Silent film "In the Land of the Head Hunters" returns to Moore after 94 years

In 1914, a unique Northwest film made its world premiere simultaneously at the Moore Theatre in Seattle and the Casino Theatre in New York. A vision of life among the Kwakwaka'wakw tribal communities in British Columbia, it played briefly in theaters before disappearing from view.

Now, 94 years later, it's back: "In the Land of the Head Hunters," the only feature-length film made by acclaimed photographer Edward Curtis (1868-1952), returns to the Moore Tuesday night in a fully restored print, complete with live orchestral accompaniment and a post-screening dance performance. The evening is co-presented by the Burke Museum, Seattle International Film Festival and Seattle Theatre Group.Curtis, who was based in Seattle for much of his life, primarily devoted his long career to photographing Native Americans in the western U.S. and western Canada. Many of those now-iconic photographs appeared in his landmark 20-volume book series, "The North American Indian." Aaron Glass, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia who is one of three executive producers of the restored film, described the books as "a monumental photographic salvage project." Curtis, like many others at the time, thought that Native people would soon disappear — "if not physically, then at least culturally and linguistically," said Glass. He traveled and visited tribes for several decades, taking photographs and recording stories, songs and other information.

"In the Land of the Head Hunters" was made as a commercial enterprise, Glass said. "[Curtis] made it in the hopes that it would make money in order to help fund his book projects, which he saw as his serious life's work."

The film is a silent melodrama that intertwines a love triangle, a series of aboriginal battles and excerpts from Kwakwaka'wakw ceremonial performances. (The title was sensationalized for commercial purposes.) Curtis filmed it primarily in two B.C. locations, from which he drew his all-Kwakwaka'wakw cast: Fort Rupert, a community at the north end of Vancouver Island, and Blunden Harbor, a village (now uninhabited) on an inlet across from Vancouver Island.

With a commissioned score by composer John J. Braham, the completed film opened in New York and Seattle. Though records are sketchy, it appears to have been released in a few other North American cities, but didn't seem to catch on with audiences.

"Basically, after a couple of years, the movie had made no money and was no longer being distributed," Glass said. In 1924, Curtis sold his copyright and print of the film to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which was interested in the film from an anthropological standpoint.

From there, the story of "In the Land of the Head Hunters" takes a mysterious turn. The Museum of Natural History has no record of the film, and no trace of it was seen until 1947, when a film collector in Illinois was given a few damaged reels from a friend, found in a theater trash bin. He didn't know what the film was, but gave it to the Field Museum in Chicago, thinking it might be of interest for its Northwest Coast collection.

And there it sat, until art historian Bill Holm (now art professor emeritus of the University of Washington and the Burke Museum) and anthropologist George Quimby (director of the Burke from 1968 to 1983) undertook the first restoration of the film. Quimby, a former curator at the Field Museum, brought the "Head Hunters" print with him when he moved to Seattle, and he and Holm worked on the project for a number of years, finally releasing a restored version in 1974. The restoration included significant changes to the film, which was incomplete and assumed to be the only existing print, and a new soundtrack (of sound effects and songs by Kwakwaka'wakw members) as the original score was presumed lost.

The current restoration came about because of two significant discoveries. Glass, working on his dissertation, discovered the sheet music for Braham's original score at the Getty Film Institute, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive found in its vaults some reels labeled "Edward Curtis" that turned out to be sections of "Head Hunters." These reels, in original nitrate, were of special interest because they retained the elaborate color tinting Curtis had intended. (The Field's version had been transferred to black and white.)

What will unspool at the Moore on Tuesday (after its world premiere at the Getty in L.A. last week) is, says Glass, closer to what audiences in 1914 saw. The current restoration is "three-quarters Field Museum and one-quarter UCLA, but the tinting and toning is extrapolated for the whole thing. It's not meant to simulate color film; it's more like hand-tinted old photographs. What we've restored are the original title, original intertitles (some of which we had to reconstruct), the original color as much as we can approximate it and the original score."

"In the Land of the Head Hunters" will screen at the Moore accompanied by Braham's original score, performed by a small orchestra made up of local musicians and led by Owen Underhill, conductor of the Turning Point Ensemble in Vancouver. After the screening, the Gwa'wina Dancers will perform a routine based on the dances in the film (at times presenting a version more true to tradition than that shown in the film). The group, a professional ensemble whose members represent many of the 16 tribes of the Kwakwaka'wakw, will also discuss their ancestors' participation in the film with the audience.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com