Director John FordA silent John Ford movie from 1927 thought to have been lost forever is among a cache of 75 early US films that has been uncovered in a New Zealand vault.

The Ford film is Upstream, is a romance between an aspiring actor and a girl from a knife throwing act. Only a handful of Ford's early silent films have survived the ravages of time. The find also contains a trailer for the acclaimed directors Strong Boy from 1929.

The National Film Preservation Foundation called the collection, "a time capsule of American film production in the 1910s and 1920s" and said that about 70% of the nitrate prints were complete. The films were found in a remote storage vault held by the New Zealand Film Archive.

Find out more after the jump... Director John FordA silent John Ford movie from 1927 thought to have been lost forever is among a cache of 75 early US films that has been uncovered in a New Zealand vault.

The Ford film is Upstream, is a romance between an aspiring actor and a girl from a knife throwing act. Only a handful of Ford's early silent films have survived the ravages of time. The find also contains a trailer for the acclaimed directors Strong Boy from 1929.

The National Film Preservation Foundation called the collection, "a time capsule of American film production in the 1910s and 1920s" and said that about 70% of the nitrate prints were complete. The films were found in a remote storage vault held by the New Zealand Film Archive.

Other titles in the collection, according to Variety, include the 1923 Clara Bow feature 'Maytime', an industrial film about the making of Stetson hats, and numerous Westerns, short films, documentaries and newsreels.

Among other titles are 'Run 'Em Ragged', a 1920 short featuring slapstick comedian Snub Pollard, 'The Diver', a documentary showing how to set underwater explosives and 'The Girl Stage Driver' a 1914 Western.

Only a fraction of the American films created during the first four decades of the motion picture still survive in the United States - probably fewer than 20 per cent. The films came to light early last year, when a preservationist for the Los Angeles archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, visited colleagues at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington while on holiday.

Many foreign films remained in New Zealand after their commercial lives were over because the studios didn't think the return shipping was worth the expense. Now the films are being shipped back to America where preserving work is due to take place. The work will take three years. Some of the films will be streamed online by the NFPF.