Metropolis theatrical poster 1927 Acrylic Print

"On 1 July 2008, film experts in Berlin announced that a 16mm reduction negative of the original cut of the film had been discovered in the archives of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina.The print had been in circulation since 1928, starting off with a film distributor, and subsequently being passed to a private collector, an art foundation, and finally the Museo del Cine. The print was investigated by the museum's curator, Argentinian film collector, curator/historian and TV presenter Fernando Martin Pera, after he heard an anecdote from a cinema club manager expressing surprise at the length of a print of Metropolis he had viewed."

The final restoration adds some 30 minutes to the production and fleshes out some sub plots. But I find it abrasive as the scratched 16mm footage is jarring compared to the mostly pristine 35mm footage printed from the original negative.

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...