Ephemera as Medium: The Afterlife of Lost Films Paul S. Moore

The Moving Image, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 2016, pp. 134-139 (Article)

Published by University of Minnesota Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/640572

Access provided by Ryerson University Library (3 Jan 2017 15:05 GMT) forum 134

4. An amendment to copyright law on August 24, 1912, marked a transition away from sub- Ephemera as Medium mitting copies of individual films to submitting The Afterlife of Lost Films select images from scenes of a given film. 5. Information like this can be found online in Paul S. Moore the Catalog of Copyright Entries Motion Pic- tures 1912–1939, https://archive.org/details Early cinema culture was as ephemeral as ni- /motionpict19121939librrich/. trate film was flammable. Traces of early film 6. Loughney, “A Descriptive Analysis,” 327. practices are hidden in print ephemera, whose 7. Though this title was the second copyright recent digitization has opened the possibil- submission, it was the 218th AFC production. ity of recovering lost histories of lost films by 8. See Paolo Cherchi Usai, Silent Cinema: An unknown filmmakers. Two following examples Introduction (London: British Film Institute, reshape the contours of Canada’s early cinema 2000), 67. history. In methodological terms, my point is 9. The AFC distributed worldwide. Camera nega- to ask how this type of research is related to tives would be shipped from Santa Barbara to the orphan film movement, given that these Chicago where domestic prints would be made. are examples of lost films without extant film Then the negative would be sent to the London prints. Because my research didn’t begin in the office, where foreign prints were created. film archive, are these examples really orphan 10. http://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu films? Phrased polemically, are these lost films /flyinga/. orphaned by the orphan film movement? The 11. http://digital.library.ucsb.edu/collections concept of “orphans” may be broadened and /show/10. strengthened by a methodological approach 12. Special credit goes to the Library of Con- that begins with ephemera of all forms, not only gress Preservation Directorate’s Dana Hem- orphaned, archived film prints. My work does menway, lead conservationist on the fragment not begin with extant films but instead relies project, and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, on the novel power of digital searches of local and Recorded Sound Division’s Greg Lukow and newspapers combined with sometimes naive Mike Mashon, for their ongoing dedication to searches and colleagues’ informed hunches the paper fragments project. to bring neglected knowledge of lost films to light. Like the orphan film movement, collegial sharing and intuitive browsing lay a foundation for ephemera to be the medium by which lost films may at last gain an afterlife.

AN ORPHANED FILMMAKER: RICHARD A. HARDIE’S PIONEERING CINEMA IN MANITOBA

In the past, I have advocated for the history of cinema in Canada to become focused on exhibition and how practices of showmen and audiences together created film publics.1 I had presumed that there was simply not enough filmmaking to sustain a national project cen- tered on films as texts. There are too few cases of films made in Canada and far fewer archived copies of what little was produced.2 As I turned to documenting early exhibition sites on a na- tional scale, I was surprised to find examples of early local view-making in the Western Prai- ries and on the East Coast. Looking for early forum 135

