MoMA's Masters of American Animation, 1914–1998 (Patreon)

Today (Jan 17 @ 1:30pm) and at the end of the month (Jan 31 @ Noon), the New York Museum of Modern art will present a number of preserved animated films with live music as apart of their annual Save and Project Festival.

Included in this year's festival will be the debut of a number of new preservation scans from Winsor McCay, Mutt & Jeff, Aesops Fables, Krazy Kat, and Fleischer Studios (from the Fleischertoons restoration project).

I did the restoration work on a number of these films, including Gertie. Mauricio Alvarado was responsible for submitting these works to MoMA for consideration for this year's event.

Above is a clip of the version of Gertie that will be shown. Initially, Mauricio had obtained another print of the film, which unfortunately was incomplete, but since it was unknown if a complete print could obtained elsewhere, I did initial restoration work on this (see below)

In addition to being incomplete, the images lack sharpness. Fortunately, through his prior working relationship with another archive in Canada, he was able to obtain a complete print, which they had previously released for the film's 100 anniversary. It is this print that is presented here (you can see a before and after picture below). This print also posed its own set of unique problems (there are many duplicate frames with duplicate dirt/scratches making more thorough cleaning not practical). However, the images are more sharp, and since the film is well over a 100 years old, looking aged is appropriate.