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75% of All Silent Films Have Been Destroyed and Are Now Lost Forever

75% of All Silent Films Have Been Destroyed and Are Now Lost Forever

You may never get a chance to kick back, fire up Netflix and finally catch up on all of those classic silent films you’ve been meaning to see. According to a new study from the Library of Congress commissioned by the National Film Preservation Board, just 1,575 out of almost 11,000 films made in the silent movie era remain undamaged. The rest have either severely deteriorated because they were not properly stored or were lost to fires (the type of film used was extremely flammable). Many were burned intentionally because studios in the 1910s and 1920s feared that some of the films violated strict content codes that were set in place in an effort to keep entertainment wholesome …

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