LYON, France — Walt Disney’s “Alice Comedies,” a series of cartoons made before Disney went to Hollywood, have been freshly restored and re-packaged for global distribution by France’s Malavida Films, one of the specialty cinema companies announcing their 2017 lineups at Lyon’s Lumière festival vintage cinema market. Disney made the silent shorts starting in 1923 when he was still a struggling cartoon filmmaker in Kansas City. They feature a young girl named Alice, originally played by Virginia Davis, who interacts with animated characters. Local company Laugh-O-gram Films produced them and subsequently went bust. Now they are in the public domain. Lumière Festival: Walt Disney’s ‘Alice Comedies’ Being Restored, Distributed by France’s Malavida
"“These are the only films in the Disney catalogue that are not copyrighted,” said Malavida co-chief Lionel Ithurralde. "“It was a quite complicated technical feat because the original material is 18 frames per second; but for restoration work you need 25 frames per second,” Ithurralde said." Well this certainly does not bode well. I hope this guy is just a blathering misinformed executive and doesn't have anything to do with the actual restoration process.
Well, (1) There are quite a few Disney films not under copyright, for a wide assortment of reasons, and (2) There was no specified frame rate for silent film; 25 frames per second is only used for European television - not film; and the frame rate has nothing whatsoever to do with restoration. (My guess - they may be planning to run it through some cheapo auto-cleanup software that they don't know how to use, which will almost certainly erase outlines in the mistaken belief that they are scratches.) And the Alice comedies - other than the first one - were all shot in Los Angeles, not Kansas City. So basically, there's nowhere that he hasn't gone wrong.
