Perhaps this is what makes the festival so unique: the frenetic search for meaning so typical of the festival circuit, shirking real risks in programming, is largely avoided here. Is that just because of the “old” films? Not quite. Strange as it may sound, Il Cinema Ritrovato is a festival where films are not only programmed but also actually watched.

I chose a sentence from Helmut Färber’s book on D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat. I could have chosen the whole book. Färber is not somebody you quote. You have to read him. I decided on this sentence because it not only applies to Griffith’s film but also to Färber himself. As I experience cinema and what is written about it nowadays mostly as a region of overly excited vagueness, Färber reminds me in every text that there is a sober reality behind images and sounds and words. They all have to do with work and being human.