Video courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress and Gosfilmofond.

The Russians just saved a little piece of Sedona’s Western film history.

For decades, “The Call of the Canyon,” the 1923 silent film that kicked off Sedona as a set location for more than 60 movies, was considered lost forever.

However, on Oct. 21, Vladimir Kozhin, head of management and administration of the president of the Russian Federation, presented “The Call of the Canyon” and nine other digitally preserved copies of “lost” silent films to the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

The films are the first installment of an ongoing series of “lost” U.S. films the Russians will give to the Library of Congress.

The films were digitally preserved by Gosfilmofond, the Russian Federation’s state film archive, and donated via the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library in St. Petersburg, Russia.

“This is really exciting stuff,” said Janeen Trevillyan, with the Sedona Heritage Museum. “We heard rumors about this film being somewhere, including Russia. But we just thought it had been lost.”

Before the invention of home movies and television, once a film finished a theatrical run, it was of little profitable use to a studio and seen as a mere storage problem.

Early films were notoriously difficult to safely store because the nitrate reels could become brittle and slowly degrade into a highly flammable powder. Several major Hollywood studios suffered devastating fires in the 1920s and 1930s from improperly stored film reels including the Fox Pictures fire of 1937 that destroyed all the studio’s films made before 1935.

According to Trevillyan, American studios began selling off old silent film reels after the movies screened. Buyers sought out the reels not for the movie’s artistic merit, but to extract minute amounts of silver from the film reels.

According to the Library of Congress, although the films of the silent era from 1893 to about 1930 were created for American audiences, they were distributed in other countries — including Russia — and shown in movie houses with translated intertitles.

More than 80 percent of U.S. movies from the silent era no longer exist in the United States, due to neglect and deterioration over time.

Curators at the Library of Congress have stepped up efforts over the last 20 years to locate and repatriate lost U.S.-produced movies from foreign archives.

“The library is committed to reclaiming America’s cinematic patrimony,” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington stated. “I am grateful to the dedicated staff of Gosfilmofond, the state film archive of Russia, for their efforts to save these important artifacts of U.S. film history. I am also thankful for the commitment of professor Alexander Vershinin and the staff of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library for their collaboration and cooperation in making this cultural recovery effort possible.”

According to the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation, as many as 200 silent and sound-era movies produced by U.S. movie studios may survive only in the Gosfilmofond archive.

Located outside Moscow, Gosfilmofond is the Russian Federation’s primary film archive of artistic, feature, documentary and animated films. Established in 1948, its collections includes more than 55,000 motion pictures, and it is the largest such archive in the world. It is administered by the Russian Ministry of Culture’s State Committee for Cinematography.

As Gosfilmofond holds related materials such as scenarios, film posters, photographs, press clippings, set designs and the personal papers of directors, actors and film critics, it is also a center for film research.

What makes the return of “The Call of Canyon” so remarkable, Trevillyan said, is the film survived in a vault through the turbulent years of World War II, the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trevillyan has already spoken with a Library of Congress loan curator and filed a formal request asking for a copy of the film to be sent to Sedona as soon as possible.

“It’s going to be several months before they can inspect the file that they have been given, check it for accuracy, corruption, make sure it is what it is, completeness, all that kind of stuff,” Trevillyan said.

Once the film is verified and on its way home back to Sedona, Trevillyan said she’d like to partner with the Sedona International Film Festival and the Zane Grey West Society to screen the film for audiences here.

According to Trevillyan, author Zane Grey wrote the novel in Oak Creek Canyon although sources are unclear at which location.

A recent book, “Arizona’s Little Hollywood,” claims journal entries show Grey wrote the book in California and Oregon.

As the author, Grey kept creative control of the film rights, even though that was unusual for films of the era. He had it shot in Oak Creek Canyon.A view of the switchbackson what later became StateRoute 89A is clearly identifiable in a short clip posted online at www.redrocknews.com.

During filming, Grey brought with him still photographer Carl Mayhew, who later moved to Sedona and opened Mayhew’s Lodge.

Grey’s secretary, Mildred Johnson, also returned to the area with her husband, Harry Johnson, and moved to a home on Schnebly Hill Road becoming part of the Sedona community, Trevillyan said.