A Diva’s Amazing Grace, A Filmmaker’s Persistence
posted June 13, 2019
In January 1972, a 29-year-old Aretha Franklin, already renowned in soul behind five Grammys and 11 No. 1 singles on the Billboard charts, returned to her roots with two evenings of riveting gospel worship in the run-down New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles. The soaring celebrations of faith became legendary moments in popular-music history. They also produced a long, confused saga of film loss and retrieval.
A Resounding 25 Years of Reviving Early Film
posted December 17, 2016
At the dawn of “talkies,” the leading film recording and projection system conveyed images and sound separately: the images on film, the sound on shellac discs. For the last 25 years, the Vitaphone Project has been locating and reuniting the many films and audio discs that became separated. It has restored some 125 features and short films, many thought lost forever, with many more in the pipeline.