Novikoff Award to Film Archivist Paolo Cherchi Usai

“To see Paolo Cherchi Usai open a can of nitrate film that is new to him is a spectacle to cherish,” writes David Robinson. “He will fondle (within the limits of archival propriety) this fabric that can be softer and suppler than the beloved’s skin, and draw it to his face to savor the vaguely narcotic fumes. Not for nothing was the original edition of (his first book) called Burning Passions.”

Robinson writes this tongue-in-cheek tribute to his friend and colleague in a preface to the new edition (now titled Silent Cinema: An Introduction). Cherchi Usai’s intelligence, knowledge and devotion to his work is by now known to film archivists throughout the world. As the senior curator of the Motion Picture Department at George Easman House, director of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and associate professor of film at the University of Rochester, Cherchi Usai has become one of the most accomplished and respected in his field. He is a perfect choice to receive the 2004 Mel Novikoff Award, which is bestowed annually on an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public’s knowledge and appreciation of world cinema. Last year’s recipient was critic Manny Farber.

Cherchi Usai is also on the consiglio direttivo of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, of which Robinson is the director.

Not without a sense of humor himself, Cherchi Usai writes that it was film scholar Kevin Brownlow who persuaded him to change the original title of Burning Passions for the new edition. “Kevin Browlow told me,” he writes, “that passengers were staring at him while he was reading the book in the London subway, as if he was dealing with some sort of pulp fiction erotica.”

Silent Cinema has become a sort of handbook for those interested in issues of film preservation and restoration. Although containing a thoroughness and wealth of detail such as to be a bible for archivists and preservatonists, any film aficionado can learn a great deal from it. His second book, The Death of Cinema (2001), confronts profound issues raised by the decay of film and the growing digitization of media. “Paolo has drawn with clinical precision (and a welcome touch of irony),” writes Martin Scorsese in the introduction, “the picture of a worldwide crisis that commands our unconditional concern.”

Cherchi Usai will be present at Pacific Film Archive april 26 to receive the award and to introduce the screening of Life Is Shorts, a program of short archival treasures.