Every film is somebody’s favorite film.

Charlotte Barker, Senior Director of Film Restoration and Preservation at Paramount Pictures, is in Lyon!

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What does your job entail?

Every film has its story, its lighting, its sound, all captured at a specific time and a specific place. Our responsibility is to protect that story by restoring the film as faithfully as possible to its original version, also for the sake of future generations. I see myself as a guardian of Paramount’s films.

Why is it important to restore films?

They are part of our shared cultural memory, and we don’t know which works will be important for future generations. Our job is to give them the chance to see as many of these films as possible. Our team’s motto is “Every film is somebody’s favorite film.” A work doesn’t have to be famous or critically acclaimed to mean something to someone.

Which film has been an unforgettable restoration experience?

To Catch a Thief  (1955), and not just because it’s one of my favorite films. It was shot in VistaVision, a filming process I love, that I’d always dreamed of working on. During the 2024 restoration, we revised the color grading of the nocturnal sequences, especially the hues of green specified by Hitchcock and his director of photography, Robert Burks. I collaborated with a legend in film restoration, Robert Harris. And I’m not quite done with this film yet; there’s always something else to improve, like a damaged section of negative… This is Hitchcock after all!… I guess To Catch a Thief has become a restoration project I simply can’t leave alone!

Which film do you dream of restoring?

My dream would be to restore a lost film such as Hitchcock’s The Mountain Eagle (1926) or Tod Browning’s London After Midnight  (1927). Restoration is also a bit like detective work: imagine discovering a box containing a lost film and being the person who brings it back to life.

What is your involvement with the MIFC?

For me, a film isn’t truly alive until it’s been screened. You can spend months restoring a film, searching for the original negative, fine tuning the color grading, listening to the different nuances of sound and trying to understand what the filmmakers initially intended to achieve. There always comes a point when we have to “let go” of the artistry to move forward with our restoration, and put the film back where it belongs, meaning in a movie theater, in front of an audience. And that’s what I love about a heritage film festival. For a few days, a film made 70 years ago, which no one has seen in its original quality since it was first made, is screened in a cinema full of people who laugh and cry. It’s as if a work of art is breathing again.

“This is my first time in Lyon, and I’m positively thrilled at the idea of discovering the festival and the audience. What I’m looking forward to most is when the lights dim in the movie theater and the restored film begins …it’s no longer an object that was left aside in a box for ages; it’s alive again, and it belongs to everybody.”