About "Lost & Rare"
CONCEPT: The idea for Lost & Rare Film & TV Treasures grew out of the realization that a group of veteran independent producers and distributors of classic film content were already collaborating on many projects and each possessed an abundance of rare films we didn't quite know what to do with. The answer was to organize them thematically into DVD collections and release ourselves.
FOUNDERS: The founding group for this new series includes Festival Films founder Ron Hall, Bijou Productions founder Bob Campbell and archivist/independent TV producer Derek Myers. The production team includes producer/editor Peter Bedell and Steve Brown of Media 14 Productions.
THE FILMS: Content distributed under the Lost & Rare banner have either been lost or are extremely rare and often unknown even to the most ardent of film fans. For example, Alan Ladd's first screen credit and color film role, a long lost Felix the Cat cartoon, lost and forgotten shorts, newsreels, docs and feature films. Among newly discovered TV treasures we have uncovered television's first reality series and the first use of product placement in a TV series.
OUR GOALS: Among our many goals for the Lost & Rare series is to find and present content that film fans and collectors have never seen or even heard of; to find and present more complete original versions of films otherwise available only in truncated versions; to find and restore prints where inferior print quality is the only version otherwise available; and to reach new audiences among the general public and educators who will discover the intrinsic and historical value many of these Lost and Rare motion picture gems represent.
FIRST RELEASES: Our premiere DVD productions Lost TV Pilots and Sports Immortals were released June 1st and garnered excellent reviews. You can read Jef Burnham's enthusiasm for Lost & Rare Film & TV Treasures here at Film Monthly, and Greg Philip's reviews at A Lost Film. More info can be found at the links in the menu bar and in press releases by Movies Unlimited available here for Lost TV Pilots and here for Sports Immortals.
CHRISTMAS 2012: Our holiday productions just released include Golf Mania! and Heavenly Christmas Film Classics.
UPCOMING Please browse our Coming Attractions for Primeval Television in the menu bar. We are in contact with other collectors to release their rare films for the first time, so if you have some please contact us. If you have a lost or rare cartoon, short, newsreel, TV show, war documentary or movie on film, please contact us. We may be interested in licensing your content for our series! DVD authoring, design and opening logo are by Producer/Editor Peter Bedell.
Sales, distribution and management of this website is by Festival Films, which has been a public domain specialist for more than 30 years. For further information or to order, please contact:
Ron HallFestival Films
6115 Chestnut Terrace
Shorewood, MN 55331
Phone or Fax: (952) 470-2172
E-mail: fesfilms@aol.com
Coming Attractions – included in upcoming lost and rare film discoveries in various stages of acquisition and restoration are long-lost silent versions of Pickford and Fairbank’s Taming of the Shrew, a lost silent version of one of Barbara Stanwyck’s first sound films, lost animation treasures, lost golf films, Christmas films, films featuring prominent figures like Drew Pearson, J.B. Priestley -- and a Fellowship of Christian Athletes film featuring a handful of major 1950s American sports superstars discussing their faith. Just acquired is a film for which we can find no evidence it ever existed. It’s an ambitious and apparently very independent 1935 production called Thine is the Kingdom. You can read about this celluloid curiosity and observe the first 10 minutes of the film here at the Café Roxy blog.
