RESTORATION WORK
As all advanced archives, also the National Film Archive started with restoration work in
the sixties of the last century.
Its specialists focus both on home cinematography and significant foreign works. The first group includes historical drama St. Wenceslas (Svatý Václav, 1929, director Jan S. Kolár) was the first big restoration project of the Prague Archive. The restoration of the film was extraordinary difficult due to the big number of film materials out of which none was complete. All of them had to be compared so that the original story and composition line could be put together. Also high-quality sequences from the technical point of view (picture quality) were also selected from these materials.
Les Trois Mousquetaires (Three Musketeers, France 1921, director Henri-Diamant Berger) is the first foreign title whose restoration was the merit of the NFA workers.
The film had originally 12 episodes and a prologue and its length was 14,500 m according to the French data. A negative loaned from Paris Cinémathèque française in 1963 was
the original material for the restoration. It was a unique material considered the only one in the world having the length of 7,862 m without subtitles.
The restoration of the film took place in the second half of the seventies of the last century, being finished in 1980. It contained the reconstruction of storyline and composition according to the written materials (the Dumas’s novel, Cinéroman, contemporary press) and subtitles reconstruction (writer J. Z. Novák was the author) and technical restoration.
The final footage of the restored copy with Czech subtitles is 10,004 m.
A selective list of other restored film works:
Czech films
Erotikon (Erotikon) 1929, director Gustav Machatý
The Oriental Languages´ Teacher (Učitel orientálních jazyků) 1928, director Jan S. Kolár
Gipsies (Cikáni) 1922, director Karel Anton
The Lovers of an Old Criminal (Milenky starého kriminálníka) 1927, director Svatopluk Innemann
The Arrival from the Darkness (Příchozí z temnot) 1921, director Jan S. Kolár
Foreign films
Treasure (Der Schatz), Germany 1923, director G. W. Pabst
Spiders (Die Spinnen), Germany 1919, director Fritz Lang
Monte-Cristo (Monte Christo), France 1928, Henri Fescourt
Toreador (Sangre y arena), Spain 1916, director Vicente Blasco Ibañez, Max André
Wind from the Sea (Wiatr od morza), Poland 1930, director Kazimierz Czyński,
Kaštanka, Soviet Union 1926, director Olga Preobraženskaja
The film restoration in NFA is done currently by:
- Mgr. Blažena Urgošíková (Film Historians Department) a Ingrid Tětková (Technical Department)
- Jeanne Pommeau (Film Historians Department) and Petra Korábová (Technical Department)
The National Film Archive has also cooperated and cooperates on a number of projects of other archives, in particular within FIAF (The International Federation of Film Archives).
The author of the text: Blažena Urgošíková