Among my many careers was the time I spent working at a film archive at the turn of the Century. The bulk of the collection was owned by Ray Regis. He had spent decades acquiring nearly 1,000 35mm prints. Odds are if you’ve attended a screening at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema or Vista, you might have seen one of Ray’s vintage prints projected. Towards the end of my time at the archive, Ray made a deal to grab all the leftover film prints when NFS went under. They were the company that circulated movies to theaters across the nation since the silent era. The major studios had reclaimed all their titles, but there were a lot of films from distributors that were abandoned. Either they went out of business or didn’t want to pay the storage fee. We created walls of the film cans as it was all sorted out. We dug through and found quite a few forgotten movies such as the documentary Groupies and Captain Milkshake. Found Emulsion is a documentary about movie collectors who spend their lives tracking down abandoned film prints hoping to preserve films that have been thought lost.
Filmmaker Glenn Andreiev provides a fine introduction into the world of film collecting. While the studios do their best to keep their big movies in the public eye, there are quite a bit of older titles that vanish. There’s a list of once popular films from the early years of cinema that have disappeared. One of the best stories has to deal with a German version of Titanic that was produced by the Nazis. The party wasn’t happy with the film and had the director murdered. The film is nowhere to be seen. Another lost film mentioned is the Indian version of Godzilla. There are people talking about films that have been rescued because of private collectors. This includes a lot of 16mm educational films that were tossed by school systems with the arrival of the VCR in classrooms.
There is coverage on the various damages that can happen to a film print over the decades including Red Shifting and Vinegar Syndrome. It’s sad when you find a print in the archive and it’s either losing its color or in the case of Vinegar Syndrome, losing focus. They elaborate how K. Gordon Murray would keep putting out the same prints of Santa Claus to theaters instead of striking new prints. The Red Shift kept getting worse until Santa and the kids were as red as the devils in the film. Audience thought the film was in Red and Black instead of full color. We also learn how distributors who put out video transfers of feature films from bad prints have ruined the market for restored versions of the film. There is talk about video projects that are being lost as the tapes vanished when DVDs took over the rental business. Not to mention a short history of the stag film.
Found Emulsion is an engrossing introduction into analog technology especially for those raised in the digital world. Andreivev reminds us of the issues that can cause a movie to disappear. Sometimes a private collector is the only reason the movie hasn’t completely vanished. The documentary doesn’t get too lofty. We get a bit into the grittiness of collecting films. The movie gets so evocative while poking around movie collections that I can smell the 16mm films from my old archive days while looking at the TV screen. Found Emulsion will make you want to hang onto your collection of films and video or even start.
The Video is 1.78:1 for the new footage. There’s a lot of clips and the quality varies with the source. The Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Things sound fine and you’ll hear the start of a projector clearly.
Trailer (1:05) lets us know about film collecting and restoration.
Wild Eye Releasing presents Found Emulsion. Directed by Glenn Andreiev. Screenplay by Glenn Andreiev. Featuring Glenn Andreiev, Keith J. Crocker, Rickard Cutler, Vernon Gravdal & Lenny Totora III. Running Time: 40 minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: November 26, 2024.
