For a film that was not released before it was rediscovered, the year is when it was produced. The year is also italicized.
The films are listed by year, then alphabetically within a year.
Silent films
Many films of the silent era have been lost.[1] The Library of Congress estimates 75% of all silent films are lost forever. About 10,919 American silent films were produced, but only 2,749 of them still exist in some complete form, either as an original American 35mm version, a foreign release, or as a lower-quality copy.[2]
The nitrate film negative of this short was rediscovered at an estate sale in Louisiana by an archivist from the University of Southern California. It is believed to contain the earliest on-screen kiss involving African Americans and is noted for departing from the prevalent and purely stereotypical presentation of racist caricature in popular culture at the time it was made.
A three-minute print was discovered around 1939 by the film historian Junichiro Tanaka, who bought the print for 50 yen; it was later acquired by the National Film Archive of Japan. Around 2006, a six-minute print was donated to the National Film Archive of Japan by film historian Motoki Yoshihiko.
Running only 30 seconds, this is the first recorded detective film and the first to feature Sherlock Holmes. A paper copy was identified in 1968 in the Library of Congress Paper Print archive by Michael Pointer, a historian of Sherlock Holmes films. It was transferred to 16 mm film in the Library of Congress collection.
Made in Great Britain and lost since 1954, the film was rediscovered in 2012 and is the oldest surviving film that features a Charles Dickens character.
Short film rediscovered as part of the Brinton Entertainment traveling circuit of early films and magic lantern slides salvaged in Iowa in 1981, but not identified until 2015 and featured in the 2017 documentary Saving Brinton.
Short film rediscovered as part of the Brinton Entertainment traveling circuit of early films and magic lantern slides salvaged in Iowa in 1981, but not identified until 2017 upon release of the documentary Saving Brinton.
One reel (10 minutes) was found of this documentary of London life. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (where the fragment was found) states it was identified by British film scholar Ian Christie as being from Living London,[12] but Urban's website claims that this is from the later documentary.[13]
In 1994, The original negative was rediscovered at Cineteca Italiana in Milan. In 2002, Time reported that a 30-minute version had been rediscovered and restored.
The film was rediscovered by a researcher, Robert Hoskin, in Australia who received a print from Japan in 2015 and personally restored it over a course of one year. When the film was thought to be lost it was said that Mary Pickford played a role in it, but after a print was found it became clear that she was not in the film at all. The part that was thought to be played by Mary Pickford was really played by Isabel Rea.
The film disappeared from cinema screens for decades until Reverend Brian Hession, vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Walton, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, went on a quest to the US to find a copy of the film for re-issue in Britain. Although initially disappointed, he eventually discovered a set of negatives after searching in the vaults and cellars of old film concerns. Hession added a musical sound track and spoken commentary, and From the Manger to the Cross was re-released in 1938.
It was found by David Navone in the early 2000s in a sea chest that he bought at a California flea market and was professionally restored by the American Film Institute. It is the only surviving film featuring actress Dorothy Gibson.
The first known full-length William Shakespeare film was thought to be lost, until in 1996 Oregon projectionist William Buffum donated his copy to the American Film Institute.
The Oubliette was considered lost until the summer of 1983 when a nitrate print in excellent condition was discovered in Georgia. A couple rebuilding the steps of their front porch uncovered all three reels of the film, still in their metal cans.
In 1982, an Oceaneering International diving expedition salvaged a number of artifacts from the wreck of the RMS Lusitania,[48] including one reel of film. With the assistance of BBCtechnical advisor Laurie Ward, the BFI National Archive was able to recover images from several feet of the film, sufficient to identify the title, but not to restore any of the film to projectable condition.[49]
A 16-minute drama shot in Akron, Ohio, that was considered lost until Los Angeles-based Periscope Film LLC posted it for online viewing via YouTube in January, 2023.
A 28mm print of the long-lost short comedy was recovered by the Harold Lloyd Estate in October 2022 and has been deposited at the UCLA Film & Television Archive for preservation.
On April 5, 2022, Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, Inc in cooperation with the National Library of Norway announced the discovery of this rare surviving five-reel feature film.
A copy was discovered in 2014 in the Cinémathèque Française archive. This is the only film made by Gillette, a famed stage actor best known for his portrayal of Holmes.
Filmed c. 1916 or 1917, apparently never released and long thought lost. Restored in 2006 by the Academy Film Archive from two reels preserved by filmmaker Arthur Dong. It is the earliest known Chinese-American feature film, and one of the earliest films directed by a woman. Parts of this are still missing.
The original copy was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire and was considered lost for 13 years until another copy was found in 1978 in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada.
