By Doug Gerbino
The
film preservation community has been excited about the 2010 discovery of 75
hitherto lost American films found at The New Zealand Film Archive. One of the
most heralded finds is a John Ford silent from 1927 entitled UPSTREAM. On
Monday, June 20 Cinema Retro had been invited by A.M.P.A.S. to attend a screening of this film at the
Academy Theater at Lighthouse International in New York City. The opportunity
to see any new aspect of John Ford’s work is not be missed, and while it did
not bear the stamp of what we have now come to know as the JOHN FORD STYLE, the film
was impressive.
The
screening was introduced by Brian Meacham, a
preservationist for the Los Angeles archive of the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences. Mr. Meachham spoke of how he undertook a vacation to New
Zealand in 2010 that wound up being a busman’s holiday. As is his want, he told
us, whenever he takes a personal trip he tries to contact film archives in the
city he is traveling to. After he arrived in Wellington the folks at The
New Zealand Film Archive told him that they had some cans of film he might be
interested in seeing. The result of that little visit proved to be a major find
to the American cinematic history.