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November 22, 2009 | filmpres | trackback

1928 Nikkatsu (Kyoto) Dir. Genjiro Saegusa, Feat. Koji Shima 35mm Silent 82 minutes (FPS=18)

The Summary of the Project

In 2001, we encountered this film in the course of our research at a film collection in Osaka. Though nobody knew the film was dying, after three years it was remarkably restored and chosen as the opening film for a film festival. We did play a very small role in this preservation project, but experiencing the process by which the lost film was revived and shone on the screen again in front of an audience definitely encouraged us to make our activities more practical and hasten the setting up of FPS.

Index

The process of saving “Tokkyu 300 Mile” and the role FPS played in it. Report on the 4th Kyoto Film Festival where “Tokkyu 300 Mile” was shown as the opening film.

Preservation Project

What FPS has done to revive Tokkyu_ 300 Mile which was found in a horrible condition, mainly falls into three categories.

Film Repair and Research

First of all, we carried out emergency treatment until this film’s preservation was confirmed.In 2001, we started the film inventory project at Planet Bibliographique du Cinema (Planet has a large collection of all kinds of films) as a test case. This means, we did the basic inspection (condition check, re-canning, adding accession/location numbers, labeling, building up a database, etc.), and figured out how long and how much we need to organize a certain amount of films, and ultimately made a manual which can be adapted to any kind of film collection. The project was finished by 2004, and we dealt with about 100 reels of film. Among these films, some were preserved at National Film Center in Tokyo, and some were sent to Korea and shown at the Pifan Festival, and the whole project was handed on to “Planetary Film Archives” which is a project undertaken by one of our supporters to make Planet into an archive format library. Tokkyu 300 Mile was originally one of the films we dealt with in this inventory project. There was no script, so the story was unclear but it was one of Nikkatsu’s feature films made in the pre-war era, and quite possibly the complete version, which made us think this should be the film to be preserved first. All rusty cans were replaced, and the roll numbers were put in order, the dirt and rust on the film surface were carefully cleaned off, and some parts which were congealed were peeled off. This all took a few days. Then we read all the intertitles one by one with a magnifier to make a record, and did basic repairs on the broken perfs and torn edges to help the film go through the telecine machine.

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The Historical Value was Unveiled

As we got to know more about the film, it was gradually revealed that the film was valuable as_ a “Train Film” with its story based on Umekoji Train Shed in Kyoto, and with official support from the Ministry of Railways at the time. Film historian/ SL expert Akio Hata backed up these facts and gave us some rare references, such as the memoir of the shooting written by the protagonist Koji Shima (later a successful film director), or the critical article by Kaoru Murao (from The Ministry of Railways) who was the producer. _ We expected this film would be preserved for screening at the 4th Kyoto Film Festival, and all the references and intertitles were handed to Director of the festival/ Professor of Osaka Art University Yoneo Ota in 2002. At first, the festival was canceled because of a financial crisis in Kyoto city, but it re-started in 2004 and fortunately, Tokkyu 300 Mile was chosen to be shown in the opening gala. IMAGICA WEST undertook the whole process under the supervision of Prof Ota. In the original print, what we found particularly remarkable was one scene partially tinted in pink, which still remained in beautiful condition. It seems this tinting information was not copied onto the restoration print as partly tinted colour restoration requires specialised techniques and a large budget, so the hurdle was too high, according to them.

Publicity for the Screenings

Secondly, we proceeded with publicity for this screenings, especially in the newspapers and train magazines. Thanks to the chief editor of “Tetsudo (Railroad) Fan”, Hiroyuki Miyata, we were able to put information in almost all major train magazines in Japan. In addition, Mainichi Newspaper covered the restoration process in a big article. Toshio Tai was the projectionist on the day. His own reconstructed projector made it possible to show the film at the proper speed, 18fps. We’ve never experienced such a spotlight on film preservation in a domestic film festival. With an audience of more than 1500, the opening gala was a big success. The new print was stored at Planet, and since then the film has been shown at places like YIDIFF’s Friday library screenings. Planet, where the original print was stored, FPS’ film inventory project, Hata-san’s passion for SL, and the Kyoto Film Fest…. a lot of conditions happened to appear like stepping-stones in front of the film, and made it possible to revive this film on the screen. Without even a single one of these factors, the film would have died because the original print was already deteriorated in 2001. Nothing is more satisfactory than to show films and make the audience happy. This experience is definitely one of our motivations to continue our activities.

Dream of International Screenings

The latest work we did for this film was making an English translation of all the intertitles. If an English version is going to be made, it is not just a dream to show this film outside Japan. We hope “Tokkyu 300 Mile” goes on into the international arena.

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