Finding Lost Films. Methodologies of an Endless Adventure.

Tamara Shvediuk

Film archives are filled with unidentified materials. Not only short fragments, but also feature films can elude the most trained eye. Film identification is an art with knowledge, experience, instinct and a bit of luck as its main ingredients. To identify a film means often to save it, to recognize its role in cinema history and to give it somehow a new life. In this respect, for many reasons, silent cinema is the most endangered legacy. This lecture by Tamara Shvediuk will be the opportunity to discuss some methodological approaches as well as to show and describe several challenging case studies, such as the long-thought lost La Gerusalemme Liberata (1911), L’Empoisonneuse (1907) with Max Linder in his only true dramatic role and other titles hidden behind heavily re-edited Soviet distribution prints.