cinema showmen, coast to coast, I inadvert- well known. Indeed, Freer’s lectures were the ently, through robust results of digital searches only aspect of this entire story mentioned in of archived newspapers, found examples of previous histories of film in Canada. Hardie lost films. I was not expecting to find a pioneer was forgotten as the filmmaker of the Manitoba filmmaker when I naively asked a colleague, films in 1897—and forgotten as the showman Robert Seiler, when were the earliest moving who brought Edison’s Vitascope to Canada pictures he knew to be shown in the Canadian when he showed moving pictures to Manitoba Prairies. None were noted before 1899 in pub- in 1896, and to the entire prairies in 1897. Freer lished histories, but Seiler graciously shared was presumed the filmmaker, while Hardie had a note he had found for Edison’s Vitascope in been buried in the small print of archived news- Brandon, Manitoba, in 1896.3 “Impossible!” I papers, until today’s digital search engines initially thought, but then I found a notice even gave him a new life. a little earlier in Winnipeg, and then others in smaller towns that mentioned the showman: AN ORPHANED PRACTICE: Richard A. Hardie. Iteratively and collectively, VITAGRAPH’S LOCAL VIEWS IN THE digital searches of the region’s newspapers MARITIMES AND NEWFOUNDLAND pieced together his story. Hardie had toured throughout Manitoba In other cases, too, the production of local with an Edison phonograph in 1892 and 1893, views is remarkably well archived but hidden before arranging the Canadian debut of Edi- in the fine print of newspapers’ local gos- son’s Vitascope in Winnipeg in July 1896 (be- sip columns. I’ve connected partial, passing fore its better-known debut in Ottawa) while mentions of local films made in more than a touring elsewhere for at least four weeks (all dozen localities to reveal, on the East Coast of before its debut in Toronto). In 1897, Hardie Canada in 1904 and 1905, a brief but systematic turned his attention to making local films as adoption of local views by the dominant film well as exhibiting them. He paired his kineto- company of the day.4 Again, the starting point scope with the Cosgrove Comedy Company, just was a question asked in idle curiosity. When, I as it was about to embark on a repeat tour of wondered, were the first moving pictures made the region. At the same time, Hardie also made in my hometown of St. John’s, Newfoundland? a series of local views, hiring Edward Amet, Online, I found the smallest note in a column the Illinois maker of the Magniscope, an early of local happenings from St. John’s Telegram independent projector. Amet spent a week in on June 24, 1905: “The American Vitagraph Manitoba training Hardie, and together they Company’s photographer expects to secure a made a total of more than two dozen scenes: picture of Water Street from the electric cars the Canadian Pacific express train approach- to-day; also a view of to-day’s Express.” Again, ing Carberry, the Winnipeg Fire Brigade, and my first thought was, “Impossible!” How could pictures of Manitoba premier Thomas Green- such a big company be exhibiting, and making way stooking wheat on his own farm. Hardie films even, on the geographic margins of the gave the film an official debut to a gathering continent? Further searches of online historic of business, railway, and government officials newspapers confirmed that Vitagraph had, in in September 1897. fact, made extensive tours in eastern Canada After a tour across the prairies with Cos- in 1904 and 1905, making films and exhibit- grove, Hardie went to Montreal to fund-raise ing them on return engagements. One of the for a railway-sponsored immigration venture earliest, almost imperceptible headings, “Want and there hired James S. Freer to lecture and Picture of Firemen,” came in Cape Breton, Nova accompany the show in England to promote Scotia, in the Sydney Herald from May 27, 1904: immigration and settlement to western Canada. “The volunteer fire department of the city have Freer was established as a lantern slide lec- been asked to give an exhibition of their skill turer and was an immigrant himself, unlike before a moving picture machine which will Hardie or Cosgrove. Playbills and posters of arrive here next week.” Such miniscule notes Freer’s “Ten Years in Manitoba” lectures in the of local filming followed Vitagraph’s exhibition United Kingdom are archived and relatively circuit across all four present-day provinces in forum 136

