University degrees: Courses
Course length: 2 years full-time
Course city: Lecce
The Puglia headquarters of the CSC, born in Lecce in 2019, is the result of an agreement between the Puglia Region and the Apulia Film Commission. Its objective is the training of personnel specialized in the conservation, restoration and cultural diffusion of the cinematographic heritage. The Lecce office is located in the prestigious spaces of the Castromediano Museum, in viale Gallipoli 28: a vast renovated space on the first, second and third floors of the building, where all the educational initiatives will take place and where students can stay during their stay in Lecce.
The three-year course has as its object of study the entire range of activities related to the protection of cinema, both in its historical events (film) and in the most recent ones (electronic and digital image). For this purpose, the Lecce office will be equipped with two interdependent structures: a photochemical laboratory for the development and printing of the film, and a digital laboratory with all the essential equipment for image and sound restoration. Students will therefore be able to participate personally in all phases of the film’s restoration work, which will take place in close collaboration with the staff of the CSC National Film Library.
The three-year course is not limited to the technical aspects of the work of the film library: its mission in fact involves a wide range of skills necessary for knowledge, management, and opportunities for the dissemination of the audiovisual heritage. A qualifying aspect of the teaching program at the CSC branch of Lecce is its attention to the administration, management and intellectual control of the collections: in addition to chemistry and digital technology, the course will address other fundamental subjects, such as cataloging of the finds; the conservation of non-film materials (posters, photographs, paper documents and period equipment); analog and digital projection; collection management (administration, budgeting, workflows, research and management of funding, copyright legislation); historical research on audiovisual heritage; the presentation to the public of the restored works in a collective context (festivals, reviews and conferences) and individual (access to collections via the Internet).
The first year of the course pursues a dual guideline: on the one hand, the theory and methodology of the work of preserving the moving image; on the other, an introduction to the practical aspects of the treatment of archival materials (their teaching is a constant in all three years of the course). The second year lessons deepen each technical, administrative and curatorial component through the detailed study of six studies selected by the teaching staff and exercises in subjects such as inspection, identification and repair of the film; cataloging; comparative analysis of copyright laws; design and management of air-conditioned deposits; in-depth study of all analog, electronic and digital formats; simulation of a budget for the restoration and for the financing and fundraising strategy; conservative treatment of non-film materials; construction of a conservative complex for photochemical and digital materials; projection practices on film and digital media; creation of a public exhibition program of restored films and access to collections via the internet.
In the third year, students undertake a project related to one of the audiovisual heritage conservation activities, following all the phases from start to finish: the definition of the objectives; the financial and managerial aspects of work; the analysis of the legal implications of the project (copyright laws); the preparation of the materials for their restoration; the realization of the actual restoration, through the use of the equipment supplied to the school; the presentation of the work, in the form of a public performance and drafting of a written report (in Italian and English). These to other activities are conducted by each student – on an individual basis or as part of a team – with the aim of achieving full decision-making autonomy, monitored by the teaching staff in order to guarantee the best quality of the final product. In doing so, students acquire all the knowledge necessary to optimize their possibilities of employment in any structure – public or private – pertinent to the conservation and diffusion of the audiovisual cultural heritage. In this sense, it is important to underline the importance of a 360-degree preparation in this discipline: ideally, at the end of the three-year period, each student must be able to contribute successfully to obtaining employment in any sector relating to the safeguarding of works film.
Paolo Cherchi Usai, formerly Senior Curator of the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, is co-founder of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation; of the Silent Film Days of Pordenone; Domitor, an international association for the study of early cinema. From 2004 to 2008 he directed the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Adjunct Professor of Film at the University of Rochester and Resident Curator of the Telluride Film Festival, he directs the bimonthly magazine Segncinema. His writings on the history and restoration of cinema have been published and translated into twenty languages; among these, there are three monographs on Georges Méliès (1983), Giovanni Pastrone (1985) and D.W. Griffith (2008) for the Il Castoro Cinema series; Silent Cinema: A Guide to Study, Research and Curatorship (Bloomsbury, 2019), third revised and expanded edition of A Flammable Passion: Guide to the Study of Silent Cinema (UTET, 1991); The Griffith Project (BFI Publishing, 1999-2008); The history of cinema in 1000 words (Il Castoro, 2012); Film Curatorship: Archives, Museums, and the Digital Marketplace (Österreichisches Filmmuseum, 2008). He is the author of two feature films: Passio (2007), adaptation of his volume L’ultimo spectatore (Il Castoro, 1999), translated into English under the title The Death of Cinema: History, Cultural Memory, and the Digital Dark Age (BFI Publishing , 2001), with a preface by Martin Scorsese; and Picture (2015), with original music composed by the Alloy Orchestra. It was awarded in 2002 by the French Ministry of Culture with the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Since 2019 he is Director of the Lecce branch of the Experimental Center of Cinematography.
Info and contacts: lecce@fondazionecsc.it / +39 345 6098022