How Household Saints Launched Missing Movies

It all started with one missing movie.

In 2019 Ira Deutchman called filmmakers Nancy Savoca and Rich Guay with a request to screen their 1994 film Household Saints in a retrospective. What seemed like an easy ask instead turned into an odyssey. The 35mm prints at UCLA Film Archive proved to be unplayable and the film was out of distribution. The three spent years tracking down film prints and (even more important) original elements and then getting the rights back.

Talking to others in the entertainment industry, they realized that their dilemma was one shared by many independent filmmakers. Working with the DGA, they helped set up and participated in a Zoom conference on that subject with Mary Harron (whoseI Shot Andy Warholis still unavailable), Mira Nair (who was able to regain the rights toMississippi Masala), entertainment lawyer Sue Bodine, Maggie Renzi (who is working on the rights to her partner John Sayles’s films), Ayoka Chenzira (whose filmAlma’s Rainbowwas recently restored and released), and distributor Amy Heller. 

Missing Movies grew out of that panel. And while we are a new organization (and a recently minted nonprofit) we have hit the ground running!