Plot Synopsis

This two-part program features a collection of lost films discovered in a New Zealand archive in 2009, where a treasure trove of American movies from the 1910s and 1920s has been unearthed in the New Zealand Film Archive, unseen by anyone for almost a hundred years. The films include features, newsreels, serials, cartoons, trailers, promotional pictures, and more. For instance, UPSTREAM, an hour-long John Ford comedy-drama released in 1927, is a rediscovery of major proportions. The characters are actors, vaudevillians, and aspiring stars whose rooming-house community gets shaken up when a young thespian makes a hit as Hamlet and returns with an ego bigger than the stage.