Keepers of the Frame . Austin Chronicle . 03-29-99

Keepers of the Frame

DIRECTED BY: Mark McLaughlin

REVIEWED: 03-29-99

Keepers of the Frame is a perfect film festival documentary: a cautionary tale about the infirmities of the celluloid itself. All this time we thought that what we had safely in the can -- from silent films, historic newsreels, and a succession of state-of-the-art film advances -- was truly preserved for posterity. Wrong. The history of film technology is the history of the medium's chemical instability: Ninety percent of silent films -- filmed on unstable nitrate film -- have disintegrated, for example. The film explains what has happened and what, if anything, can and is being done to save our film archives. A really terrific ending, with credits rolling, includes the film soundtrack of a gala celebrating, with Al Jolson, the "miracle" of the addition of sound to the motion picture. Then we are informed that the sound is all that remains of this film; the image has since self-destructed.

--Anne S. Lewis

Film Vault Suggested Links
Don't Look Back
East Side Story
Regret to Inform

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