"it's basically a miracle..."
via The Guardian:
via The Guardian:
Amazonas, Maior Rio do Mundo (Amazon: Longest River in the World)was stolen from the original director, Silvino Santos, shortly after it was made in 1918. Just over a decade later, it had completely disappeared. The film resurfaced earlier this year in a Czech archive and was identified by specialists in Italy and Brazil.
“It’s basically a miracle,” said Sávio Stoco, the Brazilian expert on Santos who confirmed the discovery. “We didn’t have the slightest hope that this work would one day be found.”
...
The 1918 film is considered a rare gem of Brazilian cinematography for its length, subject matter, and quality of composition. Featuring fascinating footage of the Amazon forest’s diverse landscapes and inhabitants – including some of the earliest known moving images of the Indigenous Witoto people – the feature-length film “mixes different dimensions of the documentary genre into a very enjoyable narrative for the viewer”, explains Stoco, a professor of visual arts at the federal university of Pará in Belém.