Documentary movie about the Amazon rainforest lost between 1920s-1930s and only found out in 2023 stored in the Národní filmový archiv, mistacalogued as a 1925 US film.
Found in an unmarked canister at the Norwegian Film Institute in 1998, alongside A Reckless Romeo. A second print, containing more footage, was found in 2002, and the two were combined to create a restored version. However, some scenes are still missing.
Just over 30 minutes of footage of the film was all that was thought to have survived in the Getty Images until the owner of a warehouse in Santiago, Chile, discovered a complete film cut in excellent condition overall.
German copies destroyed by the Nazis in 1933 and thought lost since then. A copy was found in Ukraine in the late 1970s and restored by the Stadtmuseum München. One of the earliest known sympathetic depictions of homosexuality in film.
Although fragments of the movie were known to have survived, this was widely considered to be a lost film until it was purchased from a private collector in 2014. It was scheduled to be screened at the TCM Classic Film Festival in March 2015.
This film was considered lost until being rediscovered and shown at a Danish film festival in 1963. The version screened there had German credits and carried the alternate title Sold Soul. It was later restored and uploaded to YouTube.
The previously lost film was rediscovered in the United Kingdom after a film collector provided his copy to the De Montfort University’s Cinema and Television History Institute.
Recovered and subsequently screened by The Museum of Modern Art on November 29, 2010, as part of their film exhibition Weimar Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams and Nightmares.
Found in a film vault in Quebec, Canada in 2008. However, footage from the film had been excerpted in the 1995 documentary Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood.
Rediscovered at the New Zealand Film Archive in 2010. A videoArchived July 28, 2022, at the Wayback Machine of the preserved film can be viewed at the National Film Preservation Foundation website.
Lost for decades, a single print of the film, entitled La Negra (The Black Woman), was discovered in Spain in the 1970s. In 1993, the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center restored the film as closely as possible to the original.[110]
Long considered Keaton's major lost film until it was partially reconstructed in 1987. The climactic final scene was later recovered in a Russian archive.
The first Slovak full feature film was considered lost until 1970, when original film producer John Zavodny donated his copy to Slovak film institute. It was then restored by Ivan Rumanovský and premiered in 1975.
Collector Joop Van Liempd (1913–2002) donated a large collection of film canisters to Nederlands Filmmuseum. A print of Beyond the Rocks was found among them in 2003 and restored in 2005.
Long thought lost, it has been restored from various sources, though it still lacks 10 minutes of the roughly one hour and 50-minute original running time.
With no prints of The Gold Diggers located in any archive it was for decades presumed to be a lost film. In May 2021, a collector found an incomplete nitrate 35mm Belgian print in England, which has been uploaded to YouTube. The surviving footage includes reels 1, 4, 5 and 6, although some of the extant reels have missing sections at the beginning and end of the reels. In June 2021 the same collector uploaded a digitally scanned version of the first five minutes to YouTube, with plans to scan the remaining footage.
Thought for decades to be lost, filmmaker Gary Huggins recently discovered a 35 mm copy of this 2-reel film after he picked it up in the auction of items from a defunct Omaha-based distributor.
Discovered in a Russian film archive by historians Mark Tiedje and John Coles. It was screened in 2007 in Georgetown, South Carolina, where it was filmed. Now stored in National Film Foundation of Russian Federation Archive.
A 35mm projection print was uncovered in South Africa and repatriated to the United States. It underwent restoration and preservation in 2003. Exists in:
A scene of the film that was edited out due to censorship was donated to the National Film Archive of Japan by a former deceased Interior Ministry official in 1988, but wasn't revealed until November 2022. No complete copy of this film has survived and only the scene that audiences could not see at the time of the release has survived.
A private collector obtained the film, Milestone's first feature, from a closed-down cinema in Melbourne. Warner Archive Collection and Turner Entertainment planned to restore the film for a 2017 DVD release and showing at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
Long considered a lost film, the North American version of the German film was discovered in Oregon in 2010, buried under a cellar floor and coated in machine oil. The UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation restored the film from a 35mm nitrate silent tinted print. Set to be screened on April 6, 2024 at the Billy Wilder Theater.
It was based on the film "Die entfesselte Menschheit" from 1920 (Humanity Unleashed), using previously shot scenes, adding new scenes and some documentary material. This full 90 minutes film, was restored and digitized by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Berlin.
Rediscovered in 2014 in the archive of EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. It is an Out of the Inkwell cartoon, in which Koko the Clown designs his ideal woman.
Found by the director in his garden shed in 1970; he had buried it during World War II and forgotten it, but a third of the original footage is still missing.
