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Two film prints at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY!!!

posted 21 years ago by gshanger
5 replies | jump to latest

Its a crazy story of how TWO film prints arrived at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY. An institution funded pratically single-handedly by Kodak (Rochester, NY is its world headquarters). When the originall distributor of F&D, Joseph Burstyn (NYC) died in dee late 1950's, a film professor at RIT, smartly bought all his archives, prints, notes, files, etc, etc for the RIT archives - George Eastman House (as well as being part of KODAK, as well). Well wouldn't you know that two film prints of Fear & Desire were amoungst Burstyn's collection.

Years later, around early 1980-ish, Sir Stanley considered this film as an "inept student film" and decided to remove all prints from circulation (including the original neg's), and had them "burned", as dee story goes!!! (Most people assume that they are in his Vault-we might never know). Few problems here though, George Eastman House would not give up their two prints of the film - but in the end agreed not to ever screen them publically. Secondly, it had been shown on North American TV for a while - SO all the VHS (NTSC) copies floating around are all decendants of a late 70's, early 80's VHS recording (probanly at EP speed - we'll never know) - that's why its such a bad copy!!! I have never seen a film print screened at any KUBRICK retrospective.

[–] 21 years ago

[deleted]

[–] jwer79 21 years ago

Do you know how I could get a copy of the precious early work of SK?

[–] RohanSJ 20 years ago

I saw Fear and Desire screened at George Eastman House in the late 1980s, as part of the Toronto Film Society's annual visit. (Perhaps this wasn't considered a "public screening".) The quality was pretty good.

The film made quite an impression on me. I'm very glad that I saw it, not because it's good (it's bad) but as an illustration of how even such an amateurish first feature could scream "Kubrick".

[–] saltsan 20 years ago

gshanger's posting is wrong in a number of respects. I know, I used to work at George Eastman House.

The George Eastman House has no connection to RIT and no official connection to Kodak. It is a completely independent film archive that functions as a private, non-profit organization. (The only connection it has to Kodak is that Kodak gives it some grant money every year.)

Kubrick did not burn FEAR's negative. It is still in existence and protected. The Eastman house does have two prints of the film, a screening print and a back up. They are allowed to show the movie publicly, which they do from time to time. However, they can only show it at their theater, the Dryden, and never loan it to other theaters for showings.

While it is a pretty bad film, it's no worse than Kubrick's KILLER'S KISS, really, and no worse than a lot of directors' early attempts. (Bergman's CRISIS, Bertolucci's GRIM REAPER, Terry Gilliam's JABBERWOKY, come to mind.) His estate should really lighten up and let it be released, especially since there seem to be so many bootleg videos of it floating around anyway. The one very good thing about the film is its cinematography, and I doubt it looks very good on a bootleg tape.

Also, Stanley Kubrick was never knighted...

And he's overrated; let's face it.

[–] gshanger 20 years ago

I agree with you that KUB would never burn dee neg & all remaining prints...... BUT, still dee official party-line, started by KUB, is that he did burn all neg's & remaining prints except two.......

By-the=way those TWO prints that they do have at GEH, was purchased by a prof from R.I.T., which we all know that KODAK is all over that place, as well as everything else in Rochester, NY, across dee pond from us in Toronto (Iused to work at Ryerson Universuty film dept, so I know dee stories, eh!!!!)...

Gio. Shanger
(de worlds only archival filmmaker)