Lost Films

It is estimated that more than two-thirds of all German silent films and numerous early sound films are lost, and with these, a significant part of our visual heritage and cultural memory. The project Lost Films aims to reconstruct this heritage based on selected examples of German cinematic history. Numerous major film archives in Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and France have agreed to participate in the project by scouring their archives for materials related to these films (e.g., photos, scripts, reviews, fragments of audio-visual film footage). At the same time, the project created a joint Internet platform where the archived materials is compiled and published. This model joint project reconstructs the traces of film history that were long believed to be lost and makes them publicly accessible in the Internet.

Research director: Jürgen Keiper
Participating archives: Federal Film Archive Berlin, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden, Centre national de la cinématographie CNC (F), Direction du patrimoine cinémathographie Paris (F), Filmarchiv Austria in Vienna (A), Národní Filmový in Prague (CZ)