I'm looking for The Vampire (1913), which was considered a lost film for a long time. As of a few years ago it's been preserved at the George Eastman Museum Film Archive. Unfortunately, although many of their prints have been digitized and made available on their website, The Vampire is not one of them. So its technically not a "Lost Film," but isn't readily available. There's been at least one public screening, but unless you go in person it doesn't appear to be available anywhere else. I want to write an email to request a digital copy/have them release it digitally on their website, but I've never done anything like this before. I really want to get into lost media hunting and film preservation, but honestly don't know where to start. Just wondering if anyone has had experience contacting film archives or anything like that, or would want to collaborate/critique an email to the archive.
why would you need help, just request them nicely to upload the movie to their site, if they can do so for other movies they own, why not also this one?
You're right, I did send the email. What i was really meant to ask is if anyone had that experience contacting and requesting stuff like that before, and had any tips or anything like that. I probably should have been clearer, again this is my first time doing anything like this.
You're right, I did send the email. What i was really meant to ask is if anyone had that experience contacting and requesting stuff like that before, and had any tips or anything like that. I probably should have been clearer, again this is my first time doing anything like this.
The best you can do is send the email and ask them politely. At the very least it helps build interest and lets them know to maybe consider getting around to releasing the film digitized online sooner rather than later. It's great to hear another 'lost' silent film has been found, it's a miracle that a lot of them even still exist somewhere to be found considering most films of the silent era were recorded on the very unstable nitrate stock. Not only is it flammable but it's decomposition rate can be swift without the proper storage.
I did receive an email reply. They confirmed again that the film is in their possession, and definitely on their list of films to digitize. They can't give any kind of ETA, but did say because of the rarity of the print itself it has priority.
Post by darkretro1987 on Oct 18, 2023 21:17:33 GMT
Well, hopefully they are on the verge of beginning the process of digitizing the film so that it can be shared with everyone. The last silent films that I saw having to do with vampires are 'Nosferatu' and then the French silent serial 'Les Vampires',even though the title characters are not actually vampires but just the name of their gang. It's an interesting time to be around when there are discoveries of silent films once considered lost still being located.