Photos from the DSFF
Lifetime Achievement Award
Each year, the Denver Silent Film Festival recognizes one person for outstanding contributions to silent film, whether through filmmaking, film preservation, film education or the conservation of film collections. The recipient attends the Denver Silent Film Festival as our guest, and participates in introductions to the films, post-film conversations with the audience and also joins in several meetings with students. This page is dedicated to those whose work has helped to keep alive the beautiful art of silent cinema throughout the world.
2012 Recipient – Serge Bromberg
For lovers of film, it’s hard to avoid the work of Serge Bromberg, and why would anyone want to do that! This man loves the cinema with an irresistible and thrilling delight and knowledge of film. M. Bromberg, of Paris, started early, collecting Laurel and Hardy films as a kid. He’s still a collector, an archivist and restorer of rare films, and a joyous, enthusiastic presenter of all sorts of films to audiences around the world. Unlike many archivists/restorers/presenters, Bromberg does not save things for a posterity that will never get here – he shows films now so that actual living human beings can embrace the traditions of cinema as well as the individual works.
To that end, in 1984, Bromberg founded Lobster Films, a company dedicated to the collecting, restoring and presenting of film. He has been on the board of the great Cinematheque Francaise; he is the Artistic Director of the Annecy Animation Film Festival in France. Bromberg presents film programs all over the world, including the Telluride Film Festival where last year he screened his magnificent color restoration of Georges Méliès 1902 A Trip to the Moon, a film also featured in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. He has a regular show of films for young people on French TV. In 1997 Bromberg and Eric Lange were awarded the Jean Mitry Award at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile (Italy), and in 2002 he was made a Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters. He is a national treasure – in virtually all the countries of the world.
