From AFP News Agency.

A battered wooden trunk passed down for a century held an unexpected secret. Retired teacher Bill McFarland had kept it for 20 years, unaware it contained early silent films belonging to his great-grandfather, a rural Pennsylvania exhibitor.

After a failed attempt to sell the reels, McFarland brought them to the US Library of Congress, where archivists discovered a lost 1897 short by French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès hidden among them.

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