This find is considered very important. The film, which was discovered in the latest inventory check which was did at the library’s high-security bunker in Mo i Rana (near the Arctic circle), is an almost complete version of Walt Disney’s first Christmas film “Empty Socks”. Disney cartoonist David Gerstein authenticated the Norway movie footage. The original version of “Empty Socks” has a length of 5 and a half minutes but unfortunately this copy is missing the footage between seconds 30 and 60. Although still incomplete this is now the longest recovered copy of this old Disney cartoon.
Before this lost cartoon movie treasure was found the only other known copy of “Empty Socks” was a 25 second long recovered extract which is preserved in New York at the Museum of Modern Art. The now longest copy of “Empty Socks” originally belonged to a private individual. The Norwegian Film Institute eventually got this and then handed it over to the National Library of Norway. The large digitization project launched by Norway’s National Library in an effort to make its collection as accessible as possible to people all around might soon uncover other similar lost treasures soon. Since its launch it has helped discover many lost documents.
