CONFERENCE “FILM HERITAGE WITHOUT BORDERS 2026”
Thursday, 5 February 2026, 11:15 am
LMTA Study Campus Šoblė Cinema Hall (Olandų st. 21A, Vilnius)
CONFERENCE “FILM HERITAGE WITHOUT BORDERS 2026”
The 10th Early Cinema Festival “First Wave,” as every year, offers not only an opportunity to get acquainted with bold and inventive films, some of which are a century old, but also to discuss the research, restoration, and dissemination of early cinema. On February 5, the LMTA National Film School’s Šoblė Cinema Hall will host the conference “Film Heritage Without Borders 2026,” where guests from Lithuania and abroad will discuss early cinema. The discussions will be moderated by Aleksas Gilaitis.
The event will be held in English.
PROGRAMME:
11:15 Introduction by festival initiator Aleksas Gilaitis
11:30 Elif Rongen – “Fantastic Flowers: a Colorful Project”
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is Curator of Silent Film at EYE Filmmuseum (Amsterdam), where she has worked since 1999 on the research, restoration, and presentation of early cinema. She is responsible for the internationally renowned Desmet Collection and has been instrumental in rediscovering and contextualising many forgotten silent films.
She has curated numerous international programmes and restoration projects, including Fantastic Flowers, a project dedicated to floral imagery and symbolism in early cinema, presented at festivals and archival venues worldwide.
12:00 Emilie Cauquy & Deimantas Valančiūnas – “Believing in the Devil”
Emilie Cauquy is a film archivist and curator at La Cinémathèque française, where she works on the research, preservation, and presentation of early cinema. Her curatorial and archival practice spans a wide range of early film forms, including trick films, actualities, narrative shorts, and the material history of film production and exhibition.
Within this broader field, she has also been actively involved in projects related to the heritage of Georges Méliès, contributing to the study, restoration, and contextualisation of his films and the Star Film catalogue.
Dr. Deimantas Valančiūnas is an Associate Professor at Vilnius University’s Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, where he specialises in Asian cinema, and popular culture. He teaches courses on Asian film, visual culture and popular media, and conducts research on the intersections of film, society, and ideology across Asian cinematic traditions. His public work includes lectures and collaborations that explore the diversity of film cultures beyond Western paradigms, broadening the understanding of global cinema in academic and cultural contexts.
12:30 Break
13:00 Robert Byrne – “Cinema Slides. The Greatest Images Never Seen”
Robert Byrne is a respected film preservationist, restorer, and silent cinema scholar best known for his long-standing involvement with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, where he has served as President of the Board and led numerous restoration and presentation initiatives. As a specialist in early cinema, Byrne has worked with archives and festivals internationally, contributing to the rediscovery and digital reanimation of fragile and forgotten moving images. He has restored silent films of historical significance and advocated for preservation practices that balance photochemical and digital methods.
In collaboration with researcher Thierry Lecointe and collector Pascal Fouché, Byrne has helped bring to light remarkable 19th-century flipbooks derived from early motion pictures, developing techniques to photograph and animate these fragile artifacts so they can be presented on the big screen – a project that reveals previously lost glimpses of films by Georges Méliès, Gaumont, and other pioneers.
13:30 Bernd Sholze – “Magic lantern – Grand cinema?”
Bernd Sholze is a German magic lantern collector, researcher, and presenter with over thirty years of engagement with the history of projection and optical media. He has built and curated an extensive collection of magic lantern apparatus and imagery, focusing particularly on the development of the lantern in German-speaking regions from the 17th century through the early 20th century. His research spans historical slides, dissolving views, and the cultural role of projection as a visual medium, and he has published and lectured widely on these topics.