Lobster Films

In 22 years of activity, Lobster Films has earned itself an international reputation in the search for, preservation and restoration of films. This line of business has been hailed as a success by the Jean Mitry prize in Pordenone in 1997.

 

For 20 years now, Lobster searches for forgotten films in basements and attics, restores these miraculously surviving works, and brings them back to life all over the world and for all media including movie theaters for the older and most obscure ones.
 

Today, the Lobster collection boasts more than 40.000 titles: rare films, undiscovered or classics, in black and white or in color; all of which amounts approximately to 100.000 reels among which many can be said unique. Partially digitalized (about 3000 hours) this collection offers an important image stock to production companies around the world. Daily use is made of it in the media, as illustrations in movies, television magazines, news programs, etc.
 
As the film distributor of the prestigious American collection of stock shots Blackhawk Films (this collection was created in 1927 by Messrs Eastin and Phealan), Lobster continues to search for lost films and to extend its catalog by acquiring or distributing new titles such as: I Accuse (Abel Gance, 1918), silent films by Feyder, Duvivier, singing movies by Jean Boyer, etc. Presently, we are working on the resurrection of the unfinished film of Henri-Georges Clouzot, L'Enfer (Hell) (1964), starring Serge Reggiani and Romy Schneider, images of which, although shot in 1964, have since remained unseen.
 
Lobster has developed specialized competence in restoration in order to preserve the works of its collection; and is also the first European structure of sound treatment and restoration for film with its laboratory L.E. DIAPASON, situated on the site of the Éclair laboratory in Epinay. Lobster regularly puts its know-how at the service of private companies or film archives so as to put new life into film treasures. In doing so, Lobster Films is today a major actor in film restoration worldwide. Its last important restoration is Lola Montès by Max Ophuls (1953), restored to its original quadraphonic sound version for the French Film Archives, the Thomson Foundation for the Film and Television Heritage, and the Films du Jeudi company (Cannes 2008).
 
Although a private company, the Lobster's voluntarist safeguarding policy renders a 20% systematic annual reinvestment of its turnover in film restoration and public projections of its catalogue.

In this same spirit of safeguarding, Lobster pioneers ambitious projects of international dimensions. Thus, it was on Lobster's initiative that the first multinational preservation project took place, bringing together 15 Film Archives form around the world to collaborate on an American 15-part serial dated 1917, Wolves of Kultur, each Archives taking care of a chapter.
 
Already owning Chaplin's films of the years 1915 and 1916, Lobster is also the French partner for the Chaplin Keystone Project (with the British Film Institute and the Bologna Film Archive, under the aegis of the Chaplin Association) and coordinates this vast undertaking launched 6 years ago to find and restore as best can be the first Chaplin films from 1914.
 
Besides this search for and restoration of films, Lobster developed multiple means of distribution and development of its catalog:

 

1) in 1992 an absolutely unique show titled Retour de Flamme. It involves screening short old films found in basements or attics, accompanied on the piano and presented in an innovative manner. Today the show is sought-after all over the world and is put on in prestigious cities: from New York to Cologne, Bombay to Madrid, via London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Montreal, etc.

Retour de Flamme is also a DVD series produced by Lobster and distributed in France and abroad (Great Britain, Benelux, Switzerland, and the USA since February 2008); as well as a 90' monthly television magazine broadcasted on French cable (Cine Cinema Classics).
 
Pochette-surprise is an version of Retour de Flamme, dedicated to a young and a family public, and which has been performed on a monthly basis since 2004 every second Sunday at the movie theater Le Balzac on the Champs-Elysées.
 
2) On a regular basis, a selection of films from Lobster's catalog is produced in DVD box set form, in particular:
-in France (MK2, ARTE, les Editions Montparnasse, Les Editions de la Traversière),
-in Great Britain (Eureka Video, BFI, Quantum Group),
-in Belgium (Come-and-see)
-in Switzerland (Disques Office SA)
-in the States (IMAGE Entertainment, Kino, Flicker Alley);
Distribution agreements are currently under negotiation in Germany and in Japan.

 

3) Since 2004, when VoD started in France, Lobster has been a forerunner in this new approach to distribution. More than 300 hours of Lobster's catalog are available on Orange's portal (France Télécom group) in metropolitan France (Ma Ligne TV), and in Mauritius (Mauritius Telecom). A new access will soon open through the Forum des Images, in Paris.

 

4) Lobster has also developed film and television productions and thus, supplies the main European distributors with its magazines and documentaries, often (but not always) produced from its own images. Among the recent productions are the following: A Bord du Normandie (2005 – France 3 co production), L'Aventurière (2006 – La Compagnie des Taxi-Brousse co production), Georges le Cathodique (2007 – France 2, France 5, and INA co production), La 2CV : Auto-portrait (2008 - France 5, TV5 Monde, RTBF, Planète), L'Enfer (2009 - France 2, Canal +, Cine Cinema), and the Design collection (six 26' part per year, an ARTE France and Centre Georges Pompidou co production).

 

If you happen to own reels laying around in your attic, or that you have just located some at the flea market, do not think twice: call us!