THE AWARD IS SPONSORED BY FONDAZIONE FRIULI

The 2026 Jean Mitry Award, the international award that celebrates figures and institutions who have distinguished themselves in the field of conservation and study of silent-film heritage, goes to Catherine Cormon and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi.

Established in 1986 by the Province of Pordenone and named in 1989 to honor the memory of Jean Mitry, the prize is presented annually as part of the Giornate del Cinema Muto / Pordenone Silent Film Festival and is currently sponsored by Fondazione Friuli.

Both Catherine Cormon and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi work at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, holding different roles in the preservation and promotion of film heritage: Catherine Cormon is the Nitrate Registrar, while Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film.

The presentation ceremony, in the presence of Bruno Malattia, President of Fondazione Friuli, will open the evening of Friday, 11 October 2024 at Teatro Verdi, at 9.00 p.m..

Catherine Cormon has dedicated her professional career to handling analog film. She first worked in film editing in Switzerland, where she assisted directors such as Krzysztof Kieślowski and Jean-Luc Godard. When the industry went digital, she decided to follow the film reels and transitioned into film archiving and preservation.

She graduated from the Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman House in 1998 and was the recipient of the first Haghefilm Fellowship. She worked as Film Preservationist for Memoriav in Switzerland before moving to Amsterdam to work for the Eye Filmmuseum in 2002, holding various roles over the years, including the position of Film Collection Manager, leading the team supervising access to Eye’s analog film collection, which comprises 250,000 items.

An enthusiastic educator and trainer, she strongly advocates for cooperation across film archives and archivists alike. She is also part of an informal network of Collection Managers working collectively to draw attention to the fundamental activity of film archives.

In line with her fascination with nitrate film that began during her training at the Selznick School, in her current position as Eye’s Nitrate Registrar, she has the privilege of handling and preserving this exceptional material on a daily basis, firmly convinced that with proper care, nitrate film will endure.

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum. After completing her BA in English Literature at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, and MA at the University of Amsterdam in Film & TV Studies, in 1998 she participated in the Archimedia training programme for the promotion of cinema heritage.

Since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films, often starring forgotten actors and actresses such as Rosa Porten, Sessue Hayakawa, Tsuru Aoki, Valeria Creti, Little Chrysia and more. She has overseen the trajectory of getting the Desmet Collection inscribed onto Unesco’s Memory of the World Register in 2011, and the Mutoscope & Biograph 68mm Film Collection in 2025.

Rongen-Kaynakçi is directly involved with the programs of international archival festivals Il Cinema Ritrovato, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto and other events dedicated to silent cinema, such as the Netherlands Silent Film Festival, Istanbul Silent Film Days and Silent Thursdays. She has served on the steering committee of the WFHI (Women and Film History International) from 2015 to 2022, and co-organized the 2019 Women and the Silent Screen Conference at Eye. She is the co-author of various publications by Eye and regularly contributes to professional journals and magazines. She is also the co-curator of “Views of the Ottoman Empire”, an independent travelling archival presentation project launched in 2014, and one of the three curators of “Cinema’s First Nasty Women”, a DVD-box with 99 rare silent films, released in December 2022 by Kino Lorber.

The Pordenone Silent Film Festival / Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is made possible thanks to the support of the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, the Ministry of Culture – Direzione Generale Cinema, the city of Pordenone, the Pordenone-Udine Chamber of Commerce, the Fondazione Friuli and with the participation of BCC Pordenonese e Monsile.