In Focus: The Challenges of Film Reconstruction

One might get an impression that film restoration is limited to scanning an old print or negative and digitaly removing the scratches. That is hardly the case. Silent films seldom survive in complete form. Some of the George Eastman Museum’s most renowned restorations, such as The Lost World (1925) and The Unknown (1927), have been reconstructed from multiple sources. Currently the museum is restoring the westerns of the great William S. Hart. To bring nine titles as close as possible to their original look, 44 elements from 8 archives had to be accessed. These include original 35mm nitrate prints, foreign release versions on fragile diacetate stock, bootlegged 16mm copies, and even obsolete formats, such as 28mm or paper prints. Putting the jigsaw puzzle together is a challenge, particularly when there is no roadmap. Some of the decisions are bound to be subjective, and sacrifices have to be made. And this is not inherent in silent cinema: restoring such victims of censorship as Rouben Mamoulin’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) is often a conundrum. The victories and defeats of film reconstruction will be discussed by Moving Image Department Senior Curator Peter Bagrov and Preservation Manager Anthony L’Abbate.

This event is free. You must register in advance to receive the Zoom link.