WINSTON-SALEM -- To celebrate World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, the Moving Image Archives of the School of Filmmaking at the North Carolina School of the Arts will screen a restored 35mm print of Akira Kurasawa’s 1950 classic RASHOMON on Saturday, Oct. 27.

The screening will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Main Theatre of the ACE Exhibition Complex, School of Filmmaking at NCSA, 1533 South Main St., Winston-Salem. It is free and open to the public.

RASHOMON is 88 minutes long and is in Japanese with English subtitles. It is in black-and-white and is not rated. Set in medieval Japan, the film focuses on four people who offer conflicting accounts of a rape and murder. Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Kichijiro Ueda, Fumiko Honma and Daisuke Katô star.

RASHOMON received an Honorary Oscar as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951. It also was an Oscar nominee for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

One of the most unique aspects of the School of Filmmaking at the North Carolina School of the Arts is its Moving Image Archives, the fifth largest noncommercial film archive in the United States. The top priority for the archive, like its sister archives around the world, is the conservation and preservation of its holdings.

To bring global awareness to this issue, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated October 27 as World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.

Koïchiro Matsuura, the Director-General of UNESCO, set forth this proclamation:

“Audiovisual records – which is to say moving images and recorded sound – provide us with valuable entries into the past. They draw us into the collective dramas of our recent history, they allow us to experience, firsthand, how an art was practiced, they show us people going about their business in settings that may have changed vastly, and indeed going about business that may have changed just as much. They tell us a great deal about others, and ourselves where we have been, and what makes us what we are.

“Last year, at the 33^rd session of UNESCO’s General Conference, the Member States decided to declare 27 October as World Day for Audiovisual Archives, noting that this heritage is testimony to ‘economic, political and social development, the evolution of education, scientific knowledge, and diversity of cultures of different nations and communities, as well as to the evolution of nature and the universe.’ The drafters of this resolution were fully aware that these archives are extraordinarily fragile, and that the efforts to preserve them can be extremely costly, and not easily within the means of many countries.

“Floods and fires, storms and earthquakes can erase this heritage overnight. War, theft and vandalism, and simple human negligence, have destroyed many collections, and continue to do so. Humidity, heat, dust and salt-laden atmospheres also play their part, and losses are provoked by technical obsolescence as well as physical decay affecting not only old images and sound recordings, but also the ‘new’ digital media.

“Safeguarding audiovisual heritage is a very complex process requiring a range of legal, institutional, technical, and financial solutions. Not taking action will result in the loss of entire chapters of this heritage in less than 10 years and lead to the irreparable impoverishment of human memory, culture and identity.

“On this, the first celebration of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, I call upon governments, international organizations, civil society and the private sector to give audiovisual heritage the recognition it deserves, and more than that, the resources so essential to its preservation. Only by doing so will we be able to ensure that future generations can enjoy the legacy that is still within our grasp.”

On Oct. 27, 1980, UNESCO’s General Conference adopted the “Recommendation for the safeguarding and preservation of moving images,” the first international instrument to declare the cultural and historical importance of film and television recordings.