Mostra Internazionale d Arte Cinematografica Venice

In the Sala Darsena at the Lido: the legendary silent film Rosita (1923) by Ernst Lubitsch, in a vivid new restoration by MoMA, with the support of The Film Foundation, and presented as a world premiere

Live musical accompaniment by the Mitteleuropa Orchestra directed by Gillian Anderson from her arrangement of the original score

Rosita (1923, 82’), famed as the single collaboration between two of the giants of the silent screen, the director Ernst Lubitsch and the star Mary Pickford, is the film that has been chosen for the Pre-inaugural evening of the 74^th Venice International Film Festival, which will be held on Tuesday, August 29^th in the Sala Darsena (Palazzo del Cinema) at the Lido.

Rosita, will be screened in a new 4K digital restoration effected by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, with the support of The Film Foundation; this will be the restored version’s world premiere.

The projection of Rosita will feature live music played by the Mitteleuropa Orchestra of Friuli – Venezia Giulia, directed by the musicologist Gillian Anderson, who has reconstructed the film’s original score by working on scores recovered at the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C.

Rosita is set in a mythical Spain where an engagingly lecherous King (Holbrook Blinn) has cast his eye on a popular but provocative street singer (Mary Pickford). She, in turn, yearns for the handsome young nobleman (George Walsh, brother of the celebrated director Raoul Walsh), who has rescued her from the angry king’s guards and has been condemned to a dungeon for his troubles.