A list of lost or incomplete films I most want to be found. See notes for details, and please comment with any corrections or to name lost/incomplete films you most want to see. I might add them, although I'm going to keep the list at 100 for aesthetic and manageability purposes (Edit: Or I might expand it to 250 or something someday). Most of the list is comprised of silent films, because they make up most of the lost films, for reasons of time, neglect, willful destruction of films no longer seen to have commercial value, to salvage silver content, lack of archival resources, and the fact that the films were made on inflammable nitrate that will eventually destroy itself.

A few books have been devoted to lost films and website pages written on the subject, but the most extensive research on the subject I've read is by archivist and historian David Pierce in the study, "The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929," September 2013, for the U.S. Library of Congress. The news isn't good: about 70% of them are entirely lost. For the cinemas of most other countries not as renowned worldwide as Hollywood (indeed, many American films exist only in foreign-release versions and from foreign archives) the survival rates appear to be even worse.

Also, as a prologue, here are some early motion pictures not listed on Letterboxd that are lost/incomplete:

i. Projected animation on phenakistiscope discs exhibited by Leopold Ludwig Döbler (painted by Hr. Geyling) and Franz von Uchatius (as far as I know, the only extant visual representation being a watercolor by Georg Dill), respectively (1840s-1850s).

ii. Projected posed photographs on discs exhibited by Henry Heyl (1870), in addition to extant images of waltz.

iii. Ottomar Anschutz's narrative films on discs and strips, including barbershop and sneeze subjects remade by Edison Co. and one of card players perhaps remade by Lumière and Méliès, respectively (1890s).

iv. First Max Skladanowski film with dual band system - taken of brother Emil (1892).