Cinema is such an exciting field to study, especially its early period. With all the doom and gloom surrounding the plethora of lost silent films from across the world, at the mercy of the ticking timebomb of nitrate decay, it’s a wonderful feeling when one hears reports of large batches of films discovered where you least expect it.

From the New York Times, an image from Why Husbands Flirt (1918), one of the 75 silent films recently discovered in New Zealand that are being returned to the United States.

This morning I found two such stories linked to my facebook page. First up, both Cathy Munroe Hotes, who keeps a pretty nifty Japanese film-related blogspot of her own, Nishikata Eiga, and Daniel Bird directed me to this article in the New York Times, reporting how some 75 vintage Hollywood films believed to be no longer extant have been discovered in an archive in New Zealand, including John Ford’s Upstream (1927), the comedy Mary of the Movies (1923), which is the earliest Columbia feature known to survive, and The Woman Hater (1910), an early outing for Perils of Pauline star Pearl White. The story is also reported in the UK paper The Guardian. It’s going to take a while to restore all these, and even then, one wonders how easy they’ll be for most of us to see – silent films are hardly the greatest money-spinners on the DVD market. Anyway, the films are being restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation in America, and if you look on their homepage, you can already see a few clips from one of the films, The Sergeant (1910), “one of the earliest surviving narratives shot on location in Yosemite Valley.”

The Sergeant (1910): “one of the earliest surviving narratives shot on location in Yosemite Valley.”

This is a pretty great site really. You can watch several of the films they’ve restored previously online, although the clips they do have really do have one begging for more. Some of my favourites are this rather saucy trailer for the long-lost title The Sin Woman (c. 1922); the early animation Mutt and Jeff: On Strike (1920), clearly made before the days when cel-animation was the norm, because you can see the blurs around the characters where they’ve rubbed them out and redrawn them over the backgrounds; and this fascinating early documentary-travelogue A Trip through Japan with the YWCA, filmed around 1919.

The second bit of news came once more courtesy of Daniel Bird. It pertains to an article on the BBC website about a 1935 Soviet film entitled Kara Bogaz, which was never actually released because it was made without the authorisation of Stalin. The film was the first ever production in Turkmenistan, but it has been lying around in the vaults for some 75 years, unscreened and forgotten. It’s getting an airing tonight in London, at Free Word in Farringdon, a venue I must confess I’d never even heard of before. Annoyingly, I only found out about it today, and have other commitments for this evening, but, I know it’s short notice, maybe some of you reading this might find time to fit it in.

Kara Bogaz, the first production from Soviet Turkmenistan, unseen for 75 years.

Still, these reports led me to a bit of internet trawling this morning, and reminded me what a wealth of obscure cinematic treasures there are for viewing online, films you’ll never have heard of from the early days of cinema, and films from some of the furthest-flung reaches of the world. Earlier this year, Sight and Sound conducted a poll of its contributors’ favourite online resources; the resulting article never appeared in print, but can be found on the magazine’s website. There’s some pretty interesting discoveries to be found here. For example, did you know that Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Love of Sumako (Joyu Sumako no koi), one of his lesser known works from 1947, is available to watch in its entirety on Youtube? I didn’t until I was pointed in its direction by Brad Stevens. London Screen Archive also has a Youtube channel of its own, full of valuable archive material of our great capital, and you can also catch this year’s Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 11-minute short Phantoms of Nabua online here. If Senegalese cinema is something of a mystery to you, well, why not check out the 1973 feature, Touki Bouki,  directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty. And while you’re at it, how about checking out The Feminists Art Project, which features some classic experimental work from, among others, Maya Deren and Germaine Dulac.

Touki Bouki (1973), described by some as "the Senagalese Rebel Without a Cause."

My own choice is the Europa Film Treasures website, which could keep you occupied for hours with its collection of early titles from Europe and America, and a good host of contextual information about the films and their makers too. My top choice is this proto sci-fi title, The Airship Destroyer (Der Luftkrieg der Zukunft), made way back in 1909 by Walter R Booth. Or how about following this link here, from which you’ll learn that the industry of the country that spawned Michael Haneke pioneered the production of early cheesecake one-reelers sporting titles such as The Saucy Chambermaid. Why, one need never leave the house to go to the cinema again!

Early scif-fi in William Booth's The Aircraft Destroyer (1909).

If anyone reading this has any other links to share, please don’t be shy. Post them in my comments section. I’m all ears (and eyes).

Posted at 14:12 on 08 June 2010 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• Apichatpong Weerasethakul
• Der Luftkrieg der Zukunft
• Europa Film Treasures
• John Ford
• Kara Bogaz
• Kenji Mizoguchi
• National Film Preservation Foundation
• New Zealand
• Pearl White
• silent cinema
• The Airship Destroyer
• The Love of Sumako
• The Woman Hater
• Touki Bouki
• Upstream
• Why Husbands Flirt
• William Booth

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