Atlantic Canada in at least a dozen cities and as possible under the general banner of pre- towns, in almost all cases the first locally made serving films left on the margins. The Orphan films. Here in the Maritimes, Vitagraph pio- Film Symposium, for example, refuses to limit neered a short-lived venture incorporating local its purview, offering first a deceptively simple views into its variety shows, briefly promoting notion of “a motion picture abandoned by its “See Yourself as Others See You” as the pri- owner or caretaker,” then quickly expanded mary reason to attend a moving picture show. to the following: Although the Saint John Sun had strenuously touted the possibilities for tourism and invest- More generally, the term refers to all man- ment as it cajoled its readers to get ready to be ner of films outside of the commercial filmed, its review of the resulting films from mainstream: public domain materials, April 17, 1905, was dismissive: “These, with the home movies, outtakes, unreleased films, exception of the falls and harbor, are of almost industrial and educational movies, inde- wholly local interest, and do not bring before pendent documentaries, ethnographic outsiders any of the attractions of the city.” The films, newsreels, censored material, un- “almost wholly local” Vitagraph films of the derground works, experimental pieces, Maritimes and Newfoundland are ephemeral silent-era productions, stock footage, in every sense. They are not extant or available found footage, medical films, kinescopes, in archives. The specific films were shown only small- and unusual-gauge films, amateur briefly and only in a few locations; indeed, they productions, surveillance footage, test have probably not been viewed since their brief reels, government films, advertisements, public moment. They have gone almost entirely sponsored films, student works, and sun- without notice by local historical societies as dry other ephemeral pieces of celluloid (or well as academic film historians.5 paper or glass or tape or . . .).8 The local film as a genre was only a fleet- ing part of the Vitagraph program.6 Just weeks The unwieldy definition is an open invitation after ending its 1905 Maritime tour, American to almost anyone studying almost any aspect Vitagraph turned its attention to distribution of historic or nontheatrical film. And yet, one rather than local exhibition, effectively shutting aspect is remarkably normative in the methods down its itinerant circuits to take advantage of and paradigms used to study orphan films: the emerging market for rented fiction films.7 despite the openness of the object in terms Instead of local views shown locally, Vitagraph of what is depicted, an orphan film is always and all mainstream film producers subsequent- an object. In the research and exhibitions and ly turned exclusively to general interest views projects spurred by the mandate to protect and fictional narrative films that could be re- and preserve orphan films, the basic starting produced and distributed globally. The curious point is found footage—orphaned, nameless, dabbling with local views just before this shift abandoned, and undocumented, but found, only becomes evident in the amassed local not lost. By definition, orphans are archived or trivia made available through digital newspa- archivable films. Strictly by this measure, my per searches. work doesn’t fit, because I’m not able to help an archive adopt them—I can only provide a A CASE FOR EPHEMERA AS spectral afterlife for films through the medium MEDIUM OF LOST FILMS of ephemeral documents. Dan Streible, Orphan Symposium founder Are lost films orphaned by the orphan film and organizer, indirectly acknowledged this movement? The spirit of rediscovering ephem- limit case in recounting how the orphan film eral films is at the heart of efforts to study -or movement began as an outgrowth of film pres- phan films, but does this extend to lost films ervation: only known through ephemeral documents? Orphan films have been deliberately left un- In 1993, the phrase peppered the hear- defined to include the efforts of as many like- ings that preceded the publication of minded scholars, archivists, and enthusiasts Redefining Film Preservation: A National forum 137

Plan, which formally categorized orphan ciples be? Wouldn’t we all take the periphery films as a problem child for archives. This as the center of cinema culture, beginning with led to the creation of the National Film chance rather than intention as our motiva- Preservation Foundation in 1997. The tion, and proceeding according to opportunity foundation’s success has made it easier rather than following a prescribed protocol for for everyone interested in cinema beyond our method? In recounting Hardie’s and Vita- the contemporary Hollywood feature to graph’s stories, the finished histories might discuss, even to legitimize, their work in seem to have a veneer of retrospective inten- wider forums.9 tionality and deterministic foresight. Yet, these are just two successful results of hundreds of Thus the term emerged out of the archives as a naive searches in newspaper databases. Their metaphor to describe the work of film archivists coherence and significance was built iteratively and preservationists. Historians, scholars, art- over years of searching across many different ists, and policy makers hopped aboard to aid local sources. The narratives I presented herein the cause of film preservation. But the orphan began entirely as puzzles, and worse, puzzles film movement was a project that put film as a for which I had no idea what the finished pic- material object first. ture would resemble when I started, puzzles One of the lessons learned from the Or- without any hint of how big the frame was or phan symposia is how “the professional bound- how many pieces were needed. The sources aries between academic, archivist, and artist were ephemeral, dispersed, localized, and in are best blurred.”10 And yet, with my research turn the research itself was ephemeral—akin on lost film practices that do not have extant to browsing, lacking direction, open to happen- films, I find it hard to imagine collaborating stance. The coherent stories of “the man who with archivists or visual artists. To the contrary, brought film to Manitoba” and “Vitagraph’s lo- the prospect makes me confront how I’m un- cal film experiment” only became evident to me dertaking a very traditional academic project over time, through the process of browsing and with very little opportunity for experimental keeping my eye on the margins of my sources revisionist filmmaking or archival preservation. rather than seeking a headlined, feature article Attempting to place myself within the orphan explaining all the details. This esteem for the paradigm seems only to reinforce a divide be- residual, this curiosity about the apparently tween film preservation and histories of film trivial, seems to be what I share with orphan culture. This need not be so. film research. In that spirit, I propose some In this very Forum, Eric Smoodin recent- principles for ephemera as a medium of film ly considered “writing film histories without history: films,” given the ready availability of online collections. He concluded that the “archival • If you have the time and resources, idle turn” in film studies was “not so much a move curiosity can be your guiding principle. away from the film archive as an expansion of • No detail is too trivial. the archive to include so many more materials • No search is futile. and texts.”11 In this sense, can’t the orphaned • No collegial question is a bother. film print be redefined as just one type of • No browsing is entirely random. ephemera suitable for the study of orphaned • What you need to know is always there, film culture? Can’t the spirit and approach of somewhere. orphan film research be expanded to include histories of lost films, forgotten filmmakers, It is vital to recognize that my examples and ephemeral film practices? Would such a from early filmmaking in Canada derived from shift inevitably abandon collaborations with seeking out the most ephemeral, passing men- professional film preservationists and archi- tions of the subject in every newspaper remain- vists? Could we not all begin with the curiosity ing in their regions in the period, then linking of the researcher–archivist–artist, rather than the partial, trivial citations together to reveal with the material object of the film itself? What, the structured industrial and cultural work. then, would our common methodological prin- Even in marginal locations, early filmmaking forum 138

