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DESTROYING the negative of your own film is an extreme move for any filmmaker. But when that film has been called a masterpiece and its director is an internationally respected film archivist charged with the keeping of Australia's film heritage, it approaches the unthinkable. Paolo Cherchi Usai's film Passio, proclaimed a masterpiece by filmmakers Ken Burns (The Civil War) and Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo), had its premiere with live musical accompaniment at the Adelaide Film Festival in February and has just premiered in New York to great acclaim.
Its main theme is the need for film preservation. Yet Cherchi Usai, who wears an official hat as director of the Canberra-based National Film and Sound Archive, has destroyed the film's negative after striking seven prints of the film to be performed with live accompaniment. Cherchi Usai told Reel Time that his radical move was "a provocative gesture" aimed at drawing attention to the precariousness of the world's film heritage and the extreme dangers it faces.
"I just wanted to raise a flag and say that what I have done intentionally is something happening all over the world, not because the authors want to but because there is a genuine neglect of our movie heritage," he says. "We're moving in the right direction but, without a major injection of support to the cause, what we're doing...