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Australia’s Imprint Films will release four limited edition Alfred Hitchcock Blu-ray collections — totaling 16 films plus a season of television — on August 27.

The Hitchcock Nine (1925-1929) collects the filmmaker’s nine surviving silent movies: The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger, The Ring, Downhill, The Farmer’s Wife, Easy Virtue, Champagne, The Manxman, and Blackmail.

Each film has been restored by the BFI National Archives. The feature documentary I Am Alfred Hitchcock is also included.

The 10-disc set is housed in hardbox packaging. Limited to 1,500, it costs $150.30.

Disc 1 – The Pleasure Garden (1925):

A selfish London chorus girl’s relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to a point where it nearly causes her death.

1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray Solo Piano Score by composer Neil Brand (new) Theater Organ Score by Lee Erwin Audio Commentary by editor of the Hitchcock Annual, Sidney Gottlieb (new) Introduction by film historian Charles Barr Interview with BFI silent film...

Cineteca Milano is renowned for its silent film holdings. With a collection of more than 35,000 Italian and international films dating back to the 1890s, it was both coincidental and fortuitous that, in December 2019, the archive began digitalisation.

Part of a national digitalisation program, the Cineteca decided rather than merely deposit their digitised materials into the holdings of the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome, they would release films online.

Matteo Pavesi, the director of the Cineteca Italiana, tells me they wanted to “make our oldest archival materials visible; we wanted to publish these holdings for everyone to enjoy”.

Since the Cineteca was shut in February, Cineteca’s staff of six have been releasing 20 films a week on their free streaming service.

Pre-coronavirus, Cineteca Milano attracted around 300 users to its site each day.

In March, the online archive attracted more than 4 million users.

Saving history

Film archives began to be established in 1933 as...

Audiences at this year’s BFI London film festival will see the Victorians as they’ve never been seen before – raw, immediate and in incredible detail

At first, it sounds like an obscure cinephile joke. At a time when new movies are released on streaming services and film-makers are begging audiences to watch their new blockbusters at the cinema rather than on smartphones, the BFI plans to show some of its earliest footage on the biggest screen possible. The archive gala for this year’s London film festival will present a selection of Victorian films on an Imax, with a lecturer and live band, as they were originally shown. What was a novelty then may well retain some of the shock of the new 120 years later.

These are no ordinary 19th-century films, if there is such a thing. They are large-format movies, shot on 60mm or 68mm film, so each...

A new restoration of British silent film The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927) has been selected as the London Film Festival Archive gala screening.

The virtually unknown film charts two key battles faced by the Royal Navy in the early days of the First World War.

Directed by Walter Summers, filming took place in the open seas around Malta with the Scilly Isles standing in for the Falklands.

The restoration was carried out by the BFI National Archive team and Deluxe Digital.

The film had suffered extensive wear and tear during its 86-year history with damage in some key shots as well as some missing inserts, including letters and telegrams.

The incomplete main titles containing the credits for the producer and director have been recreated from single frames containing a faint shadow.

The restoration has been created in digital and 35mm.

The film, which will screen on October 16, 2014 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, will also have...

BFI launches campaign to find missing film featuring Sherlock Holmes.

The BFI has launched a campaign to find a copy of the first feature film featuring Sherlock Holmes.

Silent film A Study in Scarlet, directed by George Pearson, was released in autumn 1914.

The work is an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story of the same name, which shows a fictional murder during Brigham Young’s trek across America with his Mormon followers.

The film was shot on location at Worton Hall studios in the Summer of 1914. Cheddar Gorge in Somerset and Southport Sands in Merseyside stood in for the Rocky Mountains and the Utah plains.

Pearson’s second Holmes film, The Valley of Fear (1916), starring H.A. Saintsbury, is also missing.

Bryony Dixon, curator, silent film, BFI National Archive said: “Every archivist dreams of finding lost films. But this is a film of great importance. Sherlock Holmes is internationally renowned as a great detective. It would be...

BFI launches campaign to find missing film featuring Sherlock Holmes.

The BFI has launched a campaign to find a copy of the first feature film featuring Sherlock Holmes.

Silent film A Study in Scarlet, directed by George Pearson, was released in autumn 1914.

The work is an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story of the same name, which shows a fictional murder during Brigham Young’s trek across America with his Mormon followers.

The film was shot on location at Worton Hall studios in the Summer of 1914. Cheddar Gorge in Somerset and Southport Sands in Merseyside stood in for the Rocky Mountains and the Utah plains.

Pearson’s second Holmes film, The Valley of Fear (1916), starring H.A. Saintsbury, is also missing.

Bryony Dixon, curator, silent film, BFI National Archive said: “Every archivist dreams of finding lost films. But this is a film of great importance. Sherlock Holmes is internationally renowned as a great detective. It would be...

The 1923 film Love, Life and Laughter stars Betty Balfour.

The BFI is has revealed the discovery by Eye, the Dutch Film Museum, of a lost masterpiece of British silent cinema, George Pearson’s Love, Life and Laughter (1923), starring Betty Balfour.

Balfour, also known as Britain’s “Queen of Happiness”, was the most successful British actress of the 1920s, known also as the country’s answer to Mary Pickford. It is one of the most wanted on the BFI’s list of 75 films published to mark the BFI National Archive’s 75th anniversary in 2010. Only one other complete film by director Geroge Pearson survives.

The film was recently discovered in the archives of Eye, while being catalogued following its arrival at the archive in November 2012. The print is part of a collection of film cans that belonged to a local cinema in the small town of Hattem, near Zwolle.

Cinema Theater De Vries had only been active for three...