Hitchcock Silent Film Festival to take place in Almaty

The restoration of Alfred Hitchcock's surviving silent films has been the biggest and most complex restoration project undertaken by the British Film Institute (BFI) National Archive to date. Made from 1925 to 1929, the silent films are among the greatest achievements of British silent cinema, and are blueprints for the rest of his body of work, containing the motifs and obsessions we have come to recognise as Hitchcockian, the British Council Kazakhstan said. The BFI has used elements borrowed from seven international archives in the restoration process but film materials from the BFI National Archive - including a number of original negatives - have been central to the project. Decades of damage and wear have been removed; the sharpness of the image improved; new shots discovered and intertitles and tinting restored. Hitchcock's silent films are essential to an understanding of his later work and these restorations now enable them to be seen afresh and discovered by our audience. The opening ceremony will take place near the Republic Palace at 20.30. Six films will be accompanied by live music.