Orson Welles filmed The Other Side of the Wind from 1970 to 1976, then edited on and off for several years. But it wasn’t complete due to financial problems. In 1979, after the Shah was overthrown, one of the film’s backers, an Iraq company located in Paris, decided to seise the original negative. Welles just held some of the working prints. A decades-long legal battle ensued, with the original negative, more than 96 hours of raw footage, sealed in a vault in Paris by the French court. Welles wasn’t able to take back the films when he died in 1985, and no one has seen the films since then.
After more than 20 years, when the then production crew and new producers convinced the Iraq company, Welles’ daughter Beatrice Welles, and Oja Kodar, the co-creator of the film to make a deal, letting the crew retrieve the films, they found out that the laboratory that kept the film was broken, all films were transferred to several remoted storages in Paris separately. Although some of the films were lost, they still luckily found most of the original negatives to continue Welles’ last production.
The completed version is now available on the online platform, we will continue to talk about the restoration and remaster process next time.
Trailer of The Other Side of the Wind: https://youtu.be/nMWHBUTHmf0
Still: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018)