MANOS: The Restoration
Benjamin Solovey, writing about his mission to restore the much-maligned Manos, the Hands of Fate (often seen leading the pack in the IMDb’s bottom 100) from a newly-discovered 16mm work print:
Now we are seeing Manos through an Ektachrome image that properly represents it as a product of a certain bygone time and place. With a clearer view of the production design (paintings, metalwork, and stone sculptures by Tom Neyman, an El Paso artist who played The Master), the off kilter handmade world of the film, and the shaggy / poppy Ektachrome photography by Robert Guidry, 45 years later the film assumes a different identity as a fascinating bit of 60’s ephemera.
I like Solovey’s assertion that every film currently languishing on celluloid deserves to be rescued, even a reviled film like Manos. (Though given its notoriety, I give Manos much better chances at quality restoration than good-but-forgotten films like The Fleet’s In.) The shift from 35mm to all-digital projection is happening quickly as existing prints disintegrate and studios shut down their celluloid archives. Just ask the folks who attend B-Fest, where film projection was once the rule and is now the exception.
Learn more about the restoration effort at Solovey’s Kickstarter page, or watch the video below.
