[Major Announcement] TrueFilm is attempting to rescue a forgotten film by a Master of Silent Cinema. Details Inside.

Together, we will contribute something to the world of film that, despite its price tag, is priceless; we will transfer, touch up, and release master silent picture director Frank Borzage’s currently locked-up The Pride of Palomar (1922). Moreover, once the funds have been raised and the project is complete, we will give it away to the world, for free, forever. This is the largest scale we have worked on to date, and with all of us involved, it’s going to keep growing. Our Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds is now officially live for the next thirty days, so let’s break down the specifics of what we’re doing and how you can help.

The Steps

• We must raise $1,200 to get the transfer from the Library of Congress going. We have already arranged everything with them; they’re just waiting for the payment so that they can begin. It will take 6–8 weeks.
• We must raise more than $1,300 to buy and ship a top tier DVD release of the film. The finished movie will include a touch up (standardizing frames per second, elongating titlecards to a readable length…), an original score composed specifically for the release, original cover art, an 8-page insert featuring pieces on Borzage from world renown critics and scholars, and donor credits.
• The rest of the money goes to the nitpicky fees: Kickstarter’s cut, shipping fees, the cost of other reward items (the T-shirts), and so forth. (By the way, check out that rewards section. Five bucks gets your name in the credits)
• The Kickstarter campaign is the release. Once we have the transfer, we edit; once we edit, we sent the copy to the composer to be scored; once it’s scored, we send it to the DVD copiers; once the copiers send us the package, we ship it to the appropriate donors. All the while, we will be working on an extensive (around 400 pages, maybe more) Digital Dossier on Borzage and the film, which all donors will receive. The longest-running reward is the six-month exclusive streaming code for the film. Once the six-month exclusivity is up, the project is technically over, and the steps are complete.

How You Can Help

• Donate with money. Every dollar gets this movie closer to your eyes. And to ours, too; no one has seen the damn thing! If we exceed our goal, the leftover money goes to the next project. Nothing goes into our pockets; no one makes a dime from this endeavor. (Even the Library of Congress; their fees cover exact expenses, and they are allowed to neither make nor lose money from their transactions)
• Spread the word on social media. Share the Kickstarter page. Share this post. Retweet, like our Facebook post, you know the drill. This is a legitimate piece of essentially lost film history that the public will now have. This is also a world-class DVD release. Were we a business, you’d be getting one hell of a deal. And, as film fanatics, causes don’t get much worthier than this in the movie world.
• Donate with your talents. This project, from top to bottom, is already made possible by the non-financial donations people have contributed. We have spoken with specialists who are contractually allowed only to give us “advice, like at a cocktail party,” but who have already led us to a better transfer quality at the LoC at no additional cost. That’s a tangible game-changer. Composers are donating their talents. Artists are donating theirs, including the truly special Pantheon Level Borzage woodcut, signed by artist John Heath. The artwork alone is worth the price of the donation. World renown critics are donating their pieces on Borzage; some are creating original ones. Archives from around the country are thanklessly (for now) scouring their holdings for continuity scripts, or microfilms of press releases. Those on the team with none of these talents are scouring through hundreds of pages of trade journals to stitch together a four year nationwide narrative of the film’s release for the Digital Dossier. Others are helping to simply get this project off the ground, which takes a ton of effort. Not one person mentioned has donated a penny, and were a single one of them to have not helped already, this release would have been tangibly worse off before it even got started. Please consider contributing, even if it’s not with your money. Know someone who could help? Letting them know about this campaign is a donation.

Final Thoughts, Looking Forward

As stated, the Kickstarter campaign is the release, and when it’s over, there is a possibility we will exceed our financial goal. In the event that this happens, we will put it towards our next release. We already have a trajectory set for our next projects. There are grants waiting to be snatched up; there are donors to convince to let us near their prints. There is a lot of room to grow, and grow we will. And The Pride of Palomar will act as the cornerstone to our future endeavors. This means that the world film community must know how dead serious TrueFilm is about film and its culture, history, preservation, and restoration. We could have campaigned for the twelve hundred bucks and given the world a mess of a movie. But that’s not TrueFilm, not by a long shot.

Not only will this release be something truly worthwhile, but our intent will also be crystal clear. Once the campaign is over, The Pride of Palomar goes up on our YouTube channel for everyone. We will keep private the file that the Library of Congress gives us, as we don’t want crumby companies selling crumby copies at the bottom of a Wal-Mart bin.

We’re not a business. We aren’t bound by profit margins, which currently plague silent and classic film releases. This puts us at a unique advantage; we can now work with movies that deserve to be rediscovered, but would not make companies any money. And there are lots of these movies, too many. If we release The Pride of Palomar the way we have it currently set up, the possibilities are near-endless. In a few years’ time, TrueFilm could be a name known on a vast stage, continuing the tradition of excellence that we have already shown for years, and that we show right now, every day. Let’s get ready, gang. Together, we are gonna to blow some minds.

Here’s the link to our Kickstarter page.

EDIT: We had a typo on the Director Level that indicated you’d get a T-Shirt. That was intended to be a perk for the Far Side level, but the 4 of you who backed us before we were alerted to the mistake will, in fact, get a T-shirt! It pays to be an early bird sometimes!