Question

[Phạm Đức Long Lê]

MO PARK - COLLECTOR
Mo Park loves collecting things. He often goes to antique sales to buy old pottery, silver and boxes. He is
fascinated by old things, so when he was online one evening and saw an old metal film container for sale,
he had to buy it. He was attracted by the film container because it looked so old and interesting. The price
was at $3, so he typed in $3.20 and won the auction. When it was delivered by post a couple of days later
he had forgotten all about it. When he did eventually open it, the container was indeed as knocked around
as it had looked in the photograph. Mo was pretty sure that whoever had sold it to him didn’t know anything
about the film within it.
When Mo took the film out and held it up to the light he could see a familiar figure. It was the famous actor,
Charlie Chaplin. About two weeks later, Mo and some friends watched the whole film. To do this Mo had
to look in the phone book and find someone with a specialised machine to show it on. As they watched
they all got a shock. The film was called Zepped but none of the audience had ever heard of it.
Mo decided to find out all he could about it. He looked online but there was nothing. He read biographies
of Chaplin but there was no mention of the film. He even contacted the British Film Institute but with no
success. Then he got lucky. On a research trip to the British Library’s newspaper archive he discovered a
reference to Zepped. He found a poster and an article that explained that the film was released in England
in 1916. It was a short comedy shown to British soldiers during the First World War but it had disappeared
after that.
A good friend of Mo’s became just as interested in the film as Mo. Together they went to Hollywood and
Chaplin’s old film studios to find out more. To do this, Mo put other people in charge of running his company
so that he could work on the film full time. What Mo discovered was that Zepped was one of a kind. No
other film made at that time used the technique of mixing live action with cartoon animation. That did not
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happen until nearly sixty years later, in Mary Poppins. Mo has been told that the film, at just seven and a
half minutes long, could be worth more than a million pounds. But then who knows? He might sell it or he
might keep it. It’s not the money that excites Mo; it’s the fact that he found such a treasure in such an
everyday place.