Raiders of the lost archives - Britmovie

julian_craster · 08-02-2008, 09:44 AM

Not specifically about UK film, but may be interest......some of these 'raiders' are
, like pornographers, clearly in it for the money, others perhaps not......

Raiders of the lost archives

Never seen Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster? Thanks to a band of renegade movie fans, such 'classics' have been saved from obscurity. Gordon Coates on the weird world of film collectors

Friday February 1, 2008
The Guardian
Raiders of the lost archives | Features | Guardian Unlimited Film

It's tempting to imagine them as Indiana Jones types, venturing to foreign countries and poking about in cobwebbed cellars in their search of treasure, long-lost artefacts known only to a few and mentioned in hushed, reverent tones. The truth is that most rare-film collectors chase their quarry by licking stamps, sending and copying DVDs. But there is a small and noble band of people willing to figuratively don a balaclava, grab the bolt cutters and risk a prison sentence to bring an obscure print into their collection.

A rare-film collector and exhibitor since the early 1980s, Jack Stevenson is the most famous of the breed. Stevenson built his collection the hard way, before the internet made most films just a mouse-click away. Instead, as he explains, he used to trawl through "squalid little storefronts" in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, finding celluloid gems among the millions of feet of grainy pornography that washed up in the second-hand stores when the 1970s adult theatres finally closed down. "There is nothing definitive or encyclopaedic about my collection," he says. "It's chaos. I run the original prints at shows and I don't store the prints in a temperature-controlled vault. One thing I hate about proper archives is that they preserve the films, often putting them in a deep freeze, but never show them. Films should be shown. I don't care about the noble legacy of cinema; I don't care if my films will survive after I'm dead. Maybe by that time people will no longer go to theatres but will be watching films on their mobile telephones."
Stevenson wrote about his search technique in his book, Land of a Thousand Balconies. "There was a place over in the Mission, a thrift shop crammed floor-to-ceiling with junk and furniture, which was owned by a Mexican family. The joint was run by an obese old lady with a gammy leg and there were always lots of children running around. The basement was a garbage-strewn pit, partially flooded and reeking like a swamp. At some point, a film lab had gone out of business and tossed its goods - mainly pornographic - into a dumpster, and the old lady's sons had fished it all out. Now here I was, lifting up water-soaked cardboard boxes whose bottoms immediately fell out to send spools of film rolling into the muck. I staggered back up with as much film as I could carry. Among the films from that heist were several triple-X gay porno trailers, including Get That Sailor, which I later incorporated into a compilation show I presented at the 1995 Rotterdam film festival. It turned out to be the surprise hit of the festival, with shouts of 'Get that sailor!' ringing around the main promenade."
Not surprisingly, a man willing to stand knee-deep in stagnant filth is completely committed to getting his hands on what he wants. He says now: "I once threatened a man's life because he sold me a print of Viva Las Vegas that was only 99% perfect. At that point, I realised I had to cool down. I can't speak for others but I would do anything to get my hands on certain films. Steal my mother's rent money even.
Stevenson tours his collection, eking out a living by distributing titles such as Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and putting on short compilation shows on themes such as "drug culture". He refuses to transfer his finds to DVD and sell them. "I think movies should be about sitting in a darkened room full of strangers. It's all about atmosphere - that harks back to the earliest shows I did at Chet's Bar."
Unfortunately, there are scores of films that no collector will ever track down now, and which will never again be seen in public - usually movies from the first part of the last century. The nitrate stock they were filmed on was unstable, and studios neglected their masterpieces; prints were often destroyed for their silver content, or used in bonfires when a script called for particularly fierce flames. The Film Foundation, the organisation set up by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen to preserve cinematic history, estimates that half of all American movies made before 1950 have already disintegrated and are lost forever. The Library of Congress states that only 10% of the films produced before 1929 are still in existence.
There is, however, always hope of a happy ending, and there are important films out there somewhere, lost to the public but waiting for someone to discover them. One such was the 1928 classic The Passion of Joan of Arc, whose director, Carl Theodore Dreyer, went to his grave in 1968 believing his work had been lost forever after a fire destroyed the original negative - only cobbled-together versions, using whatever footage was available, remained in existence. Fast forward to 1981, when a worker in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital discovered a complete copy of the original cut stuffed in the back of a cupboard. The Oslo Print, as it became known, was shipped off to the Norwegian Film Institute, where it was lovingly restored.
Another famous collectors' anecdote concerns the monumental discovery made when actor James Mason bought Buster Keaton's old house. Versions of the tale vary slightly on the details, but what is agreed is that in the mid-1950s, Mason found a stack of 35mm film prints which turned out to contain some of the legendary slapsticker's lost movies.
In all fairness, it should be pointed out that most lost movies aren't nearly so important, or even very good. For every Joan of Arc there are a thousand schlock horror movies that have fallen off the radar. The internet is now full of cyber storefronts where enthusiasts can buy copies of wonderfully named movies such as Death May Be Your Santa Claus, and If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? Mark Johnston, the collector behind web retailer Shocking Videos, says: "All of the titles I offer could be considered 'lost' to one degree or another, but some wouldn't be out there on the market now if it weren't for me finding, rediscovering or otherwise making them happen." Films he has put back into circulation include The Telephone Book, The Zebra Killer, the bizarre Beatles tribute All This and World War II.
Movies become lost for many reasons. Some are hated by the studio heads and never get a release or are entangled in a legal quagmire from which they can never be released. Most, however, fall into limbo, and after failing to set the box office alight they never make the jump to home viewing formats, and for all intents and purposes cease to exist. If there's one thing that film collectors agree on, it's that the studios have a habit of not caring about large portions of their back catalogues.
Even Stevenson is impressed with the efforts of other collectors. "I must say one good thing about the film collecting community is that they have saved films that the studios cared nothing about. If it wasn't for film collectors working from a personal love of films, a lot more movies would be lost or simply there would be no prints to show."
The rarity of certain titles has given rise to the "video gumshoe", someone who specializes in tracking down rare movies. Barbara Suarez, the founder of A Million and One World-Wide Videos, a website that specialises in tracking down hard-to-find films, explains the process behind finding a tape when Amazon and eBay come up blank. "When we receive a request for a particular film, we check the databases of our hundreds of collectors that we have acquired over the last 15 years. If we cannot locate anyone who has a copy, we offer to advertise to find it.
"There are thousands of films that have never been released on video. Many of these are in the public domain. We have collectors who own a copy of the film itself and it can be sent to a company that has the equipment to convert it to either VHS or DVD. In some instances, the only way to find one of these rare titles is to locate someone who taped it when it showed on TV. The most any one of our clients ever paid for a video was $1,000. They have asked us not to reveal what the title was."
This brings us to a fork in the road. Some collectors and locators stringently ensure they stay on the right side of the copyright law, while many others take advantage of legal loopholes to copy and sell movies. Many others ignore the law altogether and hope they don't get caught. Traditionally, collectors tend to put a disclaimer on their websites explaining that they think their titles are copyright-free. If challenged, for the most part, they remove the title immediately and carry on about their business. Some collectors, however, are vociferous in the belief that the studios are letting down film fans. One well-respected collector who asked not to be named says: "I'm a copyright communist and proud of it. I don't respect the rights of anyone who uses those rights to suppress cinematic art of the past from fans. If someone doesn't want me to watch something, that makes me want to see it even more."
Whatever the legality of copying these titles, any computer-savvy movie geek can discover where they can download lost movies such as Otto Preminger's drug-addled Skidoo, which was nigh-on unobtainable 10 years ago. Don Hicks of Subterranean Cinema (subcin.com), a film collector for over two decades, has put previously unreleased cinematic gems on to YouTube and tracked down artefacts such as the original scripts to The Day the Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis's uncompleted Holocaust movie, and the original soundtrack to William Friedkin's The Sorcerer, making them available for free.
Hicks believes rare-film collecting can only flourish in the internet age. "Internet file trading is the real future, now that broadband speeds allow films to be transferred in less time than it takes to actually watch the film. I believe it will spell the end of conventional movie theatres.
"I'm pretty much a hermit," he goes on. So what's the motivation? "It gives me personal pleasure to send someone a copy of a film that they've been seeking for years, even decades."