This film was long thought lost, but in 2016 La Cinémathèque Française found a copy of the film in their archives. A complete restoration was conducted with a planned debut at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in June 2017.[176] In November 2020 this film became available to watch online.[177]
The film has long been considered lost, however, in 1998, film critic Lyubomir Goseyko found a tape on a 16-mm film in the archives of French cinematics, where it was stored under the name "Tatars". With the efforts of the National Center of Oleksandr Dovzhenko, the film was brought to Ukraine and restored.
Originally released in three parts, all of which were long thought to be lost until portions of the second part and much of the third part were discovered and restored in 1991.
Original long version was presumed to be lost for decades, while the shorter cuts still survived. In 2008, two different versions of the film were found: one by Museo del Cine from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and another in the National Film Archive of New Zealand. Both versions were then edited into one cut to get as near the original version as possible.
3 incomplete surviving copies were found in the United Kingdom around the 2000s, all of which were sold to private collectors. In 2015, Disney found a complete copy of the cartoon in a private collection. The short was later restored and included as a bonus feature on the 2017 "Signature Edition" Blu-ray release of Pinocchio.
The last print was presumed destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire. A complete print was discovered in Paris in 1968. A second, incomplete (but better-quality) print surfaced in 1991.
Long thought to have been destroyed, a 66-minute print running four reels was discovered in September 2015. 130 minutes of this 1928 film are currently missing.
In 2008, five 16mm film reels of a film without the original titles, labeled as "El Hijo del otro" ("The son of another") were found in Argentina. Copies of the film were kept in the archive of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires.
The only known surviving Bolivian film of the silent era. Discovered in a La Paz basement in 1989, it required over a decade of restoration and was not released until 2010.
The film was thought lost in a 1971 fire at Welles' home in Spain; footage was found in Pordenone, Italy, and restored at George Eastman House for premiere in October 2013
Footage from the final reel (stored at the UCLA Film and Television Archive) and all the Vitaphone soundtrack discs for this Technicolor film were originally thought to be the only elements from the film to survive. A complete print of the film, running nine reels, and four soundtrack discs were discovered in Australia in 2009.
This Spanish-language version was made at night, while Tod Browning's Dracula was filmed during the day, using the same sets. It was considered lost until a print was rediscovered in the 1970s.
Based on Polish poet Anatol Stern’s 1925 futurist poem, this avant-garde film - with its strong anti-fascist agenda - was seized by the Nazi Party in 1940 and considered destroyed. However, it was rediscovered in 2019 in Berlin's Bundesarchiv, and was reshown for the first time as part of the 65th BFI London Film Festival.
Made for a charity, film was discovered in the 1990s in the UK under its alternate title The Slippery Pearls. Another print was later found in the US under the alternative title.
Originally titled Pinwheel, also known as The Sleep of a Transport Official, this is a Soviet propaganda animated film from 1931. It was the animation debut of the famous director, children's writer and illustrator Vladimir Suteev and was the first Soviet original sound cartoon. The cartoon was thought to be lost until found in the Czech film archives. The cartoon was first shown in 2013 at the Russian Gosfilmofond festival "Beliye Stolby" (White Pillars) and is now available on YouTube.[219]
For many years, Deluge was thought to be a lost film, but a print dubbed in Italian was found in a film archive in Italy in the late 1980s. Before the discovery, the only part of the film known to have survived was the impressive footage of the tidal wave destroying New York City, which was used in the Republic Pictures serials Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc. (1941) and King of the Rocket Men (1949).
A damaged and incomplete copy was found in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, but a nearly-pristine print was located in the archives of the British Film Institute.
Unavailable for several decades after its release, this film was officially considered lost. The Museum of Modern Art in New York premiered a restored version in 2017.
Long thought to be lost, a print of this chain gang drama was found in mid-2012 and was screened by the American Cinematheque in Hollywood in October of that year.
This 64-minute documentary was ordered to be destroyed by Adolf Hitler for showing Nazi party member Ernst Röhm, who had been murdered on Hitler's orders. A copy was found in East German archives in the 1980s.
Soviet propaganda animated film made in the Ukrainian factory "Ukrainfilm" in Kiev (now known in English as Kyiv). The film was considered lost until August 6, 2018. It is now available on YouTube.[236]
The first feature film shot in Indochina and the last commercially released American silent film. It was also the last American feature film to use the 2-color Technicolor process. A black and white print recovered from the collection of Jerry Haber in the early 2000s.
The first eight of nine reels were saved by an Australian office worker who noticed a truck loaded with film cans driving past his window on its way to dispose of them. He gave chase in his car and rescued the film, which included the incomplete print of The Flying Doctor. Two years later, the shortened British version was discovered. Despite this print having been "totally rearranged", its eighth and last reel was found to take up exactly where the Australian one left off.