was intended for commercial exploitation, al- 2. The loss of many known silent-era films in though especially in marginal locations, early Canada stems from a disastrous fire at the exhibitions circulated in relatively restricted National Film Board of Canada in 1967. See regional contexts. Treating sources as ephem- Michele Wozny, “National Audiovisual Preser- era esteems browsing—the chance hit of online vation Initiatives and the Independent Media search engines and web browsing, the eclectic Arts in Canada,” Archivaria 67 (2009): 97. mix of microfilmed newspapers, and the rare 3. Robert and Tamara Seiler, Reel Time: Movie gem of detail amid the bureaucratic or random Exhibitors and Movie Audiences in Prairie collection of archived files. To the researcher of Canada, 1896 to 1986 (Edmonton, Alberta: ephemeral film culture, such browsing turns up Athabasca University Press, 2013). a curious event, at first out of context, that is 4. The case of Vitagraph local views in wider the equivalent of the orphaned film print, unla- context is forthcoming as Paul S. Moore, “A beled in an archive, basement, or flea market. ‘Distant Reading’ of the ‘Chaser Theory’: Lo- Yet, the unmethodical character of ephemeral cal Views and the Digital Generation of New searching contains its own methodology, turn- Cinema History,” in Technology and Film ing up new notes, new bits of information— Scholarship, ed. A. Gaudreault and S. Hidalgo each new curiosity allowing repeated methodi- (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, cal turns in the archives. forthcoming). Elsewhere, I explain the “note- worthy” appearance of early cinema in small- Paul S. Moore is an associate professor of com- town newspapers as part of a methodology munication and culture at Ryerson University typifying newspaper–community–cinema rela- in Toronto. His research focuses on the inter- tions in terms of the “newsworthy” logic of the mediality of early moviegoing and newspaper metropolitan daily press and the “adworthy” reading, including projects on the American logic of small-city newspapers. See Paul S. Sunday paper and its supplements, and the Moore, “The Social Biograph: Newspapers as geometries of cinema distribution from early Archives of the Regional Mass Market for Mov- itinerants to chain theaters. ies,” in Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies, ed. R. Maltby, Notes P. Meers, and D. Biltereyst, 263–79 (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). The impetus for this argument was an invita- 5. See Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cin- tion from Zoë Druick and Charles Acland to ema: The American Screen to 1907 (Berkeley: participate in a roundtable on “Moving Image University of California Press, 1990), 405, and Ephemera” at the 2010 conference of the Film Charles Musser and Carol Nelson, High-Class Studies Association of Canada. As with much Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the For- ephemeral reflective work, it risked being or- gotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880–1920 phaned itself, and I am grateful it’s found a (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, home in this Forum. 1991), 150–52. 6. For histories of local views produced in later 1. On this point, and an earlier overview of Rich- years by marginal itinerant filmmakers, see ard A. Hardie in regional and national contexts, Dwight Swanson, “‘Wasn’t That a Funny Thing see Paul S. Moore, “Mapping the Mass Circu- That We Did?’: Oral Histories of Itinerant Film- lation of Early Cinema: Film Debuts Coast-to- making,” The Moving Image 10, no. 1 (2010): Coast in Canada in 1896 and 1897,” Canadian 102–14, and Martin Johnson, “The Places You’ll Journal of Film Studies 21, no. 1 (2012): 58–80, Know: From Self-Recognition to Place Recogni- and also Paul S. Moore, “The Flow of Amuse- tion in the Local Film,” The Moving Image 10, ment: The First Year of Cinema in the Red River no. 1 (2010): 24–50. Valley,” in Beyond the Border: Tensions across 7. Charles Musser, “American Vitagraph, 1897– the 49th Parallel, ed. K. Conway and T. Pasch, 1901,” Cinema Journal 22, no. 3 (1983): 40. 71–89 (Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen’s Uni- 8. Devin Orgeron, “Conference Report: Or- versity Press, 2013). phans Take Manhattan, 6th Annual Orphan forum 139

