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What is lost media?
While it seems unthinkable in our age of online splendor, there are actually tons of films, TV shows, video games, and other media that no longer exist (at least, as far as we know) in any format, whether private or public.
This “loss” can happen for many reasons, depending on how it used to be stored: analog storage is reused or wiped, cancelled projects are pulled from public access, and some media cannot be accessed because of obsolete technologies. While some works can be tracked down and recovered, others cannot.
Why is it important?
From lost Doctor Who episodes to filmed historical events to early 2000s ads – even though some lost media items could seem trivial, they all help paint a picture of a certain period of time and preserve its cultural landscape. Often, what gets lost are creative works, sometimes ones never thought to be preserved in the first place, like early TV broadcasts.
Whether you look at it from a broader point of view (preserving cultural history) or a more personal one (recovering childhood memories or beloved TV episodes), efforts to recover and archive lost media seem like a significant cause to pursue.
How is it recovered?
There are non-profit coordinated efforts, such as the Lost Media Wiki, whose members seek outhard-to-track media, or the Internet Archive, which started out as a way to preserve knowledge and provide access to all.
Generally, if you want to recover a piece of lost media, you need to turn into an online detective, interact with various online communities, and search through all kinds of archives. With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, there is a chance you will eventually find what you are looking for. If you’ve always wanted to be a sleuth, this is your chance.
Another way is more old-school: treasure hunting at garage sales, vintage shops, or even your parents’ basement. You never know what lost film or TV show you might find on an old VHS tape.
Unique Russian lost media
1. The second volume of Dead Souls (1850s)
Perhaps one of the most fabled bits of lost media in Russian culture, the second volume of Nikolai Gogol’s poem in prose Dead Souls was burned by the author only nine days before his own death. It was believed that while the first volume depicted all the vices of people and the country, the second one was supposed to paint a more hopeful picture, displaying ways of redemption. Five chapters were recovered from the author’s drafts, but his intent for the novel remains unknown.
2. The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda (1933)
A feature-length cartoon based on a fairytale by Alexander Pushkin, created by the husband-and-wife team of Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Vera Tsekhanovskaya, and scored by none other than Dmitri Shostakovich – this definitely sounds like something worth seeing. Unfortunately, only a single scene from the cartoon remains, as most footage was lost during the Siege of Leningrad in WWII.
3. Miss Peasant (1916)
A silent film that was the first work of the director Olga Preobrazhenskaya in collaboration with the actor, screenwriter, and director Vladimir Gardin. Though later on Ms Preobrazhenskaya went on to become one of the founders of the VGIK institute of cinematography, at the time her first work was released it was treated with mistrust, with her name often edited out of posters and reviews. Currently, the work remains lost.
4. LEGO-GO! (1995)
Imagine a game show all about Lego, where teams have to compete in their aptitude and assemble models, fighting for the main prize – a trip to the original Legoland in Denmark. It does have that dearly naive vibe of the late 1990s-early 2000s game shows that may be hard to find today. Luckily, several broadcasts of the show have been recovered!
5. Full House adaptation (2009)
Here’s another callback from the 1990s, ABC’s sitcom Full House about a father raising his three daughters on his own was sold to be adapted by the Russian channel STS, with the first season airing in 2009. But the Russian version, Дом кувырком, had not found its audience and was canceled after only two seasons. The episodes were lost for some time but have now been fully recovered – for all wishing to relive their childhood memories.
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Title image credit: Alexander Glushchenko on Unsplash
