Martin Scorsese-led Film Foundation turns focus to African movies

Los Angeles, March 4 (IANS) The Film Foundation, a movie-restoration organisation founded and chaired by Oscar winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese, has partnered with the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) and Unesco in a project to locate, restore and preserve films made on the African continent.

Dubbed the African Film Heritage Project, the group will identify 50 films with historic, artistic and cultural significance, and then work to restore them, reports deadline.com.

It's the latest film genre for the Film Foundation's World Cinema Project.

According to deadline.com, in this case, in association with its partner Cineteca di Bologna and Unesco, it will support the investigation, location and restoration of an initial selection of 50 films as identified by FEPACI's advisory board made up of archivists, scholars and filmmakers active across the African continent.

A survey to locate the best existing film elements for each title will be conducted in African cin?math?ques and film archives worldwide.

"There are so many films in need of restoration from all over the world. We created the World Cinema Project to ensure that the most vulnerable titles don't disappear forever," Scorsese said.

He added: "Over the past 10 years, the WCP has helped to restore films from Egypt, India, Cuba, the Philippines, Brazil, Armenia, Turkey, Senegal and many other countries. Along the way, we've come to understand the urgent need to locate and preserve African films title by title in order to ensure that new generations of filmgoers - African filmgoers in particular - can actually see these works and appreciate them."

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