A film by legendary director John Ford, found in the New Zealand Film Archive after it had been thought lost for decades, is to be screened at the home of the Academy Awards in September.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has announced the 1927 silent film Upstream,made by the four-time Oscar-winning director, will be "re-premiered" on September 1, at a screening at its Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills.
Upstream and 74 other "lost" films were discovered in 2009 by the Academy's archivist Brian Meacham when he decided to drop in at Wellington's New Zealand Film Archive during a New Zealand vacation.
As he toured the archive, he asked his New Zealand counterparts if there were any American films represented in the collection and the 75 films were found,
They included Upstream, Maytime starring a young starlet Clara Bow and Won in Closet, starring and directed by Mabel Normand.
Over the next few years all of the repatriated films will be preserved and made available at the Academy Film Archive and four other major American film archives, in collaboration with the National Film Preservation Foundation.
The September 1 Upstream presentation will also include the screening of an advertising trailer containing the only known surviving footage of the John Ford 1929 sound film, Strong Boy.
The Academy plans to screen two other "lost" films at later dates - The Sergeant (1910) and A Better Man (1912).
