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Lost Mickey Rooney, Tim Roth, and John Turturro Film enjoys “Re-Premiere”

A surreal romantic fantasy that never enjoyed wide release has been restored for "re-premiere" by Screen Time Images. Animals with the Tollkeeper, written and directed by Michael Di Jiacomo, was reviewed as "…one of the most visually stunning independent films I have ever seen" by Geoff Gilmore, Sundance Film Festival Catalogue.

While the film won many awards and earned great reviews when it debuted at festivals 10 years ago, it subsequently became enmeshed in legal issues and disappeared into obscurity.

Now Screen Time Images, a post-production company in Schaumburg, Illinois has acquired distribution rights. The movie was shown at the Palm Beach International Film Festival last month, with a North American theatrical release to follow. As a special feature at the festival, selected scenes from Animals and other examples were shown in 3D using new technology that requires no special 3D glasses.

Time was not kind to the original negatives of Animals with the Tollkeeper. To prepare it for re-release, Screen Time Images had to perform six months of exhaustive and meticulous restoration ordinarily reserved for A-list movies with guaranteed revenue potential.

Sean McKee, president of Screen Time Images, says, "Because I own not only the distribution rights, but also a restoration company, I was in a unique position to muster the resources required to ensure that this unique and wonderful film is shown at its best."

To restore the film, Screen Time Images first scanned it at 4K resolution and then deployed the da Vinci Revival. Each frame was manually reviewed using the Revival operating in interactive mode to remove dirt and dust, repair splices and vertical scratches, and to de-warp and stabilize images. For these operations, Screen Time used Region of Interest tools and also utilized Revival's powerful processing and machine-vision algorithms.

For color grading, Screen Time gained access to the original film lab's printer lights timing settings, which da Vinci's color enhancement systems were configured to emulate. Technology has improved since the film was made, and these settings were used as a baseline starting point for the improved color enhancement. The result was a deepening of the film's visual, emotional power. For McKee and his team at Screen Time Images, a special pleasure was having director Di Jiacomo sit in for final color adjustment and approval.

For the showing at the Palm Beach Film Festival, Screen Time Images partnered with Xtreme Electronics Systems, maker of auto-stereo 3D displays and software.

Screen Time Images www.screentimeimages.com