Enlightening Recoveries & Greedy Losses
Two items concerning film today. I'll handle this Good News/Bad News style. Happily, the two aren't directly related, though they are linked by the medium. Unhappily, the bad news is huge, widespread and worsening.
A film discovery in England of films made of daily life during the Edwardian era has led to some restorations due to be released to the public this year.
"From 1900 to 1913, filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, commissioned by touring showmen, roamed the North of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales filming the everyday lives of people at work and play. For around 70 years, 800 rolls of their early nitrate film sat in sealed barrels in the basement of a local shop in Blackburn. Miraculously discovered by a local businessman and painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute, this ranks as the most exciting film discovery of recent times."I dearly love rediscoveries such as this. Certainly, it means more directly to th
e locals over there, but this is nonetheless a treasure for the world. It's as close to living history of the period as we can get. While apparently much of the footage is of intentionally self-conscious subjects -- the people were acting up for the camera -- the recovered footage offers an amazing glimpse into the local world of the dawning years of the 20th century. Reportedly some 28 hours of footage have been restored.
Here's a small gallery of other stills from the footage, complete with brief annotations.
On a darker front, Dwight sent me a link concerning just the most recent (and historically poignant today, Martin Luther King jr. Day) example of how copyright laws, once intended to secure the short term rights of a creator and to otherwise smoothly move creative works into the public domain, have been twisted into legal monstrosities of undying restriction. In this instance it's the numerous entanglements that prevent the 1987 civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize from being rebroadcast or re-released. The laws are out of control, and as I've maintained for years they will eventually collapse under their own weight, but it will be a long and painful process getting there.
Under the currently oppressive legal environment I endorse the work of competent bootleggers in copying and distributing older work that should have long ago fallen fully into the public domain, though I expect the efforts to more harshly criminalize these activities will continue before a breaking point is reached.
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