One of the earliest films of director Alfred Hitchcock has been found in New Zealand.
The New Zealand Film Archive said the first three reels of the feature The White Shadow were found in a cache of ageing nitrate prints.
Hitchcock was the writer, assistant director, editor and production designer on the silent film, which was made in 1923 and is believed to be his oldest surviving feature.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times about the find, David Sterritt, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics in the US and author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, said: "What we are getting is the missing link.
"He was a creative young man who had already done some writing. We know the kind of creative personality he had when he was young and we know a few years later he started directing movies himself. What we don't know is how these things were coalescing in his imagination."
The film will be screened on 22 September at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles and will be added to the Academy's Hitchcock collection.
