Event

Unfinished Business: Unseen Films, Unheard Stories
A Film Series curated by Robert Cargni, Film Programmer, for Penn Cinema & Media Studies.

"Distribution circuits and exhibition venues and platforms substantially limit our access to the films we can watch. As a film programmer, my aspiration has always been that of recuperating part of the heterogeneous richness of world cinemas and local film cultures and to make it available to audiences interested in expanding the breadth and diversity of their film experience. As part of this always unfinished business of cultural recovery, I like to present to you a group of virtually unseen films that tackle some of the most pressing questions of our times: migration, social marginalization, gender inequality, racial discrimination, and the systematic impoverishment of the Global South. This film series offers you the opportunity to expand your familiarity with diasporic filmmaking, women’s cinema, contemporary film cultures in Latin American and the Caribbean, as well as with filmmakers operating at the peripheries of the American and European film industries." (Robert Cargni)
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Natan
Paul Duane and David Cairns, Ireland, 2013, 66 mins, in French w/ English subtitles

Made in collaboration by the Irish filmmaker Paul Duane and the British journalist and writer David Cairns, Natan is an unconventional and unforgettable documentary. The film reconstructs the story of one of French cinema’s forgotten pioneers, a Jewish immigrant who made it his ambition to create a truly French national cinema, the person who did more than anyone else to bring sound film to France, who started France’s first television company, first cinema advertising company, experimenting with cinemascope and color and popularizing the Pathé newsreel. He has been erased from film histories. But why? Natan is simultaneously a visually experimental murder mystery, an inspiring portrait of the birth of cinema, and a savage exploration of the bigotry and antisemitism widespread in the French society during the 1920s and 30s.

The film will be introduced by Philippe Met, Professor of French and Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Robert E. Cargni is formerly the film programmer and gallerist for Film @ International House Philadelphia. Robert has also curated film programming for the University of Pennsylvania Museum, as well as numerous international film festivals across the United States and Canada.