I will never win an Academy Award, but in 2017 I was given the next best thing - a limited edition giphoscope from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in recognition of my efforts toward the restoration of the once lost Louise Brooks' film, Now We're in the Air (1927). My name is on a plaque on the base of this "analog gif player," and it also appears in the acknowledgments of the restored film. This giphoscope, of which there are only a half-dozen or so featuring the Brooks' film (that's my understanding), was handcrafted in Italy.
I shot a short video of my giphoscope for the newly updated Louise Brooks Society Instagram account, which I would encourage everyone to check out. You can view my video short below or at https://www.instagram.com/louisebrookssociety/ After posting the brief clip to the Instagram account, I figured I would write something up this blog.
My wife and I had a small hand in helping bring this film back to the screen, and we and the Louise Brooks Society are thanked in the credits which follow the restored fragment. It was an honor to be asked to help work on the project. It was also exciting! I got to see raw footage of the surviving material (then with Czech intertitles), and helped put the fragmentary pieces back into proper order and with correct English-language intertitles. The story of the film and its restoration by Rob Byrne (seen above giving me a giphoscope) is told in a book which I authored in 2017, Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once Lost Film.
This book tells the story of the film’s making, its reception, and its discovery by film preservationist Robert Byrne. Also considered is the surprising impact this otherwise little known film had on Brooks’ life and career. The book features two rare fictionalizations of the movie story, more than 75 little seen images, detailed credits, trivia, and a foreword by Byrne.
The book is widely available: One can buy it NEW from Amazon (USA) | Indiebound | Bookshop.org | Powells | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Larry Edmunds (Hollywood, CA) | George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY)
The English-language edition is also available from Open Trolley (Indonesia) and MightyApe (New Zealand)
It is a book that every Louise Brooks fan will want to read. It is also a great deal at only $15.00 in paperback.
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