This is a trailer for the George Eastman House restoration of HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Made in 1920, it is the first feature length film adaptation of the Mark Twain classic. Music by Daryl Fleming & the Public Domain.

A new 35mm film print of the restoration of HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1920) will be screened at the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY on Friday, June 24 2011. A new score for the film will be performed live by Daryl Fleming & the Public Domain.  The performance will be introduced by Paolo Cherchi Usai. Following the film there will be a discussion on stage between members of Motion Picture Department of George Eastman House that worked on the restoration of the film and the composer of the new score. The moderator will be Jared Case.  This screening would not be possible without the generous support of Abilene Bar & Lounge and OhmCo Sound and Recording.

With the survival rate of all silent films at approximately 20 percent any discovery of a “lost film” has the potential of being a major event. While HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1920) was never truly lost it has been unavailable for well over half a century. This current restoration started from a nitrate print that was gifted to the George Eastman House in 1962 from The Danish Film Archive. A preservation acetate duplicate negative and acetate print was made in 1980; but all these new elements still contained the Danish language titles. Then in 2007 the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House was awarded a grant by The National Film Preservation Foundation for the restoration of English language titles to HUCKLEBERRY FINN and to strike new color tinted prints that would match the nitrate original.

Anytime we in the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House restore a film that needs to have new English titles we try to find copies of the script. In the case of HUCKLEBERRY FINN no known script exists, so the first step was to have the Danish translated into English. Because the film was so faithful to the novel we were able to use the novel for a lot of the dialogue for the new intertitles. New titles were created using Adobe Photoshop and sent with the 1980 duplicated negative to a film laboratory. For HUCKLEBERRY FINN we chose Colorlab in Rockville, Maryland, to do the job of making the new restoration negative and prints. The new titles were cut into the 1980 negative and new color positive film elements were printed.

For film rental inquiries: http://www.eastmanhouse.org/collections/access/film-loans.php

If you’re interested in booking the band for a live performance of the film score: daryl.fleming8@gmail.com