Nitrate Film vault technician Courtney Holschuh using a viewing loupe, views the actual film of Georges Melies’s 1897 French short silent film “Gugusse et l`Automate” in a workspace at the Nitrate Film vault at the Packard Campus of the Library of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, on April 2, 2026. Bill McFarland found a lost silent-era film, "Gugusse and the Automaton" made by film pioneer George Melies, in a box of films that had previously been owned by his great-grandfather, William Delisle Frisbee. He then donated those films to the Library of Congress who revealed the find on February 26, 2026. (Photo by Kent Nishimura / AFP)