October 18, 2011

Silent cinematic history to be seen for the first time in Wellington

Celebrating UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on October 27 the New Zealand Film Archive are delighted to present John Ford’s Upstream, a comedic melodrama centering on a love triangle between a vaudeville knife-thrower, his target girl and a hammy Shakespearean actor.

One of the greatest American directors of all time, John Ford directed more than 140 films and won four Academy Awards for Best Director. More than 60 of those films were from the silent era, and most have since been lost.

One of those films, Upstream, was found in Hastings collector Jack Murtagh’s backyard shed in 1993, following an extensive national search for nitrate film by the New Zealand Film Archive’s Last Film Search. It is the only known surviving print of that film worldwide and it came into the Film Archive’s collection after Jack’s grandson Tony Osborne answered the Film Archive’s call for film to be deposited into the collection.

The Film Archive stored the film before it was rediscovered by US film archivists Leslie Lewis and Brian Meacham, who found Upstream among a treasure trove of 75 films which were selected to be restored and repatriated to the US for the National Film Preservation Foundation; an event which made headlines around the world.

Wellington’s Park Road Post carefully preserved the film, and the restored and transferred Upstream was proudly re-premiered September, 2010 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills. Upstream received its New Zealand re-premiere in Havelock North during April, 2011.

Now it’s Wellington’s turn to see the preserved film, described by the New Yorker’s Richard Brody as “… a delight and a wonder—it’s a thoroughgoing John Ford film, one that’s artistically worthy to take its place among his many classics.”

Jack Murtagh, like many other nitrate film collectors, worked in picture theatres and squirreled away reels left in projection boxes. Jack amassed a huge collection – which has also included the Hitchcock’s earliest surviving feature The White Shadow, recovered this year during a second round of research to identify early American films at the New Zealand Film Archive.

“New Zealand held a lot of hidden and lost gems because we were often the last stop for films travelling around the world” said the Film Archive’s Jane Paul, who led the Last Film Search in 1993.

"A lot of thanks is owed to Jack’s grandson Tony Osborne that we can now show this carefully restored print of Upstream, a film that has caused so much excitement around the world” said Jane.

Upstream at the New Zealand Film Archive
7pm, Thursday 27 October, $8/6
With piano accompaniment by Nick Giles-Palmer

END

© Scoop Media