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Friday, June 12, 2020

The Past, Reconstructed

I'm fascinated by footage from the dawn of filmmaking, but much of what remains of those early 19th-century movies is either lost to time or badly degraded. But hard work and new technology has already transformed a handful of short films from visions through a glass darkly to glimpses as sharp as looking as a window to the past itself--or close to that, anyway.

I'm currently aware of two YouTube creators who are sharing their amazing work: Denis Shirayev and Restored Footage. Each has posted only a handful of clips (my favourite may be Restored Footage's reconstruction of the Hindenburg newsreel) but each is amazing in its own right, at least to my eyes. If you're a fan of history or technology, their channels are worth exploring.

(I'd post a video, but Google has willfully made it harder to embed them on Blogger.) 

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