Elif Rongen Kaynakçı

As Curator of Silent Film at Eye Filmmuseum, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi has made a significant contribution to the preservation and presentation of early cinema. After graduating from the University of Amsterdam in 1997 with a specialism in national film histories, she joined Eye in 1999.

Throughout her career, Elif has been instrumental in the discovery, restoration, and presentation of numerous presumed-lost films, including the notable Beyond the Rocks (1922) starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, The Floor Below (1918) featuring Mabel Normand, and Michael Curtiz’s Az utolsó hajnal (1917). In 2011, Elif played a crucial role in having the Desmet Collection inscribed onto UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Her ongoing work involves the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, with a particular focus on the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). As an active participant in international archival festivals like Il Cinema Ritrovato and Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, she continues to contribute to the field of silent cinema.

Elif has also co-authored various publications for Eye as well as other journals, and has been involved in independent projects such as the traveling archival presentation Views of the Ottoman Empire since 2014. Her long-term involvement in the archive’s colour restorations has resulted in collaborations including Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema (2015) and The Colour Fantastic: Chromatic Worlds of Silent Cinema (2018). Most recently, she co-curated Cinema's First Nasty Women, a DVD box set featuring 99 films, released by Kino Lorber in December 2022.