Lost 1919 Silent Comedy Van-ar-chy Found in Japanese Antique Shop

A silent comedy filmed in New Hampshire more than a century ago has resurfaced in Japan and will be screened in early November in the state where it was made.

The film is Van-ar-chy, a 1919 comedy starring the US entertainer and film-maker Billy B Van. Kohei Okita, a film student in Sendai, Japan, rediscovered it while researching early cinema connected to the word "anarchy." Okita bought several old film reels at an antique store in Japan and found the comedy starring Van, whom he did not recognize, according to a news release about the film's return.

The November screening will bring the film back to New Hampshire — specifically to Newport, according to the release — more than a hundred years after its production there.

The rediscovery underscores how much silent-era cinema remains lost or unaccounted for, often surviving only in unexpected places: private collections, archives abroad, and, in this case, an antique shop in northern Japan. Films made before widespread archiving practices frequently circulated internationally on physical reels, and prints that vanished from American records sometimes survived overseas.

For New Hampshire, the find restores a piece of local film history. For scholars of early American comedy, it adds a Billy B Van vehicle to the small pool of silents that can still be watched. The November presentation will mark the first time the film has been shown in its home state in over a century.