Anyone that has ever watched a movie with me has heard me state that “just about every movie made has a shot of a steel drum somewhere in the film.” It’s surprisingly true! Ask my children! Now, thanks to Rick Rubin of Maxi Container, I recently learned that UN approved steel drums are being used to transport 75 reels of historic and long-lost silent movies to the US for restoration. The films were discovered in a vault in the New Zealand Film Archive and include a drama by legendary director John Ford, a copy of Ford’s Upstream the earliest surviving movie by comic actor and director Mabel Normand and a period drama starring 1920s screen icon Clara Bow. The films were discovered by American preservationist Brian Meacham who claims that many of the films remained in New Zealand because distributors at the time did not think the return shipping costs to the US were worth the expense.
Because these films were printed on unstable and highly flammable nitrate film stock, the transport to the US will require them to be shipped as dangerous goods, probably Flammable Solids N.O.S., Hazard Class 4.1, Packing Group II, which, for an air shipment, authorizes they be shipped in UN approved steel drums. As demonstrated in the film Inglorious Bastards, these nitrate films are highly flammable.