(CBS) – Footage from a silent film believed to be Alfred Hitchcock’s earliest work has been  found in New Zealand almost 90 years after its release.

The first 30 minutes of “The White Shadow,” a 1923 British film that gave the filmmaker his first movie credit, was reportedly discovered among a cache of unidentified American nitrate prints at the New Zealand Film Archive.

Pictures: The films of Alfred Hitchcock 

According to The Los Angeles Times, the three reels of the movie were given to the Archive in 1989 by the grandson of a New Zealand collector and projectionist, but were only recently turned up and restored. The whereabouts of the remaining three reels are still unknown.

“We pulled a bunch of reels from the nitrate vaults and I just started going through them,” said Leslie Lewis, a nitrate expert for 배터리게임바둑이 the National Film Preservation Foundation, who helped lead the discovery.

“I realized that this was more like a film that Hitchcock worked on,” she told the Times. “I went to their archives the next day and used their research to pull out some contemporary reviews and summaries and confirmed it was ”White Shadow.””

Hitchock was 24 when the melodrama about a pair of twin sisters – one good and one evil – was made. He worked as the film’s writer, assistant director, editor and production designer.

American actress Betty Compson took on the dual role, and the movie was directed by Graham Cutts, who was described as a “hack” by National Society of Film Critics chairman David Sterritt.

“The White Shadow” will have its “re-premiere” Sept. 22 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles.

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