A 4K restoration opens the Lido, Ephesus' night visits according to TRT: two ways of bringing the past back into circulation

Heritage is not only preserved: it is programmed. Two news items today show two different paths for bringing it back before an audience, and they share the choice of a time slot — the evening — and a technical investment.

The 1967 film that opens 2026

Last evening, at 9 p.m. in the Sala Darsena at the Venice Lido, the pre-opening ceremony of the 83rd International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art screened “Col cuore in gola,” shot in 1967 by Tinto Brass, running 105 minutes, with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin in the cast. The film is scheduled in the Venezia Classici section, out of competition. This is stated in the official screening calendar published by the Biennale and confirmed by the event’s website.

The 4K digital restoration is the work of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, carried out with the support of Netflix: this is reported by Vera Classe in its report on the Biennale Cinema 2026 program.

This point is worth dwelling on, because it describes a now recurring model: the public archive provides the technical expertise and the materials, a private operator provides part of the resources, the festival provides visibility. The newspaper wrote about this on August 28, when the pre-opening was announced (the piece). The result is that the 83rd Exhibition opened with a film from fifty-nine years ago, placed out of competition in the section dedicated to classics.

The other shore: Ephesus by night, according to TRT

On the archaeological front, Turkish international broadcaster TRT World reported in its September 1, 2026 programming that the site of Ephesus, in Turkey, had exceeded 200,000 visitors during night openings: this is what the relayed report shows. The figure currently remains a statement attributed to a single source, a Turkish state broadcaster; no independent confirmation is available, and neither the reference period nor the comparison with previous seasons is known.

With this caveat, the figure reported by TRT World is interesting for a structural reason. Evening openings at the major sites of the eastern Mediterranean respond to two constraints at once: daytime heat, which in the summer months makes visiting an exposed archaeological area exhausting, and capacity, which saturates during the day. Shifting a share of visits to nighttime hours means increasing the overall number of admissions without increasing the instantaneous pressure on the structures.

What they have in common

Neither operation produces new content. They produce access: one through the technical restoration of a deteriorated medium, the other through the extension of opening hours. These are the two levers a cultural institution has available when the material already exists and the problem is getting someone to reach it.

The difference lies in who pays. The Venetian restoration has a declared private co-funder; on the Turkish night openings, available sources indicate neither the cost of the operation nor who bears it.

What we don’t know

We do not know the extent of Netflix’s contribution to the restoration nor the terms of the agreement with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, which the sources do not specify. Regarding the site of Ephesus, the exact period to which the 200,000 admissions indicated by TRT World refer is missing, as is the number of opening evenings and the comparative figure with daytime attendance. The Biennale calendar does not indicate whether the restoration of “Col cuore in gola” will have theatrical or platform distribution after its screening at the Lido.

Sources: La Biennale di Venezia (official calendar and website of the 83rd Exhibition); Vera Classe; TRT World (Turkish state broadcaster), via relay.