced a digital awareness among trustees and staff, to share our collection with the world. To date Eastman House has digitized close to half of its collection of photographs and was at the forefront of this effort among museums. Today Eastman House partners with Orange Logic to license collection images, has a strong presence on Flickr’s “The Commons” and is building a solid platform for the management of the Museum’s digital assets.  In the early days these initiatives were often foundational, requiring a vision for the long-game and a constancy for which I will always be grateful.

Yesterday we kicked off our week-long block with a look at our graduate programs, all started under Tony’s leadership:

http://blog.eastmanhouse.org/2012/04/23/to-celebrate-tony-bannons-tenure-we-share-16-museum-successes-over-his-16-years/

Learn more about Tony’s farewell gala: http://shop.eastmanhouse.org/technicolor-philanthrophist.html

At the top of the list are advancements in higher education, with one-year certificate programs and master’s degrees in film and photographic preservation, plus a decade-long fellowship program in photograph conservation.

1) The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation

Dr. Paolo Cherchi Usai, Senior Curator of Motion Pictures:

I recall Tony hammering out details with me, Jeffrey Selznick, and Trustee Ted Curtis in 1996 about starting the school, which was to be the first of its kind in the world. We soon will celebrate the graduation of the 16th class. The program offers a master’s degree in conjunction with the University of Rochester, and archives around the world are staffed by Selznick School graduates, allowing for a connected network that benefits film preservation globally.

"Gone With the Wind" screen tests, restored via a Selznick School project.

2) Photographic Preservation and Collections Management

Dr. Alison Nordström, Senior Curator of Photographs, Director of Exhibitions, and USA Director of the George Eastman House/Ryerson University MA in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management:

Eastman House has been training the next generation in the photographic field since 1947 and now more than ever there is a need for formal, high-level educational programs. To educate future leaders in the field, we established in 2003 a Master of Arts degree in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management with Toronto’s Ryerson University. This program, now also available as a one-year certificate program, is a comprehensive combination of practical and classroom experience, offering students access to renowned collections and faculty, as well as our library of photographica and conservation lab. Graduates of this program are working in archives and museums across the globe.

Conservator Taina Meller, left, with students of the Photographic Preservation and Collections Management master's degree program.

3) Photograph Conservation

Taina Meller, Head of the Kay R. Whitmore Conservation Center:

George Eastman House has been a major influence in photograph conservation education and research under Dr. Bannon’s leadership. From 1999 to 2009, the Advanced Residency Program, generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and offered in conjunction with RIT’s Image Permanence Institute, provided an extraordinary educational opportunity for almost 40 conservators from all over the world. Today, many of the historic processes previously taught as part of this fellowship program are taught in workshops throughout the year at Eastman House and at the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock , England. In recent years George Eastman House conservators have been called upon to conduct most challenging conservation treatments on iconic photographs. These include 1848 Daguerreotype Panorama of Cincinnati Waterfront, a significant collection of the first ever photographs of Manila, Philippines, and a glass interpositive of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Hesler portrait of 1860, Lincoln’s favorite –  which arrived at the museum as shards of glass. An unprecedented series of grant awards supporting conservation have been hallmark achievements during Dr. Bannon’s tenure. These range from the NEA’s Save America’s Treasures grant to the inaugural award by the National Science Foundation, which we received collaboratively with the University of Rochester.

Tomorrow: We look at motion picture acquisitions, our library, and digitization of the collections

Ten renowned photographers from Magnum Photos are here visiting Rochester until the 29th for a comprehensive photographic survey of the city and its people. The participating artists in the House of Pictures project are Bruce Gilden, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Alec Soth, Larry Towell, Alex Webb, and Donovan Wylie. They will explore multiple facets of Rochester covering subjects from gangs to gardens, youth and weddings to aging strippers, as well as George Eastman House.

image by Martin Parr via postcardsfromamerica.tumblr.com

At 2 p.m. Saturday, April 28, the Magnum photographers will participate in a panel discussion at the conclusion of the project, at the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House. The talk will be moderated by Alison Nordström, senior curator of photographs, and followed by a book signing with all artists. This event is included with museum admission.

