Paolo Cherchi Usai is senior curator of the Motion Picture department at George Eastman House in Rochester, USA and Professor of Film at the University of Rochester, USA. He is co-founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Director of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and an adjunct member of the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress. He is the author of Silent Cinema: An Introduction (BFI, 2000) and The Death of Cinema (BFI, 2001).