Moor Larkin · 08-02-2008, 10:11 AM

Two or three years ago I recall someone advertising three 35mm Film Tins that he said were sealed and had a printed label reading 'Danger Man' on them. He'd found them on a piece of waste ground somewhere around Borehamwood. I wonder who bought them, and what was actually in there.......

midnight sheep · 08-02-2008, 12:01 PM

Fascinating stuff.Thanks to DVDS it's now so easy for collectors to swop and for people to finally see the films they never dreamed they would.
For me the greatest losses would include all but 2 of the early 70's British series Menace.
Also all those missing Out Of The Unknown shows, especially season 4 which I prefered.

orpheum · 08-02-2008, 12:27 PM

I have in fact used AMillion & One Worldwide Videos.They couldnt track down anything other than an early talkie"Thunderbolt" which i had been after for years.However nothing alas on British films.I might try to get them to advertise for Underneath The Arches.Itmust be out there somewhere.

image45 · 11-02-2008, 12:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by midnight sheep

Fascinating stuff.Thanks to DVDS it's now so easy for collectors to swop and for people to finally see the films they never dreamed they would.
For me the greatest losses would include all but 2 of the early 70's British series Menace.
Also all those missing Out Of The Unknown shows, especially season 4 which I prefered.

Yes I would love to see more Menace episodes returned to the BBC archives. This seems along way off and you have more chance of a Paul Temple episode been returned!

Brief Encounter · 22-02-2008, 10:06 PM

I tried A Million and One with some of my British film wants - nada.

It's a crying shame so many British films from the 40s onward haven't been show on TV in years, if ever, and are unlikely to ever be released on DVD.

Buffalo_Chuck · 23-02-2008, 01:59 PM

I like the attitudes. Films should be put out to be seen, not hidden away.

Brief Encounter · 23-02-2008, 04:43 PM

Exactly. I found someone who had a copy of 'The Happiness of Three Women' - extremely rare film. I asked them about it and was told, 'I placed my copy with the Welsh Film Archive'. Yes, because more people will get to see it that way!

lemmycaution · 02-05-2008, 08:17 PM

Good article.

Thanks, Julian.