The first film to be directed by the then 21-year-old Italian director Mario Monicelli, with the pseudonym of Michele Badiek. Never published for theatrical release, was thought to be a lost film until 2011, when some fragments were discovered in the editor's personal archive.
This film, produced in the Philippines, was thought to have been lost until Nick Deocampo found an original copy in the United States Library of Congress.
It was finished in July 1939 and shown twice in Paris, but Francoist regime applied pressure to censor it. All known copies were believed destroyed in World War II, until one was found and the film was reissued in 1945. In Spain, it was not screened until 1977.
When RKO acquired the distribution rights to Le Jour se lève in preparation for remaking it as The Long Night, they also sought to buy up and destroy all available prints of the original film. For a time, it was thought that the French film had been lost completely, but copies reappeared in the 1950s.
A short film made in 1939 to promote an ex-servicemen's charity. It was shelved because of the start of World War II and was not shown publicly, nor was it even mentioned by Powell in his autobiography. A copy was found in 2003 and it had its first public screening in the UK in 2004, 65 years after it was completed.
Considered a lost film for many years. The Berlin Bundesarchiv held only a few clips of the film. However, a complete nitrate copy of the film surfaced on an Internet auction in 2005. The Norwegian college professor and media expert Jostein Saakvitne discovered this and purchased the copy.
Walt Disney bought the rights to the film, because he did not want people comparing it with his 1960 version. It was believed that Disney destroyed all copies until it was released briefly from their Vault DVD Collection in 2010, sold by Turner Classic Movies only.
Sack Amusements, the film's distributor, went out of business, and no one preserved its collection. A trailer was found at UCLA in 2022 by Ray Langstone.
A wartime drama, Welcome, Mr. Washington was listed as one of the British Film Institute's "75 Most Wanted" lost films for some years.[261] In early 2016, a complete print had been discovered in a locker in London's Cinema Museum, giving Cummins the opportunity to see the film on her 90th birthday. It was screened at BFI Southbank in late January 2016.[262]
Another film on the BFI 75 Most Wanted list. On July 31, 2019, a 16mm safety print was uncovered by Ray Langstone at the UCLA Film and Television Archive using their online searchable database, being held as part of the Mel Torme Collection.
A Famous Studios' Noveltoon featuring Snuffy Smith. Most prints, including the original negatives, were destroyed by request of King Features Syndicate (owners of the character), but a 16mm print of the film in black and white with French subtitles was found on eBay and uploaded to YouTube in 2016. An official English release of the 16mm print was discovered in the same year at the BFI archives and uploaded to YouTube in 2022.
After being listed on the BFI 75 Most Wanted, the film was available on DVD for a short time. The only known 35mm print is in a private archive in the UK.
20-minute British adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's psychological drama, rediscovered in 2017 when Jeff Wells, a 16mm enthusiast, found the reel in his loft in Drummore, near Stranraer. It is now digitally restored and is available to watch online.
One of six adaptations of the Kosuke Kindaichi series starring Kataoka. The movie, as well as two other movies of the adaptations which are still missing, was considered lost until in 2024 when NHK reported that Naotaka Yamaguchi of Nishogakusha University found the film.
Soviet animated-drawn film based on the Indian folk tale The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal. It was extensively searched for in 2000s and 2010s and was officially declared lost in the Soviet TV and Radio archive Gosteleradiofond. A copy was found in Yugoslav Film Archive in 2014, but that copy was never released to the viewers. In 2018 a vintage VCR enthusiast purchased an old Soviet video tape recorder and discovered an old damaged tape. On that tape the missing cartoon was identified, digitized, and uploaded to YouTube[275] with a request for the public to help with the restoration. With the extensive efforts and help of the online community, the cartoon was restored. The restored version is now also available on YouTube.[276]
The short documentary was filmed in 1958, but was not aired on television at that time. Welles left the only print in a hotel room, and it ended up first in the lost-and-found department, then in a storage facility. It was rediscovered in 1986. After Lollobrigida saw it when it finally premiered, she took steps to have the short documentary banned.[280]
Cassavetes showed a first version of his film only a handful of times, then scrapped it and re-shot the movie entirely. Found in 2004 at a sale of items lost on the New York City Subway, and tracked down by cinema historian Ray Carney.
Crime drama set in Los Angeles, also starring Warren Oates and Kate Manx. Condemned by the National Legion of Decency, it was re-released in 2016 to critical acclaim.