“Magnum represents the continued vitality of photography as a tool for exploration, interpretation, and thought,” Nordström said. “It is fitting that George Eastman House, which shares these values, is participating in this project to tell our story at this moment in time.”

Saturday April 28, 2012 at 2:00pm in Dryden Theatre

Related links: 

• Postcards from America Tumblr
• Magnum on Facebook
• Magnum on Flickr

Street hawkers "selling" Huckleberry Finn outside the Coronado Theatre in 1931.

Dazzling marquees, large cut-outs of stars, eye-catching posters greeting passersby, street hawkers, parades, and star appearances (or look-alike contests) — just a few ways Hollywood studios encouraged movie-theater owners to create a buzz in towns and cities to “sell” movies during the Golden Age of cinema.

Ballyhoo: The Art of Selling the Movies, an exhibition on view now at George Eastman House, highlights the innovative lobby displays, outdoor advertising, and merchant tie-ins that were a hallmark of film exhibition during the era of the corporate studio system, which was at its peak between 1925 and 1950. The featured images are drawn primarily from the publicity stills and photographs collected by Ray Rueby Sr., and the studio publicity departments of Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

During the 25 years that are the focus of this exhibition, studios devised bigger, brassier, and glitzier productions to entice patrons facing the Great Depression and a world war.  The publicity efforts that accompanied the films are, in this exhibition, the star of the show.

Attention-grabbing signs for "Private Hargrove" at the Astor Theatre in 1944.

The motion picture industry was considered a wild and uncertain concern in its first two decades. By the early 1920s, as smaller concerns merged into fewer and larger corporations, the industry became stable enough to be considered a legitimate business by Wall Street investors. During these formative years, motion picture studios created a system of vertical integration that allowed them to control every aspect of the business — production, distribution, and exhibition. Corporate ownership of movie theatres and block booking ensured regular exhibition throughout the country.

“We sell tickets to theaters, not movies.”

- Marcus Loew, Loew’s Inc. (1920s)

Studios also provided pre-packaged publicity campaigns to their theatre chains to help fill theater seats in a highly competitive market. Much of the publicity was carried out at the site of exhibition, the theaters themselves.  In the age of the “movie palace,” theaters could be alluring structures in their own right, but exhibitors continually refashioned their facades and lobbies to attract audiences week after week.

Theater managers adapted the studios’ strategies — provided to them in the form of pressbooks — to their own venues. Theater managers worked with local merchants on cooperative campaigns (tie-ins) to advertise films in shop windows, stage contests and giveaways, and display merchandise from stores in theatre lobbies. Upon entering the lobby itself, moviegoers encountered creative displays embellished with movie stills and even three-dimensional recreations of movie settings.

Ballyhoo is part of the See: Untold Stories exhibition, which showcases the Eastman House collections, on view through Sept. 16, 2012.

TCM's Robert Osborne, left, with Eastman House's Jared Case, who is in Hollywood this week at the TCM Classic Film Fest.

Film festivals and repertory theaters have long been the best way to revisit our cinematic heritage. Festivals like Cannes and Telluride, and venues like our own Dryden Theatre have histories that reach decades back. Our preservations play at these venues around the world. This weekend, one of our favorite preservations will play at the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival in Hollywood.

Still somewhat new, the TCM Classic Film Fest gives the audience a chance to see famous Hollywood films in famous Hollywood theaters like Grauman’s Chinese, the Egyptian, and the Cinerama Dome. Over four days, the festival runs five screens simultaneously, not including special screenings. The festival also offers the chance to see Hollywood stars and technicians, film scholars and preservation archivists talk about the films.

The year, George Eastman House offered the festival Lonesome, a film from the dawn of the sound era. Originally shot as a silent film with a music and effects soundtrack, Universal decided that it needed some talking sequences to compete in the 1928 marketplace. Three were shot and edited into the film, which was how it was released, and how it survives today.