08-02-2008, 09:44 AM	#1
julian_craster has no status. Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Isle of Foula, UK Posts: 1,543 Country: iTrader: (0)	Raiders of the lost archives Not specifically about UK film, but may be interest......some of these 'raiders' are , like pornographers, clearly in it for the money, others perhaps not...... Raiders of the lost archives Never seen Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster? Thanks to a band of renegade movie fans, such 'classics' have been saved from obscurity. Gordon Coates on the weird world of film collectors Friday February 1, 2008 The Guardian Raiders of the lost archives \| Features \| Guardian Unlimited Film It's tempting to imagine them as Indiana Jones types, venturing to foreign countries and poking about in cobwebbed cellars in their search of treasure, long-lost artefacts known only to a few and mentioned in hushed, reverent tones. The truth is that most rare-film collectors chase their quarry by licking stamps, sending and copying DVDs. But there is a small and noble band of people willing to figuratively don a balaclava, grab the bolt cutters and risk a prison sentence to bring an obscure print into their collection. A rare-film collector and exhibitor since the early 1980s, Jack Stevenson is the most famous of the breed. Stevenson built his collection the hard way, before the internet made most films just a mouse-click away. Instead, as he explains, he used to trawl through "squalid little storefronts" in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, finding celluloid gems among the millions of feet of grainy pornography that washed up in the second-hand stores when the 1970s adult theatres finally closed down. "There is nothing definitive or encyclopaedic about my collection," he says. "It's chaos. I run the original prints at shows and I don't store the prints in a temperature-controlled vault. One thing I hate about proper archives is that they preserve the films, often putting them in a deep freeze, but never show them. Films should be shown. I don't care about the noble legacy of cinema; I don't care if my films will survive after I'm dead. Maybe by that time people will no longer go to theatres but will be watching films on their mobile telephones." Stevenson wrote about his search technique in his book, Land of a Thousand Balconies. "There was a place over in the Mission, a thrift shop crammed floor-to-ceiling with junk and furniture, which was owned by a Mexican family. The joint was run by an obese old lady with a gammy leg and there were always lots of children running around. The basement was a garbage-strewn pit, partially flooded and reeking like a swamp. At some point, a film lab had gone out of business and tossed its goods - mainly pornographic - into a dumpster, and the old lady's sons had fished it all out. Now here I was, lifting up water-soaked cardboard boxes whose bottoms immediately fell out to send spools of film rolling into the muck. I staggered back up with as much film as I could carry. Among the films from that heist were several triple-X gay porno trailers, including Get That Sailor, which I later incorporated into a compilation show I presented at the 1995 Rotterdam film festival. It turned out to be the surprise hit of the festival, with shouts of 'Get that sailor!' ringing around the main promenade." Not surprisingly, a man willing to stand knee-deep in stagnant filth is completely committed to getting his hands on what he wants. He says now: "I once threatened a man's life because he sold me a print of Viva Las Vegas that was only 99% perfect. At that point, I realised I had to cool down. I can't speak for others but I would do anything to get my hands on certain films. Steal my mother's rent money even. Stevenson tours his collection, eking out a living by distributing titles such as Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and putting on short compilation shows on themes such as "drug culture". He refuses to transfer his finds to DVD and sell them. "I think movies should be about sitting in a darkened room full of strangers. It's all about atmosphere - that harks back to the earliest shows I did at Chet's Bar." Unfortunately, there are scores of films that no collector will ever track down now, and which will never again be seen in public - usually movies from the first part of the last century. The nitrate stock they were filmed on was unstable, and studios neglected their masterpieces; prints were often destroyed for their silver content, or used in bonfires when a script called for particularly fierce flames. The Film Foundation, the organisation set up by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen to preserve cinematic history, estimates that half of all American movies made before 1950 have already disintegrated and are lost forever. The Library of Congress states that only 10% of the films produced before 1929 are still in existence. There is, however, always hope of a happy ending, and there are important films out there somewhere, lost to the public but waiting for someone to discover them. One such was the 1928 classic The Passion of Joan of Arc, whose director, Carl Theodore Dreyer, went to his grave in 1968 believing his work had been lost forever after a fire destroyed the original negative - only cobbled-together versions, using whatever footage was