The Museu del Cinema will take part in Pordenone's leading international silent film festival

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

It will be present at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto's retrospective on the origins of cinema in Spain, contributing two outstanding pieces from the Tomàs Mallol Collection: the film L'Hereu de Ca'n Pruna and the flip book Andalusian Dance. The presentation of these materials in the Italian town has been made possible thanks to the restoration and digitisation work carried out by the Filmoteca de Catalunya, with which the Museu del Cinema has had a collaboration agreement since 2002.

Collaboration between film archives, archives and heritage institutions has made it possible for Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the leading silent film festival, which celebrates its 45th edition in Pordenone (Italy) in 2026, to present for the first time a retrospective on the origins of cinema in Spain between 1896 and 1916.

The Museu del Cinema is taking part in this joint project alongside the Filmoteca Valenciana, the Filmoteca Canaria, the Arxiu del So i de la Imatge de Mallorca, the film archives of Zaragoza, Navarre and Andalusia, the Filmoteca Vasca, the Biblioteca de Catalunya, the Filmoteca de Catalunya and the Filmoteca Española, with the collaboration of the Institut Lumière, the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, the Cinémathèque française and the British Film Institute.

Among the 62 titles in the retrospective, the Museu del Cinema is contributing two unique and previously unseen pieces from the Tomàs Mallol Collection: an example of early Catalan fiction filmmaking and an individual viewing device that has enabled the recovery of an early film.

The first is L'Hereu de Ca'n Pruna, directed by Segundo de Chomón in 1904 for the Barcelona production company Macaya y Marro. It is a short comic sketch about a rural heir who seeks a wife through a newspaper advertisement and flees from the flood of suitors who respond. Premiered at Christmas 1904 in several Barcelona cinemas, the film was believed lost until it was rediscovered in 2002 during the cataloguing of the Museum's nitrate film holdings, and it remains the only known copy. Chomón, one of the great pioneers of Catalan and Spanish cinema, went on to have a distinguished career in France and Italy.

The second piece is a flip book featuring frames from Andalusian Dance (1896), filmed by William S. Short for R. W. Paul's Animatographe as part of the series "A Tour in Spain and Portugal". These devices animated photographic sequences when the viewer rapidly flicked through a set of cards, bound like a book, on which the frames were printed. The Museum's example is a Filoscope, marketed by Paul from 1897 and based on the kineograph patented by John Barnes Linnett in 1868. It shows how some early films have been recovered thanks to such devices. It is estimated that between 70% and 80% of all silent-era films have been lost.

Their presentation in Pordenone has been made possible by the restoration and digitisation work of the Filmoteca de Catalunya. The Museum has had a collaboration agreement with this institution since 2002, currently under review, covering research, conservation, dissemination, exhibitions and educational services. In the case of L'Hereu de Ca'n Pruna, the work was carried out from an original 35 mm black-and-white silent nitrate print, now deposited at the Filmoteca.

From 5 to 8 October 2026, the festival will bring together 62 works from various archives and collections in four sessions. The retrospective will offer the chance to discover on the big screen some of the earliest images filmed in Spain, from the arrival of the cinematograph in the hands of foreign camera operators to the first local production initiatives, with special attention to the earliest fiction films starring women. It will also showcase to an international audience the value of cooperation between institutions in preserving and disseminating film heritage.

The retrospective is also the outcome of the screening sessions "Projectem el passat (1896-1916)", held over three editions at the Filmoteca de Catalunya between 2019 and 2025. These sessions brought together historians, programmers, archivists and curators to jointly study the early cinema preserved in Spain. Some of the materials screened will be added to PLATFO, the free public platform of Spain's ICAA (Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales) for the dissemination of Spanish film and audiovisual heritage.