I've wrote it in my essays, but I am fairly confident superior elements will appear including the one remaining missing scene. What I just can't get over is that a complete print was the actual one distributed in Argentina, and yet no researcher had been able to uncover this fact. I just find it so odd that no contemporary account or review from that nation came to light which revealed this fact. I am especially baffled when you consider how many of the German elite took flight to South America at the end of the Second World War. It seemed like an obvious place to start looking to me. And for it to be sitting in the National Film museum... I mean, they were being a bit short sighted as researchers, weren't they? :)

Also I've seen bits of the clips of the print. While in comparison to the current excellently restored prints, the raw image looks poor, we have been rather spoiled with image quality of late. Certainly, people were putting up with inferior prints of Metropolis for many years before the 2001 restoration appeared for public consumption. I actually think the print has damage that is consistent with a lot of that evident on the Moroder print. It is more severe, but it is the same sort of damage. Also it seems a lot worse on the first reel than it is on the rest of the film.

Martin Koerber has gone on record as being conservative about what can be done, but I am confident that they will present a very watchable version of this material. I would not even be surprised if they wrote software specifically for repairing damage found on these sequences.

I'd like to put the guys that found this jewel on locating the high-quality NASA tapes of the first Apollo 11 moon landing. The stuff we've all seen of the "one small step" footage was taped off a TV screen. The good tape (I think. Not film) came from an on-board camera.

In true bureaucratese, NASA says it's "not lost." They "just can't find it" right now.

I'm unfortunately not at all surprised by this turn of events. At least one iconic Australian movie made in my lifetime was nearly lost. A print was eventually found in a garden shed in L.A. and in not too great a condition. Even with the modern printing process a pristine 35mm print is not such a good thing to work from.
Thankfully we now have an enterprise funded from the public purse charged with maintaining and restoring our film heritage. As much as some dislike the Hollywood studio system it has one thing going for it, the ongoing funds to maintain the back catalogue.
Down here and I guess pretty much elsewhere movies are made by a production company that exists solely to make one movie. Once the profits or losses are distributed to the shareholders the company is wound up. The very same people might make another movie but that means a new company. Under this system there's no funds to run an archive.

Bob.

I suspect it's right next to the Ark of the Covenant

I, too, would like to see the original Apollo 11 footage. Here is a liitle more info about the search for the lost tapes:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/nasa.html

I think the BBC holds the record for lost footage. It even got to the stage in the seventies where the producers and stars (most notably Peter Cook) begged to be allowed to buy the tapes, and even offered to buy them replacement blanks, instead of wiping them. I believe that most of the first series of "Not Only... But Also..." was wiped in favour of pre-recorded weather reports...

And when producers realised that their shows were not being archived, the likes of Galton and Simpson started make their own copies secretly for their own archives, because the BBC were actually starting legal proceedings against some production staff who had done so with permission.

I, too, would like to see the original Apollo 11 footage. Here is a little more info about the search for the lost tapes Well, here's my "lost tape:" I shot this with my pre-war Contax Zeiss Ikon camera, as it happened on July 20, 1969:



Oh, this makes me feel old.

Also, would you believe, I still have this TV set? It had the best looking phosphors of any set I've ever seen: subtle, yet realistic.

That makes me feel old too John.

I have no doubt that NASA has a hard time keeping track of everything. Considering the amount of data that some of the missions have collected, finding any particular piece would be extremely tough - regardless of how it may (or may not) be catalogged(sp?).

I'm not sure if they found the originals but there have been a couple of Ron Howard funded docs recently about the early space program. They did an incredible job in finding and restoring some of the Apollo age films and tape. Some scenes look really good. I'm not sure if they used the original film/video of the moon landing though. The shot of the 'rocket ring' falling away from one of the Saturn V's is even more impressive now.

I am pretty sure that Howard re-created most everything for "Apollo 13," including the launch and separation videos, so I don't know if what you saw in anything else he produced was real or not. The success of those shots certainly adds fuel to the old speculation that the moon landing was faked in some Hollywood studio.

Of course, I could counter that claim by posting Super8 film and simultaneous tape recorded audio my dad took during two of the Saturn V launches (one Apollo and one Skylab -- I wish I'd gone with him). I can't tell you where they went, but something really large and loud definitely took off and disappeared into the sky.

Why not simply contact the studio where the "moon landings" were filmed. Surely they kept a copy for themselves!

:-)

Why not simply contact the studio where the "moon landings" were filmed. Surely they kept a copy for themselves!

I wish I knew more of the Internet jargon, 'cause I think there is a shorthand for rolling on the floor laughing, which is what I'm doing now. That's just too good ...

ROFL = rolling on floor laughing
LMHO = laughing my head off
LOL = laughing out loud

Yeah, any and all of those apply. :)