available, remained in existence. Fast forward to 1981, when a worker in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital discovered a complete copy of the original cut stuffed in the back of a cupboard. The Oslo Print, as it became known, was shipped off to the Norwegian Film Institute, where it was lovingly restored. Another famous collectors' anecdote concerns the monumental discovery made when actor James Mason bought Buster Keaton's old house. Versions of the tale vary slightly on the details, but what is agreed is that in the mid-1950s, Mason found a stack of 35mm film prints which turned out to contain some of the legendary slapsticker's lost movies. In all fairness, it should be pointed out that most lost movies aren't nearly so important, or even very good. For every Joan of Arc there are a thousand schlock horror movies that have fallen off the radar. The internet is now full of cyber storefronts where enthusiasts can buy copies of wonderfully named movies such as Death May Be Your Santa Claus, and If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? Mark Johnston, the collector behind web retailer Shocking Videos, says: "All of the titles I offer could be considered 'lost' to one degree or another, but some wouldn't be out there on the market now if it weren't for me finding, rediscovering or otherwise making them happen." Films he has put back into circulation include The Telephone Book, The Zebra Killer, the bizarre Beatles tribute All This and World War II. Movies become lost for many reasons. Some are hated by the studio heads and never get a release or are entangled in a legal quagmire from which they can never be released. Most, however, fall into limbo, and after failing to set the box office alight they never make the jump to home viewing formats, and for all intents and purposes cease to exist. If there's one thing that film collectors agree on, it's that the studios have a habit of not caring about large portions of their back catalogues. Even Stevenson is impressed with the efforts of other collectors. "I must say one good thing about the film collecting community is that they have saved films that the studios cared nothing about. If it wasn't for film collectors working from a personal love of films, a lot more movies would be lost or simply there would be no prints to show." The rarity of certain titles has given rise to the "video gumshoe", someone who specializes in tracking down rare movies. Barbara Suarez, the founder of A Million and One World-Wide Videos, a website that specialises in tracking down hard-to-find films, explains the process behind finding a tape when Amazon and eBay come up blank. "When we receive a request for a particular film, we check the databases of our hundreds of collectors that we have acquired over the last 15 years. If we cannot locate anyone who has a copy, we offer to advertise to find it. "There are thousands of films that have never been released on video. Many of these are in the public domain. We have collectors who own a copy of the film itself and it can be sent to a company that has the equipment to convert it to either VHS or DVD. In some instances, the only way to find one of these rare titles is to locate someone who taped it when it showed on TV. The most any one of our clients ever paid for a video was $1,000. They have asked us not to reveal what the title was." This brings us to a fork in the road. Some collectors and locators stringently ensure they stay on the right side of the copyright law, while many others take advantage of legal loopholes to copy and sell movies. Many others ignore the law altogether and hope they don't get caught. Traditionally, collectors tend to put a disclaimer on their websites explaining that they think their titles are copyright-free. If challenged, for the most part, they remove the title immediately and carry on about their business. Some collectors, however, are vociferous in the belief that the studios are letting down film fans. One well-respected collector who asked not to be named says: "I'm a copyright communist and proud of it. I don't respect the rights of anyone who uses those rights to suppress cinematic art of the past from fans. If someone doesn't want me to watch something, that makes me want to see it even more." Whatever the legality of copying these titles, any computer-savvy movie geek can discover where they can download lost movies such as Otto Preminger's drug-addled Skidoo, which was nigh-on unobtainable 10 years ago. Don Hicks of Subterranean Cinema (subcin.com), a film collector for over two decades, has put previously unreleased cinematic gems on to YouTube and tracked down artefacts such as the original scripts to The Day the Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis's uncompleted Holocaust movie, and the original soundtrack to William Friedkin's The Sorcerer, making them available for free. Hicks believes rare-film collecting can only flourish in the internet age. "Internet file trading is the real future, now that broadband speeds allow films to be transferred in less time than it takes to actually watch the film. I believe it will spell the end of conventional movie theatres. "I'm pretty much a hermit," he goes on. So what's the motivation? "It gives me personal pleasure to send someone a copy of a film that they've been seeking for years, even decades."

