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After years of trying to find a home for his great-grandfather’s collection of old silent films, a Pennsylvania man has achieved success in the most unexpected way. The Library of Congress has identified one trunk’s contents as holding the last known copy of the earliest science fiction film ever made.
Bill McFarland had been hauling around two dusty trunks filled with his great-grandfather’s vintage films, attempting to sell them to antique shops, museums, and even on eBay, but to no avail. It wasn’t until a film digitizing company recognized the collection’s significance and suggested he contact the Library of Congress, as reported by the Times Observer.
When archivists at the library received the trunks, they made an incredible find. Among the forgotten reels was a 56-second film from 1897, titled “Gugusse et l’Automate” or “The Clown and the Automaton.” This film is the last known original of what is widely regarded as the first science fiction film ever produced.
The film collection belonged to McFarland’s great-grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee, affectionately known as “Professor Frisbee.” He was a traveling showman who spent about 30 years, beginning in the late 19th century, performing in rural schoolhouses and churches across northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.
Frisbee’s traveling show kit was a treasure trove of entertainment from the era, including hand-painted glass magic lantern slides, an Edison phonograph, and eventually silent movies on nitrate film. McFarland discovered that nitrate film is notoriously dangerous, with the potential to explode or burn even when submerged in water.
But after the trunks sat in storage for decades, McFarland set out to find them a proper home, he told the outlet.
McFarland’s friend Dan Sorensen helped shopped the collection to antique stores, museums and online film forums, but nobody wanted them until the Library of Congress recognized for the first time how unique the collection was, reports said.
The William DeLyle Frisbee Collection, which contains 42 films, now rests in a climate-controlled vault at the Packard Campus in Virginia — a Cold War-era bunker once built for the Federal Reserve Bank and later refurbished into a state-of-the-art film preservation facility before being donated back to the government.