Jeg vil her presentere nyheter innen stumfilmen og nyutgivelser som er blitt utgitt på DVD. Da flere av filmene er mer kjente under engelsk tittel, vil jeg her genrelt bruke de engelske titlene og i flere tilfeller vil jeg legge en link til en side hvor jeg bruker den orginale tittel ved filmomtalen.
 

080708:  KOMPLETT UTGAVE AV FRITZ LANGS FILM "METROPOLIS" (1925/1926) I et museumsarkiv i Argentina har man funnet scener som var klippet ut fra "Metropolis", scener man trodde var tapt for altid. Dermed er det nå mulig for første gang å på mange år å se orginalversjonen av denne filmen. Da "Metropolis" hadde urpremiere i Tyskland den 10.01.1927, Berlin, på "Ufa-Palast am Zoo", hadde den en spilletid på 210 minutter, dvs at den var i ni akter og var på 4189 meter. Men detsverre skjedde det at da filmen kom ut på det utenlandske markedet, ble filmen klippet ned og scener ble fjernet for at den skulle være mindre kontroversiell og for å tilpasse "det gyldne snittet" som er på ca 90 minutter. Dermed var det faktisk bare det tyske publikum som fikk filmen i sin orginale lengde. Efter all denne sensuren og omjusteringer forsvant enkelte scener og i flere år har man trodd at 20 minutter av filmen var tapt for alltid. Men nå er altså de 20 minuttene funnet og "Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Stiftung" har uttalt at den fullkomne utgaven skal bli utgitt i løpet av 2009. Bakgrunnen for at filmen havnet i Argentina var at en argentinsk filmutleier i 1928 fått fatt i en kopi av originalen, så den kunne vises for et argentinsk publikum. Disse filmrullerne ble senere kjøpt opp en samler, Pena Rodríguez, som ijgen solgte dem videre til Museo del Cine i Buenos Aires. Da det samme museum nylig fikk en ny leder, Paula Félix-Didier, oppdaget hun denne glemte filmen, og årsaken var fordi hennes eks-mann hadde hørt rykter om at museet skulle ha en særlig lang film som skulle ligge på lageret. I årevis skal en filmfanatiker, ved navnet Fernando Pena, ha bedt museet om å sjekke arkivene sine, men det var først i april i år at de tapte scenene så dagens lys igjen. I følge museumskurator Martin Koerber, ved det Tyske Cinematekets filmmuseum i Berlin, skal dette være Fritz Langs originalversjon. På hjemmesiden til "Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Stiftung" står det følgende: Sensational discovery in Buenos Aires: Lost scenes from “Metropolis” rediscovered Staff members of the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken in Buenos Aires, found the missing scenes which had been considered lost up to now, in a 16mm Negative. The tale of the concision of “Metropolis” is well-known. The film is renowned for the story of its restoration which began in the 1960s in the national Film archive of the German Democratic Republic, to the source critical reconstruction of the Film museum Munich (E. Patalas) in the 1980s, up until the film was digitally restored through Mr. Martin Koerber on behalf of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden in the year 2001. This restoration, which is based on the version of the Film museum Munich and on materials of the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv (Federal Archive / Filmarchive), Berlin, was completed not only with these two institutions but also with other partners of the Deutscher Kinematheksverbund (Association of German Film Archives) In addition to this, Enno Patalas developed a study version of the film in collaboration with the University of Arts in Berlin. They supplemented the survived fragments in their original relation to the film in written form or with pictures and musical resources. Because of these survived sources, the hiatuses which weren’t able to be found even after decades of research in national and international Film archives and private converts, were sorely cognizant. Pictures gave us the impression of what was missing – the to a supernumerary reduced figure of Georgy, the man named Slim, Josaphat, the car journey through Metropolis, the observation of Georgy through Slim, Freders delirium of Slim in which he changes into a apocalypse preaching monk. With this discovery in Buenos Aires these scenes will finally come back to life. Even if the quality of the picture is in a deplorable condition, thanks to the Argentinean material, the dream of the completion of “Metropolis” will finally come true. According to Anke Wilkening, restorer of the Murnau Foundation “Hitherto incomprehensible is now intelligible, the sometimes puzzling relations of the figures among each other now make sense.” The story of the instauration can now come to an end. Helmut Poßmann, managing director of the Murnau Foundation states that: “In continuance of the restoration from 2001, the Murnau Foundation would very much like to compile a complete version of the film together with the former partners and the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken in Buenos Aires and to open it to the public, all the more because “Metropolis” is the first film which has been affiliated in this restored version from 2001 – safety lug Nr. 1 – to the Memory of the World register of the UNESCO.” “This sensational discovery places the Murnau Foundation into a position being able to restore the film to a very large degree. That way it could be achieved to come as close to the masterwork of Fritz Lang as never before possible and present it to the world”, says Eberhard Junkersdorf, head of the board of trustees. guardian.co.uk, Friday July 4 2008: The discovery of scenes from Fritz Lang's 1927 silent sci-fi epic Metropolis is fascinating. Half-an-hour of running time, fully one-fifth of the original movie, was for decades considered hopelessly lost. Now the complete film can be viewed for the first time in 80 years or the first time, in fact, since it premiered in Weimar Berlin, was hissed at by the press, and ignominiously chopped down for foreign distribution. But will the missing 30 minutes "explain" this sprawling and operatic movie? Or just make it more baroque, more mysterious, and madder than ever? Hør også på et lydspor om denne oppdagelsen.