A Land Of Lost Movies In Midtown Manhattan

There was a surprising and somewhat disturbing story in the TIMES arts section today about DuArt film labs collection of "lost movies". The lab, once a mainstay in the NY indie film world, worked with many filmmakers back in the days when one actually made films--on celluloid, with sprockets, chemical baths, and all that 20th century photochemical jazz.

However, after they stopped processing film a few years ao, they realized they still had something of a film problem in that there were thousands of unclaimed negatives in their possession that filmmakers or the companies that made these indie films in the 70s, 80s, 90s left behind.The good news is that the lab's founders have hung onto these materials because they just can't bear to throw them away knowing they are someone's artistic work. The bad news is many filmmakers don't even know that they have film in their storage facility.

So to try and get these films to their proper owners or to a proper place for archiving (like the Library of Congress of the Academy in LA), they have started working with IndieCollect, a archiving clearinghouse started by a former producer who is trying to get these films out of limbo. I encourage other filmmakers to seek out DuArt's collection as I went through this process myself last year, tracking down my first feature I THINK I DO to a Technicolor vault out in the Valley and getting it to the UCLA Film/TV Archive in Los Angeles, via Outfest's Legacy project. The negative for my short POOL DAYS was a bit easier to track down--it was under my bed! But still it got sent off to L.A. as well where it was properly archived.

My Short Films Are Headed To UCLA Archive

Over the weekend, I boxed up the 16mm negatives of my two NYU short films SHALL WE DANCE and POOL DAYS for a trip out west to the UCLA Film and Television Archive.  The archive, partnering with Outfest, has created the Legacy initiative to preserve LGBT films for scholars and researchers. It's a massive collection, with thousands of holdings which make it the largest repository of LGBT media in the world.

I had been called by a festival programmer last summer and asked about putting my films in the archive. At the time, I was working on another project and though it sounded like a great idea I just didn't get around to it. Fast forward to last month and this became my New Year's resolution; to get my previous films in order and properly stowed for the future. I THINK I DO, my first feature, will be heading to the archive shortly from a vault in Glendale, where it's been for the last few years. And I'm currently making some transfers to digital media of my Super8 movies from even further back.

For my film school shorts, it's certainly a lot better having these negatives stored in proper archival conditions rather than in a cardboard box under my bed (where most filmmakers tend to put their projects "in storage"). I'm very grateful to Outfest (which has screened 6 of my films over the yeas) and UCLA for supporting this project and making it possible for filmmakers to have some peace of mind, knowing their work is in a safe for place for generations to come.