A 1919 silent comedy missing for more than a century is heading back to New Hampshire after a film student found the reels in a Japanese antique shop.
Film student Kohei Okita bought a batch of old reels while researching movies about “anarchy,” and inside that lot sat Van-ar-chy, the long-missing slapstick short starring old-time comedy figure Billy B. Van. New Hampshire film archivist John Tariot restored the print and plans to screen it for the first time in 100 years at the place it was made.
The New York Post reported that the official premiere is set for Nov. 1 at 2 p.m. at the Newport Opera House in New Hampshire, with live music and another rediscovered Van title on the bill.
Okita was digging through material tied to “anarchy” when he purchased the reels from an antique shop in Japan. The film turned up in that batch. Once he realized what he had, he contacted Tariot.
Tariot, a New Hampshire film archivist, took on the restoration. His spokesperson, Kiki Keating, framed the find as a rare second chance for a title that had sat out of public view for generations.
Keating said the picture had been written off for good.
"For nearly a century... [Van-ar-chy] was presumed lost forever, sadly the fate of roughly 75% of all American silent films,"
That figure is a blunt reminder of how much early American cinema never made it into modern archives. Nitrate stock, neglect, fires, and simple disposal wiped out most of the silent era. A recovery like this is the exception, not the rule.
Billy B. Van was born William Webster Van de Grift in 1870. He starred in vaudeville and on Broadway, then moved behind the camera as a filmmaker.
He built the Equity Motion Picture Company on the shores of Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire. Many historians treat it as northern New England’s first movie studio. Van cast locals in slapstick comedies and shot them on the region’s streets.
Van-ar-chy was made in 1919. The same year, Van also made Where Are Your Husbands? Both titles are part of the planned Newport program. The Opera House screening is described as a return to the ground where the work was created more than a century ago.
Keating put the hometown angle front and center.
"An extraordinary story of international discovery, lost cinema, and local New Hampshire history is heading to the stage at [New Hampshire’s] Newport Opera House, the lost film is making its official world premiere back where it was created over 100 years ago,"
The path is simple and almost hard to believe on paper: a student in Japan buys old reels, a New Hampshire archivist restores the find, and a 1919 comedy returns to the Opera House tied to its original production.
Absolute dates for the purchase and the finished restoration were not released in the initial account. The city and shop name in Japan were not named either. What is clear is the sequence, discovery, outreach, restoration, and a set premiere time of Nov. 1 at 2 p.m.
For silent-film fans, the draw is obvious. For New Hampshire, it is local history coming home. Van used real streets and real neighbors as his backdrop. Seeing that work projected again ties a small-state studio experiment back to the audience that once lived next door to it.
Most American silent films never get this ending. Keating’s own figure, roughly three-quarters presumed gone for good, shows how thin the survival rate was. When a print does surface, the responsible move is to restore it, show it, and keep the record intact.
History does not preserve itself. It takes a curious buyer, a careful archivist, and a hometown stage willing to hit the lights again.