Film Symposium, 2008,” Cinema Journal 48, a more direct access to the past will then serve no. 2 (2009): 114. as an entry point to assess the risk in producing 9. Dan Streible, “The Role of Orphan Films in a movie detached from its historical context. the 21st-Century Archive,” Cinema Journal 46, The three remediations explored in this article no. 3 (2007): 124; see also Brian Real, “From either remedy or increase the movie’s isola- Colorization to Orphans: The Evolution of tion, reducing the spectator’s chance to further American Public Policy on Film Preservation,” explore the past. The Moving Image 13, no. 1 (2013): 129–50. 10. Streible, “Role of Orphan Films,” 125. VOYAGE ’S MULTIPLE VARIANTS 11. Eric Smoodin, “As the Archive Turned: Writ- ing Film Histories without Films,” The Moving Soon after the first screenings of Méliès’s Trip Image 14, no. 2 (2014): 99–100. to the Moon, in 1902, at the Théâtre Robert- Houdin in Paris, copies were sold to entrepre- neurs from all around the globe. Unauthorized duplication and screenings assured the film a Méliès’s Voyage Restoration rapid circulation, notably in the United States.2 Following Méliès’s financial difficulties or, The Risk of Being Stuck in and the destruction of a large part of his origi- the Digital Reconstruction nal film materials in 1923, the rediscovery of his works, starting with the 1929 now famous Martin Bonnard “Méliès Gala,” had to build on the remaining distributed prints. In 1937, when the Museum Extending the now frequent use of the digital at of Modern Art Film Library sent a copy of the every step of the film heritage conservation and film to the Cinémathèque Française, “the film exhibition processes, DVD releases and online had followed a circuitous path of duplication, viewing give restored films a new visibility.1 from London to New York to Paris, through the This increase in accessibility raises questions hands of several collectors and institutions, about the very form of access, in particular, in order to belatedly return to its creator.”3 how digital circulation of archival films can The film’s early success and its continuous paradoxically lead to their isolated viewing. screening through patrimonial institutions, This article aims to study three reme- for instance, the Museum of Modern Art Film diations of Méliès’s Voyage dans la Lune: a Library, contributed to its celebration as one of restoration made in 2011 and its subsequent the “canons of world cinema.”4 Nevertheless, actualizations as extracts in Martin Scorsese’s cinephiles and film historians had to wait until feature film Hugo (2011) and a viewable entry 1997 to watch a complete version of the film as in the catalog of the cinephile online service reconstructed by the Cinémathèque Méliès. Fandor. The film’s rich history and the debate Now that we can grasp the entire structure of started by the digital restoration made by Serge the film, we can understand how, for much Bromberg (Lobster Films), Tom Burton (Techni- of its history, missing scenes (especially at color), and their teams make of Méliès’s 1902 the end) changed the overall experience of the artwork an interesting object. I would like to film.5 The path Voyage followed, with multiple show how the restoration and its paratexts variations coexisting during the beginning of invite the spectator to a particular point of view the twentieth century and afterward, follows a on the film. In the case of an online viewing and logic shared by many other films made during without contextual information, the restoration the period. can block the spectator’s gaze, failing to point toward Méliès’s Voyage as a historical object. A CONTROVERSIAL RESTORATION After a brief presentation of the film’s circulation, I consider the restoration process Three cooperating institutions, the Technicolor and some of the contradictory opinions made Foundation for Cinema Heritage, Groupama on the final work. Serge Bromberg’s comment Gan Foundation for Cinema, and Lobster Films, about the use of digital restoration tools to give premiered the latest restoration in 2011. It is