Bryony Dixon was one of two recipients, alongside Mark Paul Meyer, Eye Filmmuseum’s retiring senior curator, of the prestigious Jean Mitry Award at the recent Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Honoured for her achievements in curating, preserving and programming silent film and her significant contribution to silent film appreciation. Dixon is the latest in a long line of silent film luminaries who have been recognised, with previous Jean Mitry Award recipients including major figures such as Kevin Brownlow, Harold Brown, Eileen Bowser, David Francis and Paul Spehr, Pearl Bowser, Elaine Burrows, Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries.
In 1986, four years after the festival was founded, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival introduced the Jean Mitry Award. Initially sponsored by the Province of Pordenone and subsequently by the Fondazione Friuli, the award remembers one of the most important film historians of the twentieth century, a founder of the Cinémathèque Française, and the first Chairman of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. The award celebrates figures and institutions who have distinguished themselves in the field of conservation and study of silent-film history….