Description
Available from October 6!
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It took us 300,000 years to make it to the movies. Will it take us just a couple hundred years to lose them?
Last Rites for Lost Films charts humankind’s march towards cinema—a miracle of technology, artistry and cultural myth-making—and wonders why it keeps dying on us.
Is it because the first nitrate film prints were made of combustible celluloid, a material that combines bones and silver, and was often melted down for weapons of war? Is it because we abandoned physical media and now can only access a fraction of the films we once casually strolled past in a video store? Is it because we’re now dedicated to digital formats and artificial intelligence, unaware of the silent fire secretly wiping away decades of digitised memories? Or is it because we’re as haphazard with movies as we are with ourselves, each other and our planet? (The answers are yes, yes, yes and oh boy, yeah, this one in particular.)
From the author of Book of the Banned comes a cosmic celebration of cinema, and a caustic cautionary tale.
Featuring interviews with Oscar nominees, international preservationists, cinema owners and those who have been literally erased from cinema history, Last Rites for Lost Films describes the doomed productions, deleted files and directors’ cuts you were never meant to see, and the ones you never will. This is for anyone who’s ever lusted after the prospect of witnessing Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried or Marvel’s first—and forsaken—Fantastic Four, as well as everything else you heard was burned, shelved or sued into oblivion. Pay your respects as we travel from the missing first movies to cinema’s likely last gasp, and find out if there’s still a glimmer of hope for film—and humans—yet.
‘Last Rites for Lost Films is the next essential book for every film lover; it’s the funny, stirring, and thrilling adventure about all the movies you’ll never get to see. Simon writes with such excitement, you feel like you’re on the mission of discovery alongside him. You’re completely encased in a tense curiosity that makes you want to scribble down the name of every film mentioned onto your watchlist, only to realise ripping through this book might just be the only way you’ll ever encounter these lost movies.’ —Alexei Toliopoulos
‘Last Rites for Lost Films is about movies, yes, but it’s also about history and climate change, birth and apocalypse –– cycles we all endure. Miraudo’s second book isn’t a dirge but a profound, funny, and miraculous celebration of life, for movies and for what we remember of them.’ —Fran Hoepfner, Vulture and NYMag
‘My first film was almost lost, banned and burned at the stake before it ever reached its audience, so I know firsthand that every finished movie is a miracle. Simon’s Last Rites for Lost Films is a fascinating, moving, and refreshing reminder of how easily cinema can disappear and why we should be grateful for every frame that survives.’ —Vera Drew, The People’s Joker
