DrRexMorman t1_j5yzbec wrote
>myth
It isn’t a myth.
>Wikipedia
If you read a something like this on Wikipedia:
>Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from about 1894 to 1930.[7] Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation estimates that more than 90% of American films made before 1929 are lost,[8] and the Library of Congress estimates that 75% of all silent films are lost forever.[9]
You can click on links embedded in in the citations, which will take you to articles like these:
https://www.film-foundation.org/columbus-dispatch
which play out the Wiki’s claims.
>there is actually should be a guy
Here is the basic idea: a film historian named David Pierce looked up old film studio release schedules and catalogued and decided that 10,919 films were released before 1929. Pierce was only able to find ~1500 of these films in their original format. He was able to find non-original copies of another ~1200 films.
This feature article about the US Library of Congress’ efforts to digitized film gives some frustrating reasons for why those movies were lost:
https://whyy.org/segments/difficulties-with-digital-leave-old-school-film-archivists-reeling/
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments