Lyrical Nitrate Explained

Lyrical Nitrate (Dutch; Flemish: Lyrisch Nitraat) is a 1991 collage film by Peter Delpeut.^[1]

Summary

The film consists of clips from various silent films printed on decaying nitrate film stock, including shorts, documentaries, and travelogues.^[2] There is no formal narrative.^[3] Delpeut followed the film with 1993's The Forbidden Quest, which also uses found footage; the two were released together on video and DVD.^[4]

Production

The films were drawn from the Desmet Collection of the Nederlands Filmmuseum (Eye Filmmuseum), where Delpeut worked as deputy director for a decade.^[5] Jean Desmet (1875–1956) was an early Dutch film distributor. After Desmet's death a cache of film prints was discovered in the attic of a theater he owned in Amsterdam, and subsequently added to the museum's collection.^[6]

See also

• Decasia, a similar non-narrative, found-footage film.
• The Forbidden Quest, Delpeut's unofficial sequel to Lyrical Nitrate.
• Lost film

External links

• • MUBI
• Chicago Reader Review

Notes and References

1. https://bampfa.org/event/lyrical-nitrate-1 BAMPFA
2. News: The Beauty of the Silents. Canby. Vincent. 1991-10-11. The New York Times. 2009-11-12.
3. Habib . André . 2006 . Ruin, Archive and the Time of Cinema: Peter Delpeut's Lyrical Nitrate . SubStance . 35 . 2 . 120–139. 10.1353/sub.2006.0034 .
4. Foreign Videos. https://web.archive.org/web/20091223123520/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,292277,00.html. dead. December 23, 2009. Purtell. Tim. 1996-04-26. Entertainment Weekly. 2009-11-12.
5. Book: Elsaesser, Thomas. Films that Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media. Vinzenz Hediger, Patrick Vonderau. Amsterdam University Press. 2009. 30. Archives and Archaeologies: the Place of Non-Fiction Film in Contemporary Media. https://books.google.com/books?id=WlGSVKeZM7gC&q=%22lyrical+nitrate%22&pg=PA30 . 978-90-8964-013-0.
6. op den Kemp. Claudy . 2004-11-30. Plus belle que la beauté est la ruine de la beauté. Offscreen.