Some Of Early Cinema’s Greatest Films Ended Up – By Design – In An Iowa Shed

Retired history teacher Michael Zahs saves everything – and in this case, “everything” is priceless for understanding early cinema. The Brinton Collection is “a mammoth set of films, lantern slides, posters and projection equipment from the first years of cinema, and even earlier. There are two exciting things about these artefacts. One is that during the more than three decades after Zahs took delivery of the collection and stored it on his property, he has been showing its treasures to local people and keeping the tradition of the travelling showman alive. The second is the discovery that the collection contains very rare material – films by the French cinema pioneer, George Méliès that were once thought to be lost.”