Iowan's rare films could be among first motion pictures

Mike Kilen | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Iowan's collection of old films reveals cinematic history Mike Zahs of rural Washington County, Iowa, talks about his interest in and collection of film history from 19th century entertainers Frank and Indiana Brinton.

Michael Zahs has kept the films he discovered in 1981 among a local estate%27s treasures in his shed

A recent study of American silent films from 1912-29 revealed that only 25 percent of the films have survived

Zah%27s collection includes films of films of Teddy Roosevelt what may be the earliest-known film of the Middle East

Michael Zahs lives in rural Washington County, Iowa, down a dirt road, in a big farmhouse filled with artifacts.

The 66-year-old retired history teacher is enamored with the past, so in 1981 he was delighted to find a stack of old motion picture films among a local estate's treasures.

For more than 30 years, Zahs kept them in his farm shed. He knew the cellulose nitrate-based films were precious. Some dated back to before the turn of the last century.

He even had the American Film Institute make copies of a few of the films back in the 1980s. He would show them during a bus tour of Iowa history that he still leads every year.

No one else seemed too interested. Until now.

The films took on a new life after an Iowa arts organization learned of them and enlisted film experts to confirm the reels include the earliest films ever made, dating back to 1895.

"The specialists are gobsmacked and excited almost beyond belief what the collection is revealing," said Christopher Rossi, director of Humanities Iowa, which last week secured a $51,000 grant to preserve the films.

Zahs, a 6-foot-3-inch man who wears Wrangler jeans and flannel shirts, is now telling the films' story to a wider audience of people, including a documentary film crew that was visiting his farmhouse on Wednesday.

The films came from the basement of the old home of Frank and Indiana Brinton, traveling entertainers from Washington, Iowa. Zahs enlisted his students in Washington to clear off the coal dust and rat droppings, and incorporated the films into his lessons. "Together," Zahs told the children, "we are going to see things that haven't been seen for 100 years."

When they first watched them, he was overwhelmed and amused.

Some of the silent films contained short narratives: A comedy about a man who flirted with a woman on a train before it passed through a tunnel, emerging into the light with the surprise that he had accidentally kissed the maid instead of the woman; a western with gold prospectors and wild gunfire that clearly missed the mark, but the actor dropped dead, anyway.

From 1889 to 1915, the Brintons traveled the Midwest, showing their pre-cinematic magic lantern slides, hundreds of which Zahs also owns, and the earliest reels of film from the time.

Frank Brinton was the son of a wealthy farmer who also owned early air ships. His wife, Indiana, sat on stage during the film presentations, saying nothing, but looking "purdy," said Zahs, who years ago interviewed people who had attended the shows. "She was the original trophy wife."

He tries to imagine the wonder of Iowans back then, seeing their first motion pictures. During some showings of the movies, viewers were so surprised at the reality in the new technology that they fell to the floor at the footage of an oncoming train.

Their impact became clear to Zahs when he first began to show the films to Iowans. A man told him after one showing that he remembered the film. Zahs told him he was too young to have seen it. But the man's father had talked about it with such enthusiasm and clarity that decades later it was as if he had seen it.

"Nothing wows us like that now," he said.

Back then, Iowans flocked from farms and small towns to see the traveling shows in opera houses or church halls. The Brintons often earned more than $100 a night, charging 10 to 25 cents a person, packing hundreds into each show.

"They were probably the highest-paid people in the state at the time," Zahs said.

A century later, the significance of the films has emerged. In addition to short narratives, they include clips of natural disasters of the day and zoo animals, but also films of Teddy Roosevelt and daily life in Burma and the Middle East.

The collection includes what may be the earliest-known film of the Middle East, said Barb Petzen, director of the nonprofit Middle East Connections.

Most photographic images of that era are staged with stoically mugged subjects in settings that conform to Middle East stereotypes.

"But in a few seconds of film in a camel market, which we believe is in Egypt, you have this little boy waving, smiling and laughing," Petzen said. "It was like having history so close you could reach out and touch it."

The footage was shot with a camera that had to be cranked by hand and often was projected for audiences the same way. The nitrate-based film was explosive, one reason people were skittish about storing it in later decades.

"I would say that (the collection) is priceless, and I would be shocked to hear that it wasn't unique," said Bob Strauss of MediaPreserve in Pittsburgh, Pa., a company that is digitizing the films.

A recent study of American silent films from 1912-29 revealed that only 25 percent of the films have survived, so he suspects few from the 19th century exist. Many of the nitrate-based films have deteriorated.

Of Zahs' 16 reels of 35-millimeter film, his company was able to transfer 13 to digital. Together, the short clips combine to make up an hour of footage, everything from a comedy bit of a man spraying another man with seltzer, to a drama on the Civil War.

Once returned from Pittsburgh, the films will be stored at the University of Iowa Special Collections, and their release will be carefully controlled.

"The Brinton cache is so extraordinary," said Rick Altman, emeritus professor of cinema and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. "I wouldn't say it's the tomb of Tutankhamun, but you open the door and you see some marvelous things.

"One of the wonderful things Mike (Zahs) has done, is he has wanted to become a Frank Brinton lookalike. He has done the show himself. I know how important it is for materials to not sit in an archive somewhere. It's important to give them a second life."

As keeper of what Zahs calls "the most significant collection on earth" for more than 30 years, he is now determined to share it with a wider audience.

He is working with Humanities Iowa and Red Cedar Chamber Music, a Marion company that will reproduce musical scores for the films, to recreate a traveling show by late next year, that will visit the same venues the Brintons did.

One expert told him that this project could occupy the rest of his life, but Zahs said he had too much else going on.

Just this year he has conducted 30 historical programs, led 12 bus trips and 11 concerts, and recently found the grave of an ancestor who was one of the first Iowans and was killed by Indians.

He's convinced history is best revealed in its original setting.

"There is just so much we ignore. Most of it. I love to show people what they don't know in their own backyards," he said.

Or in one man's farmyard shed.