Dawson Film Find

The Dawson Film Find (DFF) was the accidental discovery in 1978 of 533 reels of silent-era films in the Canadian gold rush town of Dawson City. Dating from the 1910s and '20s, the films had been buried under an abandoned hockey rink and included silent feature movies as well as newsreels. A construction excavation inadvertently uncovered the forgotten collection of discarded films which were composed of inflammable nitrate film that had been unintentionally preserved by the permafrost.

A documentary film about the find — Dawson City: Frozen Time — was released in 2016.

Description

The 533 film reels date from "between 1903 and 1929 and were uncovered in the rubble beneath [an] old hockey rink". Works by Pearl White, Helen Holmes, Grace Cunard, Lois Weber, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, and Lon Chaney, among others, were included. Along with the lost feature films, there was also rare footage of historic events, including the 1919 World Series.

History

Beginning in 1903, the Dawson Amateur Athletic Association (DAAA) began showing films in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. The unreturned films were deposited in the local Canadian Bank of Commerce and later stored in the local Carnegie Library basement. The DAAA later converted a swimming pool to an ice rink, but because of improper conversion the ice rink suffered from uneven temperatures in the middle of the rink. In 1929, Clifford Thomson, then-employed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce and also treasurer of the hockey association, solved the problem of the library's stock of film and the inadequate ice rink. Thomson took 500,000 feet of film and stacked the reels in the pool, covered the reels with boards and leveled the rink with a layer of earth. The DAAA continued to receive new nitrate films which would later fuel the destruction of the entire complex in a fire in 1951. The films stored under the ice rink were preserved and uncovered in 1978 when a new recreation center was being built.

The Dawson Film Find material was collected and preserved, with these prints becoming the last surviving records of some movie studios. Owing to its dangerous chemical volatility, the historical find was moved by military transport to Library and Archives Canada and the U.S. Library of Congress for both transfer to safety film and storage.

List of Films in the Dawson Film Find

Not all films are complete, as some were too damaged to restore in their entirety.

• A Trip through Palestine (1907)
• Pasquali and co (1909)
• The Girl of the Northern Woods (1910), Thanhouser

• Birth of Flowers (1911)
• Elephant Racing at Perak (1911)

• The New Woman and The Lion (1912)
• A Chrismas accident (1912)
• Out of the Deep End (1912)
• The Martyrs (1912)
• His Madonna (1912)
• The Frog (1912)
• Giuseppe’s good fortune (1912)
• Circumstantial evidence (1912)
• A Winter's visit to Central Park (1912)
• The Butler and the Maid (1912), Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
• Brutality (1912), D.W. Griffith, Biograph Company.

• Draga, The Gypsy (1913), Rex Motion Picture Company
• Until we Three meet again (1913)
• What is the use of Repinning (1913)
• The Pit and The Pendulum (1913)
• Pure Gold and Dross (1913)
• Balaoo (1913)
• Protecting San Francisco from Fire (1913), Keystone Film Company

• Pathé's Weekly #17 (1914)
• Wildfire (1914)
• Daybreak (1914)
• White Dove's Sacrifice (1914)

• The Scandal Mongers (1915)
• The Bludgeon (1915)
• The Price (1915)

• The Half-Breed (1916), Allan Dwan, Triangle
• The End of the Rainbow (1916)
• The Rail Rider (1916)
• The Mysterious Mrs M (1916)
• Gloriana (1916)
• Temperance Town (1916)
• The Unpardonable Sin (1916)
• If my Country should call (1916)
• The Hidden Scar (1916)
• The Vicar of Wakefield (1916)
• Threads of Fate (1916)
• The Salamander (1916)
• The Closer Road (1916)
• The Iron Hand (1916)
• Barriers of Society (1916)
• Her Soul's Inspiration (1916)
• The Social Buccaneer (1916), Jack Conway, Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Inc.
• The Strange Case of Mary Page (1916), J. Charles Haydon, Essanay Studios

• The Recoil (1917)
• Polly of the Circus (1917)
• The Stolen Paradise (1917)
• It Happened to Adele (1917)
• The Little Orphan (1917)
• A Soul for Sale (1917)
• Princess virtue (1917)
• A Girl's Folly (1917)
• An Even Break (1917)
• Chicken Casey (1917)
• The Awakening (1917)
• The Hunting of the Hawk (1917)

• The Marriage Lie (1918)
• Bread (1918)
• The Sea Waif (1918)
• The Stolen Hours (1918)
• British War Office (1918)

• British Canadian Pathé News 81A (1919)
• International News, Vol. 1, Issue 52 (1919)
• The Montreal Herald Screen Magazine (1919)
• A Sagebrush Hamlet (1919)
• The Silver Girl (1919)
• The Exquisite Thief (1919), Tod Browning, Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Inc.

• The Little Clown (1921)