The Second (Digital) Life of Orson Welles’ Films

Małgorzata Kozubek

malgorzatakozubek@gmail.com
University of Wroclaw (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8263-4397

Abstract

In the light of recent archival research, the story of Orson Welles' life and work is no longer as enigmatic and mysterious as it was in previous decades. But with new discoveries and the subsequent release of films restored and completed after the director's death, it remains a hot topic for his biographers. The author traces the influence of the technological process on the final shape of Welles' restored works mainly through the examples of The Other Side of the Wind (2018), the director's last film, and Too Much Johnson (1938), his medium-length debut found in 2013. The choice of these titles is dictated on the one hand by the fact that in both cases technology played a very important role, and on the other hand, by the fact that both films have not yet been described in depth.


Keywords:

Orson Welles, unfinished movies, digitization, production studies

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Published
2021-05-13

Cited by

Kozubek, M. (2021) “The Second (Digital) Life of Orson Welles’ Films”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (113), pp. 153–168. doi: 10.36744/kf.684.

Authors

Małgorzata Kozubek 
malgorzatakozubek@gmail.com
University of Wroclaw Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8263-4397

Assistant Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Wrocław and lecturer at the Lodz Film School. Her main research areas include New Film History, unfinished movies, psychology of film perception, social influence of films, therapeutic culture and film therapy. She is a tutor at two film education projects in Wroclaw, with a focus on history of world cinema and Polish cinema. She published the book Filmoterapia. Teoria i praktyka [Film Therapy: Theory and Practice] (2016) and co-edited the monograph Polski film dokumentalny w XXI wieku [Polish Documentary Films of the 21st century] (2016) and Polska animacja w XXI wieku [Polish Animated Films of the 21st century] (2017). She is working on a book about Orson Welles’ unfinished movies.



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