The Joye Collection, which was entrusted to the National Film and Television Archive in London in 1976, is one of the most important collections for the history of cinema from 1905-1912. It is composed of the approximately 1300 prints (often unique ones) resulting from the activities of a Swiss priest, Father Joseph Joye S.J. (1855-1919), who lived and worked in Bale. Father Joye purchased films of all genres and production countries mainly in used copies on the second hand market in Germany at affordable prices. He showed the films both as enter­tainment for his catechumens and as a teaching device for adults. In the 1970s Father Stefan Bamberger S.J. (1923-1997), realizing the historical value of this collection, entrusted Davide Turconi with two hundred films. Thus began the Italian Association for Research in the History of Cinema (Associazione Ital­iana per le Ricerche di Storia del Cinema).

Roland Cosandey

In the 1970s, the Cineteca di Bologna purchased the only film in the collection that Davide Turconi had kept for himself, Sid­ney Olcott’s Ben Hur (Usa 1907), along with 2282 photograms cut from films in Joye’s collection. At the time most of the coloured prints in Joye’s collection were printed in black and white by the BFI. For this reason two of the films presented from Joye’s collection will be screened using colour prints from other archives.