Annual Museum Of Modern Art International Festival of Film

Our annual To Save and Project festival returns in 2025 with a rich selection of newly restored treasures from archives around the world. This year's program spans nearly a century of cinema, from pioneering German Expressionist works like Robert Wiene's Raskolnikow (1923) to groundbreaking independent films of the 1970s like James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971). Films from Argentina, Thailand, India, Syria, the Czech Republic, and beyond highlight cinema's global diversity and the work of film preservation institutions worldwide.

Highlights include the rediscovery of Yevgeni Cherviakov's forgotten Soviet masterpiece My Son (1928), found in Argentina and restored by GEM; the racy pre-Code Hollywood comedy The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932) from the Library of Congress; and Andre Bonzel's Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By, a powerful repurposing of home movies from Janus Films. The program features restorations by major archives and funders, including The Film Foundation, UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Cinemathèque française, and Filmmuseum München.

The series opens on January 9 with the world premiere of MoMA's newly upgraded restoration of Frank Borzage's transcendent romance 7th Heaven (1927), and concludes on January 30 with the world premiere of MoMA's new reconstruction of the long unseen, original 1918 version of Charles Chaplin's World War I comedy Shoulder Arms.

Schedule of Events:

4:30 pm: The Wages of Sin. 1938. Directed by Herman E. Webber

The Wages of Sin. 1938. USA. Directed by Herman E. Webber. With Constance Worth, Willy Castello, Blanche Mehaffey, Clara Kimball Young. New York premiere. 76 min.

A rare surviving example of Depression-era exploitation cinema produced outside the constraints of the Production Code, Herman E. Webber's stark melodrama follows Marjorie Benton, a struggling working woman coerced into prostitution. Like Dwain Esper's Narcotic (1933) and Sex Madness (1938), the film traveled the exploitation circuit under the pretense of public health education, complete with a live lecturer and sensationalistic lobby displays warning of "moral decay." Shot in a raw, unvarnished style typical of "vice films" of the period, The Wages of Sin exemplifies how independent producers addressed taboo social issues while skirting censorship through strategic marketing of their films as educational ventures. While ostensibly serving as a cautionary tale, it provides an unexpectedly sympathetic portrait of women's economic vulnerability during the Depression, sharing thematic concerns with more prestigious social-problem films like William Wyler's Dead End (1937).

Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding provided by David Stenn.

7:00 pm: The White Heather. 1919.Directed by Maurice Tourneur Peg o' the Mounted. 1924. Directed by Alfred J. Goulding

The White Heather. 1919. USA. Directed by Maurice Tourneur. Screenplay by Charles E. Whittaker, based on the play by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton. With Holmes Herbert, Ben Alexander, Ralph Graves, Mabel Ballin, John Gilbert. World premiere. Silent. 70 min.

Digital restoration by the San Francisco Film Preserve, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and Eye Filmmuseum.

Peg o' the Mounted. 1924. USA. Directed by Alfred J. Goulding. Screenplay by Bert Sterling. With Baby Peggy, Sterling, Jack Earle. New York premiere. Silent. 20 min.

Digital restoration by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in cooperation with Eye Filmmuseum and the Library of Congress, Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation.

By 1919, Maurice Tourneur had established himself as one of American cinema's most sophisticated visual stylists, known for his innovative use of chiaroscuro lighting and painterly compositional techniques. The White Heather demonstrates his characteristic ability to transform talky theatrical material into compelling images, here elevating a Victorian stage melodrama into a visually dynamic exploration of class, morality, and the destructive power of social ambition.

Set in Scotland, the narrative follows Lord Angus Cameron (Holmes Herbert, at the beginning of his long Hollywood career playing distinguished patriarchs), who, facing financial ruin, seeks to annul his secret marriage to his housekeeper, Marion Hume (Mabel Ballin). The only material proof of their union is a marriage certificate aboard a sunken yacht, The White Heather. As Marion, with the help of her father, fights to save her reputation and secure a future for her son, Lord Angus sends agents to track down the witnesses to his marriage, leading to a dramatic underwater confrontation.

Working with cinematographers Rene Guissart and Harold S. Sintzenich, Tourneur created groundbreaking underwater sequences that pushed the boundaries of what was technically possible in 1919. For a contemporary reviewer in Variety, the film was "an absolute masterpiece" that stood out "on the strength of the thrills that the camera made possible and which could not be secured on the stage."

Long thought lost, The White Heather was recently rediscovered and has been restored by the San Francisco Film Preserve and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. SFFP president Rob Byrne will introduce the screening. The feature will be accompanied by SFSFF's restoration, the two-reel comedy Peg o' the Mounted, starring TSAP favorite Baby Peggy.