Chan's film debut. Thought to have been lost until a copy was uploaded to YouTube on February 3, 2016, most likely recorded off of TVB's Classic Movies channel.
British B movie thriller much criticized at the time for its violence. The film vanished without trace for decades until a negative print was found in a film lab in the early 2010s.
25-minute short, based on a Anton Chekhovplay of the same name, filmed entirely at a Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side. Newman could not find distribution and had his name taken off the film. Rediscovered in the 2000s, shown at Lincoln Center in 2017.
Anti-pornography short produced by Charles Keating. A faded 16mm print was discovered in the Moving Image collection at the Oregon Historical Society in late 2015. When lost, the film was ranked No. 14 in Gambit Magazine's list of 15 Films Lost to Time.
By contractual agreement, all prints of the film were to have been destroyed after its theatrical run. However, a single print was discovered in Burton's garage following his death.
An animated short film, thought lost in the fire at Williams' Soho studio until it was discovered in 2021. The original negatives were donated to the British Film Institute in hopes of restoring the film.
South Korea's first animated feature (traditional animation). It was believed that none of the prints of the film had survived to the present time, but in 2008, a 16mm print was found in Japan.
Trepanation film with Feilding drilling a hole in her own head. Was due to be screened by Feilding at the ICA in April 2011; however, she did not in the end take part in the event.
After a brief, limited theatrical release, the film was placed in storage and was presumed lost. The film was rediscovered and subsequently remastered for DVD release in 2010. Notable in part for its soundtrack by acclaimed composer Vangelis.
Although once thought to be lost, a print was recovered overseas and restored by the Korean Film Council, which screened the film at their theater in northern Seoul on May 18, 2009.
For many years, Wake in Fright enjoyed a reputation as Australia's great "lost film". The film's editor, Anthony Buckley, found the negatives for it in a shipping container labelled "For Destruction", in Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Winner of the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the film was long unavailable and the original stock had deteriorated past the point of recovery. In 2002, the original negatives and related materials were rediscovered and restored.
After a brief, limited theatrical release, the film was placed in storage and was presumed lost. The film was rediscovered and subsequently remastered for online release in 2012. Notable in part for its soundtrack by composer Vangelis.
Shelved by the distribution company and original negatives destroyed. Considered lost until a print was discovered in storage in 2012. Official Blu-ray released on August 1, 2017.
Known as a first-ever Philippine animated feature film, the 35mm print of the film was destroyed during the Marcos regime but only the remaining copies left rediscovered by Mowelfund Film Institute and Pandy Aviado in 2018.
The film was shown once on the night air of the Tonis TV channel in 1990. The Werewolf Hour was considered lost for 31 years until interested activists of the lost media community began searching for it in early 2021. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all rights to the TV movie were completely transferred to the Ukrainian TV channel Tonis, but it ceased to exist in 2017. Gosteleradiofond, the National Library of Ukraine, the Alexander Dovzhenko National Center and the Odesa Film Studio gave a negative answer to the question of whether they have such a film in their archives. Finally, The Werewolf Hour was found in the archives of the Gosfilmofond. After the copyright issue was resolved, the film was published on April 28, 2021, on the YouTube channel "Odesa Alternative" - the creative studio of Igor Shevchenko".
The film was considered lost for a long time, until on July 13, 2021, people from the VKontakte community "From Outer Space" digitized a VHS copy of the film, which was kept by one of the cinematographers Dmitry Ermakov.
After its initial premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, the original negative was rediscovered in 2014, and the film was subsequently re-released.
Bezhin Meadow, directed by Sergei Eisenstein: The production was halted in 1937 by the Soviet government and it was believed lost in World War II, but excerpts and partial prints were found and used to make a 35-minute slide show.
^Ana Grgic (September 13, 2016). "Rediscovering nationalism in the Balkans: the early moving image in contemporary memorial spaces". Studies in Eastern European Cinema. 7 (3): 240–257. doi:10.1080/2040350X.2016.1216777. S2CID157983987.
^"Salomy Jane (1914)". American Film Institute. A 1931 fire destroyed what appeared to be their [Michelena Studios] entire inventory of films. However, the 26 Sep 2008 Pacific Sun in Marin County reported that a 35mm print of Salomy Jane was found in Australia in 1996, and restored by the Library of Congress and the National Film Preservation Foundation.
^Thomas Kampen (June 30, 2004). "Film 'Love and Duty'". Institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg. Archived from the original on September 4, 2007. Retrieved April 9, 2007.
^"Dracula (1930)". dvdreview.com. Archived from the original on May 9, 2013. Retrieved March 25, 2013. Universal's original negative had already fallen into nitrate decomposition by the time the negative was rediscovered in the 1970s.