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Australia's 'Lost' Films: Search & Rescue
We are searching for the original, uncut version of the feature film Captain Thunderbolt (Cecil Holmes, Australia 1953) as the focus for a broader search for Australia’s 'lost' films, called Australia’s 'Lost' Films: Search & Rescue.
Officially announced at the 2010 Sydney Film Festival, Australia’s 'Lost' Films: Search & Rescue is looking for lost feature-length Australian films (60 minutes or more) made since 1951. The search will also inevitably turn up earlier Australian films – produced on fragile, highly perishable nitrate film stock until that format was replaced by safety film in 1951. For definitions of ‘lost’, and for highlights of the lost films the NFSA is searching for, see What Do We Mean By ‘Lost’?.
Sydney Film Festival launch
The NFSA, in collaboration with the Sydney Film Festival, is launching Australia's 'Lost' Films: Search & Rescue with a showing of a trailer from Captain Thunderbolt at the Sydney Film Festival at 10.30am, 14 June 2010.
See the Sydney Film Festival website for more details »
What are we seeking?
NFSA aims to acquire original image and sound negatives, or their more recent digital equivalents of Australian feature films, documentaries and short films. These components can be used for preservation and any necessary restoration, allowing the creation of new duplicate image and sound negs in the lead-up to a new print.
The many copies of a film that are screened in cinemas are printed, photochemically, from a 35mm or 16mm negative, usually itself a duplicate made from the original edited camera negative. Prints over time become scratched, faded, shrunken, fragmented and their soundtrack worn. Even if a print is in perfect condition it is unsuitable for copying or for preservation, and when a battered print is the sole survivor of a feature film, this is far from ideal. Sometimes negatives are re-edited to shorter versions of the film for later release or for use overseas, and the original full-length version is hard to reproduce.
NFSA’s Collection Policy requires the NFSA to preserve a film in its original form for as long as the technology of that form can be supported. While a film might turn up regularly on television or DVD, this does not guarantee that it is being preserved.
What can you do?
If you know of the whereabouts of any of Australia’s ' lost' films listed on these web pages, you can contact the NFSA’s Acquisitions staff via email or call +61 2 6248 2253.
Alternatively, if you hold films, videos or other items that you think will be of interest to the NFSA, you can visit our Building the Collection page or download the Collection Offers Form (pdf 244Kb).
Why search for 'lost' film?
Searching for screening copies of films, and, vitally, the materials that are used to make new screening prints, and those needed for preservation, is part of NFSA's day-to-day work. Our aim is to find the materials that will enable us to preserve, and to screen, every Australian feature film. Primarily website-driven, Australia’s 'Lost' Films: Search & Rescue is an international activity: Because so many Australian films have screened overseas, Australia’s lost films may survive in archives and other collections anywhere in the world.
More than 90 per cent of all Australian films made during the pre-1930 silent era are now missing. Chances of their survival diminish with each passing year unless they are held by an archive, distributor or collector. The survival options for films made since 1951 are far better. Not only have these films been made on safety stock, but many of their filmmakers, or people who knew them, are still around to provide valuable leads.
If a film has not been kept under stable storage conditions (in vaults with customised temperature and humidity controls), even films several years old can be in jeopardy. This applies to films shot digitally too. With digital production, projection and archiving now a reality, archives face the increasing challenge of deciding what to preserve, how to preserve it, and how to migrate digital-born material in the face of rapid format change.
The NFSA acknowledges that David Donaldson, the first-ever director of the Sydney Film Festival (1954), has been a driving force for some years in the search for the original version of Captain Thunderbolt. The NFSA have discussed with David, and with the Sydney Film Festival, ideas behind the 2010 search for Captain Thunderbolt as well as Australia’s 'Lost' Films: Search & Rescue. The NFSA thanks them both for their inspiration and advice. See David's Sydney Film Festival blog about the search for Captain Thunderbolt.
Kodak/Atlab Collection
When creating new prints for a restoration and preservation project such as the NFSA-commissioned Deluxe/Kodak Project, it is preferable to start with an original negative rather than a duplicating copy. The Deluxe/Kodak Project, sponsored by Deluxe Sydney and Kodak Australasia, aims to create new prints of key Australian colour feature films, as did its predecessor, the Kodak/Atlab Project.