08-02-2008, 10:11 AM	#2
Moor Larkin has no status. Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: North West Frontier Posts: 1,609 Country: iTrader: (0)	Two or three years ago I recall someone advertising three 35mm Film Tins that he said were sealed and had a printed label reading 'Danger Man' on them. He'd found them on a piece of waste ground somewhere around Borehamwood. I wonder who bought them, and what was actually in there....... __________________ http://theatrical-mcgoohan.mysite.orange.co.uk/

08-02-2008, 12:27 PM	#4
orpheum is wishing he were sitting in the 3/9s at the Odeon Temple Fortune Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: London Posts: 1,302 Country: iTrader: (4)	I have in fact used AMillion & One Worldwide Videos.They couldnt track down anything other than an early talkie"Thunderbolt" which i had been after for years.However nothing alas on British films.I might try to get them to advertise for Underneath The Arches.Itmust be out there somewhere. __________________ Welcome To Highbury The Home Of Football

02-05-2008, 08:17 PM	#9
lemmycaution has no status. Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Toronto, Ontario Posts: 8 Country: iTrader: (0)	Good article. Thanks, Julian. __________________ I say, you do talk funny. You must be foreigners.

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08-02-2008, 12:01 PM	#3
midnight sheep has no status. Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Cork Posts: 77 My Mood: Country: iTrader: (3)	Fascinating stuff.Thanks to DVDS it's now so easy for collectors to swop and for people to finally see the films they never dreamed they would. For me the greatest losses would include all but 2 of the early 70's British series Menace. Also all those missing Out Of The Unknown shows, especially season 4 which I prefered.

22-02-2008, 10:06 PM	#6
Brief Encounter is anticipating the Margaret boxset Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: London Posts: 281 My Mood: Country: iTrader: (0)	I tried A Million and One with some of my British film wants - nada. It's a crying shame so many British films from the 40s onward haven't been show on TV in years, if ever, and are unlikely to ever be released on DVD.

23-02-2008, 01:59 PM	#7
Buffalo_Chuck has no status. Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: USA Posts: 42 Country: iTrader: (0)	I like the attitudes. Films should be put out to be seen, not hidden away.

23-02-2008, 04:43 PM	#8
Brief Encounter is anticipating the Margaret boxset Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: London Posts: 281 My Mood: Country: iTrader: (0)	Exactly. I found someone who had a copy of 'The Happiness of Three Women' - extremely rare film. I asked them about it and was told, 'I placed my copy with the Welsh Film Archive'. Yes, because more people will get to see it that way!