In this digital golden age, people who restore motion pictures have powerful, affordable new tools to deflicker, clean, remove scratches, and color-correct existing films—and to then create high-resolution exhibition copies. Now, preservationists around the world are using these technologies to rediscover and restore the work of non-mainstream filmmakers, overlooked genres, student films, home movies, and experimental cinema—expanding access to stories by marginalized communities and under-appreciated artists. In concert with the Walker’s Lost Films & Restorations screening series, we invited four experts to weigh in on this work’s impact on cinematic history moving forward.
The Survival of Witches: Jack Zipes on Nietzchka Keene’s Feminist Fairytale Film
A weekend screening in the Walker Cinema of the new 4K restoration of The Juniper Tree by Nietzchka Keene (1952–2004) prompts an insightful conversation with Jack Zipes, a critical theorist, storyteller, and one of the most prolific authors on fairy tales.
The Last Movie: Dennis Hopper’s Curiously Frustrating Experiment
"Was Hopper a madman or a genius?" Walker projectionist Justin Ayd reflects on Dennis Hopper's "intriguingly exasperating" 1971 film The Last Movie, screening at the Walker Cinema July 31 and August 2 as part of the Lost Films and Restorations series.
Planting a Seed: On the Creation, Loss, and Restoration of Horace Jenkins’s Cane River
“He always told me that he was about telling our stories, and by ‘our’ I mean Black people in America,” says Sacha Jenkins of his father Horace's 1982 film. "It wasn't a documentary, but a lot of the things that he believed in as a documentary filmmaker were evident in Cane River.” Amirah Ellison delves into the loss, rediscovery, and restoration of a film that has deep meaning for many Black Americans today—and deep ties to the Ellison family.
