In this country although under the 1911 copyright act (the terms of which govern any film made before 1956, 'made' being defined as the date on which the negative was exposed), copyright lapses 50 years after the death of the author in the case of fiction, or 50 years from the date of production in the case of non-fiction.

However, if the 'author' is a company, copyright can be maintained in perpetuity, because a corporate 'author' is not deemed to have died if it is bought out, taken into receivership or a corporate asset (e.g. the rights to a film) is sold from one company to another. The reality is that pretty much everything is owned by someone. A graphic example of this is the fact that Georges Melies' widow was notorious for threatening legal action against various archives, organisations and individuals relating to the screening of his films - many of which were produced in the late nineteenth century! Another (less pleasant) one is that Leni Riefenstahl, now in her late 90s, still ferociously protects the rights to her Nazi-era productions, so much so that a conference on her planned by an English university some years back had to be abandoned because of legal threats.

Another hurdle is that the cost of restoration is not cheap, even if it's reasonably straigtforward. Recently we had deposited a locally produced sound newsreel showing celebrations for George VI's coronation in 1937 (OK, here come the comments about sad limeys...). The print runs 790 feet and consists of one 35mm b/w combined positive on Eastman type 1301 (nitrate release print) stock of 1937 manufacture. The cost of making preservation elements (a new polyester 35mm dupe neg, sound neg rerecorded from the unilateral VA original and combined viewing print) comes to £1,620 - that's well over £100 per minute of running time. If this film were in colour or a weird format then it could well have cost three times that. If this element were in less than perfect condition (e.g. scratched, shrunk, brittle or decomposed) there would have been extra costs involved in preparing it for printing, and/or printing it using specialist equipment such as an optical step printer.

John Pytlak is absolutely right -- do NOT assume that the films are in the public domain, even if they seem otherwise to be. Films before 1970 are NOT necessarily in the public domain. That is a very common misconception. TV stations fell into that trap by showing It's a Wonderful Life. Now, it's recognized that the film (made in the 1940s, much earlier than the year of "freedom" Derek mentioned) is still copyrighted by virtue of the music used.

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