50000 Films Found?

[Sven Koerber-Abe]

Don't want to frighten somebody, but this incidence reminds me on the story
of the German director Wolfgang Petersen, who wanted to make a director's
cut of his quite famous film "Das Boot". The original film had been in the
stock of the producing company (or maybe the Bavaria Studios ?) in a more or
less climate-controlled room. After not much more than 10 years the director
almost screemed as he had to find out that the original film-rolls stuck
together like plastic-glue and had to be carefully restored (what costed a
quite big bunch of money ...).

It wonder if there will be enough money to restore the full collection of
50.000 films, some of which had been in this not so good condition for more
than 50 years ?!

Sven

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Cremin" <asianfilmlibrary at mac.com>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: 50000 Films Found?


Take this as Chinese whispers if you like, but from somebody in the
Korean film industry: "someone once went to Abe's house, ostensibly as
a guest to check out the house's structure and temperature and
humidity, and they said that it would have been impossible to keep an
80-year-old print properly there."  Let's hope he had a
climate-controlled cellar.

The existence of ARIRANG and other silent Korean films will hopefully
put pressure on the National Film Center to be more open about the
collection.  I'm sure Cannes, Venice and Pusan are all desperate to
premiere this.  Although NFC aren't due to publish their next catalogue
until 2012...

Stephen


On Feb 12, 2005, at 3:48 AM, Aaron Gerow wrote:

> It's ironic that with the Korean boom in Japan these days, the Arirang
> news is played up (important news though it is), even though it is
> much more likely that the grand majority of these films are Japanese.
>
> I've heard rumors about this guy for a while, but I only hope these
> films are in good condition. There are a number of private collectors
> out there who are hoarding their films, even when they are made of
> explosive nitrate stock. Let's pray that there are some great films in
> this collection and that they will be viewable.
>
> Aaron Gerow
> KineJapan owner