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Australia Returns Silent Films to the States
Announcing on 24th April 2008 that it was to return eight silent-era films to the United States as part of a new partnership to preserve American filmmaking history, the Australian Ministry of Culture described the shorts, which date from between 1912 and 1927, as ‘important missing links in early film history.’ The partnership, called Film Connection: Australia-America, saw the National Film and Sound Archive – Australia and the US Library of Congress National Film Preservation Foundation working together with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
The announcement stated that the Australian Archive would despatch the nitrate films to a restoration laboratory in Holland where they were to be scanned into digital files.
"The Americans will make any necessary digital corrections and return the files to (the Dutch lab) for outputting to 35mm film and colour tinting… At the end of the process, the nitrate will be returned to the NFSA – Australia, along with new exhibition prints; the preservation masters and a second set of exhibition prints will be shipped to America. The NFPF will coordinate the project."
Australian culture minister (and former lead singer of the rock band Midnight Oil) Peter Garrett said, ‘This pilot project is a significant step in the right direction… Let's hope it builds a path to wider international collaboration.’
The films in question were The Prospector (1912), a trailer for Sin Woman (1921), the animated short Mutt and Jeff: On Strike (1920), a trailer for Frank Capra’s Long Pants starring Harry Langdon, a 1920 Pathe newsreel, a U.S. Navy documentary, a travel tour of Japan and an early Hollywood promotional short of movie stars playing baseball. [ADD]
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