The Films
Die Suffragette
moving image document > clip
Title
Die Suffragette - reconstructed version 2008
Description
About the reconstruction of "Die Suffragette"

Our reconstruction is based on the film material we found for this title, a script with the title "Frauenfilm" written by Urban Gad, various reviews, the Swedish censorship card and information about the censorship cuts made by the Munich police department. The safety viewing prints that were available before we started the reconstruction were heavily cut and the order of the scenes had been altered. The only original nitrate material that survives is a small fragment from our collection.

Our goal was to reconstruct the version that premiered on the 2nd of September 1913 in Berlin. The existent prints were missing various sequences, among them the ones cut by the censorship office of the Munich police department but many more besides. We assume that during the course of time the film was deliberately shortened by its distributors, most probably to speed up the action.

Unfortunately, no detailed German censorship card for "Die Suffragette" survives. We received a copy of a script held by the Danish Film Institute entitled "Frauenfilm" (women's film), which was written by Urban Gad, the director of “Die Suffragette”. The script differs in some parts from the finished film but matches close enough for us to be able to use it to aid our reconstruction.

The Swedish censorship card revealed a plot line that was completely missing from the existant prints. We were only able to find a very short segment matching it in the nitrate fragment in our collection. A detailed description of the scenes still missing will be posted soon on this website.

We based our reconstruction on five film elements that we selected from the surviving film material: one 35mm safety negative and one 35mm safety positive from Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv Berlin, two 35mm safety negatives from our own collection and one 35mm safety positive from the Národní Filmový Archiv, Prague.

These were transferred to Digital Video format by means of a video camera attached to our Steenbeck. The digitized films were then edited using an open source software, which enabled us to make several versions without having to repeatedly touch the original materials. Gaps in the narrative caused by lost scenes were filled with new explanatory intertitles, detailing the missing action.

We are still working on the reconstruction and hope that we will still find some of the lost scenes - please take a look at the most recent version on the Lost Films website.
Description Sources
Annette Groschke / Oliver Hanley, Deutsche Kinemathek, Nov 2008
Id number
000002
Related collections
Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen (is a part of)
Collection category
film archive
Classification
moving image document > clip
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