Doc Corner: The art of restoration at TCM Classic Film Festival

By Glenn Dunks

Do you ever think about what career path you may have chosen in retrospect? You know, the one you would have selected had you been able to make such a life-changing decision after having actually experienced life? Maybe you already have your dream job, but even then—there’s often a niggling part of us that imagines something else. If I could turn back time, I think I would love to have gotten into film restoration and archiving. They are each fascinating professions that play to my niche interests including preservation and exhibition of celluloid, not to mention pretty, curated shelves. (I was the guy who would visit the video store and ensure the cases were in alphabetical order.) What's this go to do with anything though?

I bring this up because playing at this month’s TCM Classic Film Festival (May 6–9) is a new documentary called The Méliès’ Mystery about the efforts to conserve and restore the 520 films by the French pioneer, Georges Méliès. Yes, he of A Trip to the Moon had burned the original print negatives of all his movies as his career faltered at the start of the 1910s. His fairy tale excursions of light and magic were out of vogue and his production house of Star Films, with French and American studios, shut up shop.

Méliès’ story is not new to audiences, of course...

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Doc Corner: 'Dawson City: Frozen Time' is a Masterpiece 100 Years in the Making

by Glenn Dunks

If you have ever watched a Bill Morrison film, then you will have surely remember him for the way his films appear as if they are deteriorating before your eyes. Best known for works such as Decasia that are assembled out of weathered, beaten and sometimes even partly destroyed reels of film celluloid, Morrison’s films often play with the concept that film – the physical, tactile product of film itself just as much as the broad term for motion pictures as we know them – is not something we should ever be flippant about.

His movies are made out of parts of other movies, its true -- clips and excerpts taken from decaying reels that most could consider at home in a rubbish tip. Many may find his aesthetic challenging, but there is something so delightfully classical about the way he repurposes any image that sits atop a filmstrip. His work breathes new life into old, unwanted, and unused works so that they may be seen anew in a new light, a new form and allow somebody’s hard work to prosper once more...

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