More than eight decades after the Republican exodus during the Civil War, a small film has appeared on one of the retreat trails. It is the film Pathé Baby, a reel from the first home cinema projector, produced in 1922. This discovery was made last summer thanks to Lluís Bassaganya, director of the exhibition about the events at the Espai Cal Marques in Camprodon and discoverer of some of the events. Of the organisms of which it is composed. He himself explains this “There were several boxes where part of the filming was missing, and in one of them there seemed to be materials and it would be interesting to take them for repair in case there were images in this film.”.
For years, Passagania's work has focused on tracing paths of retreat with the goal of discovering and then displaying objects. This latest discovery is important for the collection and the goal now is to find out its content and whether it has been preserved in good condition. “When you find something that was theoretically supposed to rot after 85 years and has to be preserved, it's a very big surprise for us. I don't know how, but it was preserved after so many years in the forest.”“, specifies Pasagania.
The challenge of finding out what is in the film is the work of the Center for the Conservation and Restoration of Villemoteca de Catalunya, the organization that will try to restore it. “What will be in these pictures? We don’t know. I think it must be an entertaining film that the soldiers will carry, meaning that Charles Chaplin can come out and say something.”.
The coil is 10 meters long, and one of the reasons for its preservation after so many years may be due to the metal casing that encloses it. The main premise is that it will be a film brought in by retreating soldiers for entertainment.
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