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The Times (03/Nov/1993) - Film buffs hunt lost treasures

(c) The Times (03/Nov/1993)


Film buffs hunt lost treasures

Europe's leading film archive is launching a worldwide search for copies of 150 historic films that have gone missing from cinemas and libraries throughout Europe.

The lost movies range from Errol Flynn's first film, Murder at Monte Carlo, made in 1935, to the first British Sherlock Holmes film, A Study in Scarlet, shot in 1914 with James Bragington as Holmes.

Archivists believe the missing footage, which includes Alfred Hitchcock's 1926 The Mountain Eagle and Walter Forde's 1931 version of The Ghost Train, could be languishing in unmarked cans on library shelves or gathering dust in converted bingo halls.

Launched in Britain by the National Film and Television Archive, the Search for Lost Films, as it is known, is being co-ordinated by Lumiere, an EC-funded body set up to preserve Europe's film archive. Lumiere has been given a £300,000 grant to help to locate films and, where necessary, restore them.