Preservation Status
This film was thought to have been lost. Then workmen clearing a building site in the Sydney suburb of Fig Tree uncovered a film vault. They cut through the steel door using an oxy torch - somehow avoiding igniting the highly flammable nitrate film inside - and loaded a truck with the contents to take away for disposal. An office worker saw the truck drive by, loaded with film cans, gave chase in his car, and rescued the film, which included the first eight of nine reels of The Flying Doctor. Two years later, the National Film Archive in London found a copy of the shortened, re-edited British release of the film, also eight reels long, in the possession of a large film company. Despite this print having been "totally rearranged", the last reel was found to take up exactly where the Australian one left off.
Read more about this topic: The Flying Doctor
Famous quotes containing the words preservation and/or status:
“It is my hope to be able to prove that television is the greatest step forward we have yet made in the preservation of humanity. It will make of this Earth the paradise we have all envisioned, but have never seen.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Professor James Houghland, Murder by Television, just before he demonstrates his new television device (1935)
“What is clear is that Christianity directed increased attention to childhood. For the first time in history it seemed important to decide what the moral status of children was. In the midst of this sometimes excessive concern, a new sympathy for children was promoted. Sometimes this meant criticizing adults. . . . So far as parents were put on the defensive in this way, the beginning of the Christian era marks a revolution in the child’s status.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)