PARIS: Frenchman Serge Bromberg, saviour of more than 100,000 reels of old films, this week marked the 15th anniversary of a world-touring show with a difference -- where he accompanies rescued silent movies on the piano.

A twice yearly Paris event, Retour de Flamme (Return of the Flame) has played New York’s MoMA and travels to India in February before going to Italy and the US for shows in San Francisco and New York.

“I like to say I ‘restore’ the spectator,” he said in an interview. “I bring old movies up-to-date with a presentation and a specially-written musical score, to bring the films alive.

Bromberg’s company Lobster Films, set up two decades ago with fellow film addict Eric Lange, has saved from destruction movies dating as far back as 1895, including film’s first movie with sound -- Charlie Chaplin’s first 1914 movie “Twenty Minutes of Love” -- and the first movies shot in Palestine (1897).

In the first 50 years of cinema, films were recorded on nitrate stocks, which is inflammable and decays. As no-one had thought at the time of preserving film, much of movie history was lost.

“I pick up films all year, with 99 percent unviewable but there’s always one which is extraordinary and which I want to share,” said the 46-year-old—AFP