We’re losing older films at a record rate.
What happens when films get old? Just like the people who made them, films actually age—and yes, they can die and decompose as well. There are plenty of lost films. An estimated 75% of American silent films are considered lost. But that’s why we have to be much better about finding and preserving the movies we still have around.
Some experts are dedicated to that work at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. Their team rescues old movies and restores them to glory.
The Eastman Museum runs one of the world’s top film-preservation programs, with an archive of 28,000 films, including the personal collections of Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese. The museum’s preservation projects include the silent films of Cecil B. DeMille, Georges Méliès, and Stanley Kubrick’s first film, Fear and Desire.
Check out this video from Insider on how this team keeps old films alive.
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
