Long-lost US cinema treasures found in NZ

Photo / Herald on Sunday

A trove of "forgotten silver" - 75 long-lost American films on inflammable nitrate film stock - is on its way back to the United States after being discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive last year.

The films include a silent feature by legendary director John Ford, a number of early one-reel Westerns and period drama starring glamorous 1920s screen siren Clara Bow, the New York Times reports.

The New Zealand find was important because there were no remaining prints of the films in the US, the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Christopher Finlayson, said yesterday.

The significance of the films was uncovered by Brian Meacham, a preservationist for the Los Angeles archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who visited the Film Archive in Wellington when on holiday last year.

"The conversation inevitably turned to what films we held in our collection," the archive's manager of corporate services, Steve Russell, told the Times.

"Brian was, not surprisingly, excited to learn the Film Archive held a number of non-New Zealand titles, primarily early nitrate films, including a substantial number of American films. We offered to compile a list of the US material, and it was a short step to here."

Mr Russell said prints of many foreign films remained in New Zealand after originally screening here because of the expense of shipping them home.

"It's one of the rare cases where the tyranny of distance has worked in our and the films' favour," Mr Russell said.

The John Ford film Upstream is a backstage drama from 1927 and is said to be the first to reflect the influence of legendary German director F.W. Murnau, who began working at the same studio as Ford the previous year. The Clara Bow film Maytime was made in 1923 and was the sex symbol's first Hollywood film.

The films are being gradually shipped to the US by the National Film Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit organisation affiliated with the Library of Congress' National Film Preservation Board.

Because of the unstable, highly inflammable nature of the nitrate stock, the films have to be transported in small batches inside steel barrels.

About a third of the films have arrived in the US so far and preservation work has begun on four.

Mr Finlayson, who recently committed an extra $2 million for the Film Archive's preservation work, said the US interest "shows the breadth and international significance of its moving image collection".

"There are no known copies of these nitrate films in existence in the United States."

He welcomed the co-operation between the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Film Archive.

"These important films will be preserved and made available to both US and New Zealand audiences to enjoy."