: Major festivals like Cannes, Venice, and Il Cinema Ritrovato heavily feature the foundation's work.

— The Film Foundation is a nonprofit powerhouse dedicated to protecting motion picture history. To date, it has helped preserve and restore over from every era and genre. Why Restoration Matters

Every few seconds, another piece of our collective visual memory decays into dust. Nitrate film stock, the standard for the first half of cinema’s history, doesn’t just fade—it chemically decomposes into a sticky, foul-smelling goo, or spontaneously combusts. Color films from the 1950s to the 1970s suffer from "fading" as cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes separate, turning once-vibrant landscapes into pinkish wastelands. It is estimated that over 90% of American silent films and 50% of color films made before 1950 are gone forever.

This Senegalese masterpiece of world cinema—a wild, surreal road movie about a young couple dreaming of escaping to Paris—had been unavailable for decades. The only surviving elements were a damaged 35mm print and a faded internegative. TFF’s (launched in 2007) restored the film’s vivid colors and jagged soundtrack. In 2013, the restored Touki Bouki was re-released and placed on the Criterion Collection, introducing Mambéty’s genius to a global audience.

To learn more about their work or to donate, visit filmfoundation.org .

Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen