S2E6 Paramount & Zoetrope: Andrea Kalas & James Mockoski on Movie Archives

Paramount Pictures is a goliath, a company that is instantly recognisable to movie watchers around the world, and its archives are chock full of some of humanity’s best-loved moments. American Zoetrope is an equally mammoth operation, founded by Frances Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Our guests today are Andrea Kalas, vice president of archives at Paramount, and James Mockoski, archivist at Zoetrope. They discuss the process that goes into reinterpreting and remastering epics from the past, primarily focussing on Coppola’s ‘final cut’ version of Apocalypse Now and the newly reversioned ‘The Godfather III’, now ‘The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone’. They explain how archivists help to reimagine a story whilst paying respects to the original works, and how new technology is able to make us fall back in love with a film all over again. In this episode, discover the value of revisiting stories from the past, explore the notion that a story has never finished being told, and find out why it’s important to plan for the future by never throwing any of your work away.