A single frame from D.W. Griffith’s 1909 short THE SON’S RETURN, starring Mary Pickford (her 2nd film) and Mack Sennett. The image on the left is from an existing DVD, which came from the paper prints stored at the Library of Congress and is typical of the quality we’ve come to associate with early silent-era cinema. The newly restored image on the right is from the original, single-perf Biograph 35mm nitrate camera negative. Until now, no one has been able to scan camera original Biograph negative due to its bizarre one-perf structure (which can be seen in the image).

Cinelicious is happy to announce that we’ve solved this problem and have engineered a way to successfully scan and restore this important piece of cinema history at 4K.  Beyond the gorgeous 4K scan, our team of artists put in a tremendous amount of time and effort grading, stabilizing and cleaning up the over century old images.

The 4K restoration premiered at UCLA Film & Television Archive’s FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION this past March at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood.  The restoration was funded jointly by the UCLA Film & Television Achive, the Mary Pickford Foundation, and the Museum of Modern Art.