TIRANA, Sept. 13 – A 1982 movie featuring Albania’s independence under the leadership of Ismail Qemali is being restored in the United States and be ready to screen in the Albanian Film Festival next November. The Nentori i Dyte (Second November) was restored by the Colorlab Film Corp., working in collaboration with the Albanian Film Archive and the Albanian National Film Center on the hundredth anniversary of Albanian independence.
The new color 35mm print with a re-mastered soundtrack and English language subtitles will premiere at the Albanian Film Festival during the week of Nov 3-8, 2012. The film will then travel to the US with Albanian Film Archive representative Eriona Vyshka, as part of the first “Festival of the Archives,” to be held from Dec. 7-9, 2012 at the new SIFF Cinema in Seattle, WA, in cooperation with the annual meeting of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
The 1982 Albanian feature film was written by the socialist realist author Dhimiter Shuteriqi (along with Kico Blushi) and directed by Viktor Gjika. Made three years before the death of the country’s dictator, Enver Hoxha, the film premiered in late November, less than a year after the mysterious demise of Mehmet Shehu, Hoxha’s heir apparent. During the production of the film Albania entered one of its darkest periods in its fifty years of Marxist rule. Numerous purges and arrests of government officials and their families became the order of the day.
Hoxha, who cultivated his own cult of personality as an ardent nationalist, approved production for the film, which detailed the 1912 struggle for Albania’s independence by the legendary patriot Ismail Qemal Bey Vlora (1844-1919). To play the part of the revered gray-bearded Vlora, director Gjika cast the highly regarded theater and film actor Alexsander ‘Sander’ Prosi (1920-1985). The talented and troubled Prosi had given rich supporting performances in numerous films during the communist Kinostudio era. The Second November gave Prosi the opportunity to create one of the indelible characterizations of Albanian cinema.
The Second November premiered one day before the seventieth anniversary of Ismail Qemal Bey Vlora’s independence declaration on November 27, 1982. Before the film premiered, the regime ordered that Gjika cut a sequence that portrayed a confrontation with the neighboring Serbs. During production, Kosovar Albanian students had revolted and the notoriously paranoid Hoxha worried about possible tensions with the Yugoslavs. After being removed, the sequence disappeared from the film archive and has yet to be re-discovered.
Last summer, international film archivists warned the old film reels preserved at the Albanian Central State Film Archive are endangered because of the poor storage conditions in the building.
Regina Longo, a US film and media archivist is assisting the Albanian Central State Film Archive prepare a detailed report and an action plan to preserve its movie collection. The project involves a detailed assessment of the 35 mm collection, the preservation conditions, management and the Archive ventilation system.
