A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons. Of American silent films far more have been lost than have survived, and of American sound films made from 1927 to 1950, perhaps half have been lost. The phrase "lost film" can also be used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternative versions of feature films are known to have been created but can no longer be accounted for. Sometimes a copy of a lost film is rediscovered. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a partially lost film. For example, the 1922 film Sherlock Holmes was eventually discovered but some of the footage is still missing.
Most film studios routinely had a "still" photographer with a large-format camera working on the set during production, taking pictures for potential later publicity use. The high-quality photographic paper prints that resulted, some produced in quantity for display use by theaters, others in smaller numbers for distribution to newspapers and magazines, have preserved imagery from many otherwise lost films. In some cases, the surviving coverage is so extensive that an entire lost film can be reconstructed scene by scene in the form of still photographs. Stills have been used to stand in for missing footage when making new preservation prints of partially lost films.
Read more about Lost Film: Reasons For Film Loss, Later Lost Films, Lost Film Soundtracks, List of Rediscovered Films, Lost Film in Film
Famous quotes containing the words lost and/or film:
“Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another. This painting here. I bought it 10 years ago for 60 thousand dollars. I could sell it today for 600. The illusion has become real and the more real it becomes, the more desperately they want it.”
—Oliver Stone (b. 1946)
“Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It’s another part of the twentieth-century mind. It’s the world seen from inside. We’ve come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film.... You have to ask yourself if there’s anything about us more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)