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Recommendation 5.2: Repati-iating "Lost" Films
Develop public-private ventures to repatriate American films in foreign archives. The vast majority of American silent films are lost. Roughly 90% of the U.S. features from the 1910s and 80% from the 1920s are thought to have been thrown away or allowed to deteriorate. Of the survivors, many owe their existence to the efforts of foreign archives, which saved internationally distributed prints long ago abandoned or forgotten by their American producers.
Through a repatriation effort begun in 1987, American audiences may get a second chance to study and enjoy these lost works. Public archives and the National Center for Film and Video Preservation, working through the International Federation of Film Archives, have negotiated for the return of some 460 American shorts and features, including the earliest surviving feature directed by an African American, Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1919); Capital Punishment (1925) with Clara Bow; the silent adventure picture The Sea Hawk (1924); and Maurice Tourneur's gangster film Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915). Similarly, U.S. archives have identified "lost" foreign films in their collections and returned them to their national archives.
Recommendation 5.3: Archival Gifts and Deposits
The underfunded effort to repatriate American films is, however, proceeding slowly. The opening of Eastern Europe, while providing an opportunity, also underscores the urgency; many Eastern European archives, faced with worsening economic conditions, do not have the funds to copy or store American nitrate films in low-temperature and low-humidity environments that will prolong their survival.
Repatriation could be expedited with the assistance of the private sector. Major American studios are interested not only in obtaining titles missing from their early libraries but also films with foreignlanguage soundtracks, an asset of renewed value in ancillary markets. As a first step, the National Film Preservation Board will facilitate discussions among U.S. nitrate archives and studios holding copyrights from the silent and early sound period regarding a framework and funding mechanism for a joint repatriation effort. The goal is to present a proposal to foreign archives by mid1995.
Alert independent filmmakers to the preservation needs of their work and encourage them to transfer to archives films of cultural or historical interest. A less obvious public-private partnership involves custodial agreements between archives and film owners. As noted in the 1993 hearings and interviews, avant-garde and independent films are today among the most in need of preservation attention-due to the conditions under which the films were made, the limited number of release prints, and the inability of filmmakers to
Rethinking Partnerships and Funding 23