It’s important to us that we not only preserve the elements in our vaults, but also that we preserve the experience of watching film as it was meant to be seen. To this end, we made sure to duplicate the wonderful tinting and hand-coloring of the original nitrate print, as well as the groundbreaking soundtrack, onto new 35mm stock, so that it could be played just as it was nearly 90 years ago. We actively seek out venues that can project 35mm film in an archival manner, so that our films can be seen by as many people as possible. The TCM Classic Film Fest is just such a place.

Jared Case will introduce the festival's screening of Eastman House restoration of 1928 film "Lonesome."

At 11:30 a.m. Saturday, April 14, I will be proud to present the film Lonesome to the attendees in Hollywood. Then next week I’ll return to Rochester to continue my work at George Eastman House, the everyday job of supporting film preservation.

You, too, can support film preservation every day by seeking out venues like the Museum’s Dryden Theatre, or becoming a member of George Eastman House. We’re all in this together.

I will be tweeting some of my activities while I’m at the TCM Classic Film Fest. You can follow along on Twitter @eastmanhouse and on Facebook (George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film).

With the goal of sharing knowledge about the practice of preserving motion pictures and making those preserved films available to the public, an annual exchange program was established in 2006 between the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) located in Canberra, the nation’s capital.

In 2011 I was excited to learn that I was the staff member selected to visit the NFSA.

During my visit in late October and early November, I rotated between departments and was able to spend some time with many of the 200+ staff members of the NFSA. I worked with the film technicians, video technicians, as well as the film stills and paper conservation departments. I also had the opportunity to work with the curators of the sound collection, sound technicians, film programmers and projectionists. I visited the NFSA offices in Sydney and Melbourne, met with the vault managers, toured the film laboratory and learned how they market their collections.

During my time in Melbourne I visited the Astor Theatre and the Sun Theatre. I met with the owners and technicians of both venues to learn about how they operate their organizations. I visited Chapel Film Distribution, the Australian rights holders of many classic Hollywood and foreign language films. I was fortunate to coordinate my visit with the Canberra International Film Festival and was able to attend a screening of the newly restored METROPOLIS at the Sydney Opera House with live musical accompaniment by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

At the end of my stay I delivered a presentation to approximately 50 staff members of the NFSA, including their new CEO and the Chairman of their Board of Directors. There, I gave a brief history of GEH and the Motion Picture Department and my impressions of the NFSA during my visit. I addressed the similarities and differences between the two institutions and spoke about what I learned during my time there.

It was a fantastic opportunity for me to experience the works and rewards of this National Archive, and I am pleased to share this video of my presentation:

Scene from Bresson’s  ’Au Hasard Balthazar’, 1966. 

Born in 1901, Bresson did not turn to filmmaking full-time until 1943, after an early career as a painter and photographer and a year spent in a German POW camp. Though his first two features were comparatively conventional, his style soon became increasingly unique, moving toward an approach that the director labeled as “emotional, not representational.” To that effect, his visual style became sparer and more controlled, his sound design more layered, and his actors entirely non-professional.

Like fellow master Ingmar Bergman, his themes were often spiritual and his characters on the precipice of despair, but the director’s consummate craft and insight into the human condition produce a rare kind of exaltation. These people live in this world and caress every corner of it. Their bodies are beautiful in their imperfections, their attitudes self-effacing, anxious, cocky, and innocent in all the recognizable ways. Above all, Bresson is a social filmmaker. If his early work earned praise for its humanist values, then his ’60s and ’70s output is messier, awkwardly lurching through a violent political landscape. Continually, Bresson pursues a radical empathy, forcing us to engage and experience the world around us. This approach influenced filmmakers from Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader (their Taxi Driver bears heavy traces of Pickpocket) to Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (L’enfant, Lorna’s Silence).

These eight Bresson films, presented in conjunction with a nationally touring retrospective, include several that have been imported from France and cannot be screened easily or often. Don’t bet on seeing them again any time soon.

Lori Donnelly is the George Eastman House Dryden Theatre film programmer.

Kyle Westphal is Chief Projectionist and a graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House.