John E. Allen and Associates
Restores
Oldest Surviving
American Feature Film
John E. Allen and Associates was recently entrusted with the restoration of our nation’s oldest surviving complete original feature, The Life and Death of King Richard III.
The American Film Institute asked John E. Allen to restore the 1912 original nitrate print in preparation for the AFI Los Angeles Film Festival.
According to John Allen, the Lipsner-Smith CF3000 MKV film cleaning machine was one of the tools that was used during the restoration. "We use the MKV to clean just about every piece of film we work with. Archive film is typically very dirty and solvent based ultrasonic cleaning is essential to the restoration process."
After the film was cleaned, Allen and his staff started the tedious process of shooting the film frame by frame on an optical printer.
They used wet gate technology to further reduce the appearance of scratches and other damage on the new negative.
Allen’s other projects have included restorations from D.W. Griffith’s originals of The Birth of A Nation, Intolerance and Way Down East which are held by The Museum of Modern Art.