The New Zealand Film Archive was established in 1981. On 1 August 2014 the archive was amalgamated with Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero and the

Television New Zealand Archive The Television New Zealand Archive collection contains over 600,000 hours of television spanning almost 55 years of New Zealand's public television history. It includes New Zealand content such as documentaries, dramas, sports programmes and ev ...

to form

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (Operating name for The New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua Me Ngā Taonga Kōrero.) is an archive that was launched on 31 July 2014, following the completion of a three-year process ...

2009 lost film recovery

In early 2009, a collection of 75 previously thought to be lost American

silent films A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, whe ...

, were discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive. The films dated from 1898 to 1929 and were previously thought to be

lost film A lost film is a feature Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing char ...

s.Silent films in the spotlight
The Art Newspaper

Background and restoration

During the time period that the films were performed films were shipped to countries along a "distribution line" format, with

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

often being the last place the films would be shipped. Because of the high cost of transport during this time and the flammability of the early film stock, most of the films would not be shipped back to the United States and were moved into government archives, were destroyed, or given or sold to private owners. The films were discovered during a visit to the archive by Brian Meacham, a Los Angeles film preservationist. Meacham was curious as to what films the archive held, upon which it was discovered that the archive held a large number of early American films. The New Zealand Film Archive's Steve Russell said "It's one of the rare cases where the tyranny of distance has worked in our and the films' favour". In 2009, the archive agreed with the (American)

National Film Preservation Foundation The National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) is an independent, nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage. Growing from a national planning effort led by the Library of Congress, the NFPF began op ...

to repatriate 75 silent American films, all rare or previously thought by American archivists and scholars to be lost (the archive continues to hold many other silent-era American films). About 70 percent of the copies were complete. In order to export the films back to the United States, the movies had to be transported in U.N.-approved steel barrels in incremental shipments.Long-Lost Silent Films Return to America
New York Times Many of the films had begun to deteriorate, with NFPF director Annette Melville saying "About a quarter of the films are in advanced nitrate decay and the rest have good image quality, though they are badly shrunken". The repatriated films from this discovery were sent for preservation and storage to five major film archives in the United States: the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

, the

Academy Film Archive The Academy Film Archive is part of the Academy Foundation, established in 1944 with the purpose of organizing and overseeing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ educational and cultural activities, including the preservation of m ...

, the

George Eastman House The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

, the

UCLA Film and Television Archive The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the ar ...

, and the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

. Those films sent to the Academy Film Archive now form that institution's New Zealand Collection.

Films discovered

Of the 75 films discovered in the New Zealand archive, some of the more notable examples were John Ford's 1927 film ''Upstream'' and the 1923 film ''Maytime''. It was also noted by the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' that many of the films that were recovered "underline the major contribution made by women to early cinema".

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

has assumed the costs for the restoration of '' Mary of the Movies''. The Hitchcock film '' The White Shadow'' was discovered in the collection, mislabeled as the movie '' Twin Sisters'' and lacked a title credit. The discovery of this film was named as one of Movies.com's "Biggest Surprises of 2011".The Year in Film: 2011's Biggest Surprises
Movies.com

References

{{Authority control Film archives in New Zealand Film organisations in New Zealand

2009 lost film recovery

Background and restoration

Films discovered

See also

References