REEL LIFE / FILM & VIDEO FILE : Trying to Put Damaged Movie Back in Motion : A Ventura resident has put in hours of work to salvage 18 crumbling reels of a silent Italian drama.

What’s brown and crunchy and comes in a tin can?

Answer: Deteriorated film from a silent movie.

The film, 18 reels of it, is a feature called “Nobody’s Children,” an Italian movie circa 1920 that local movie lover Leif Engeswick is trying to restore as a cinematic labor of love.

The unemployed Ventura resident explained that motion picture film used to be made from a chemical related to nitroglycerin. It’s not very stable and, if stored incorrectly, it deteriorates.

“The film had stuck together in some places,” Engeswick said. “I have to carefully unwind it and, as I go, I am washing the deteriorated parts with water to clean off crystals that have formed. The parts that were stuck, I have to splice together.”

Each reel is about 15 minutes and so far Engeswick has spent 18 hours on the most damaged roll.

Engeswick said that the unknown movie, given to him by Wes Lambert, an antique-camera collector, appears to be a drama about child labor set in the marble quarries. He said he can’t tell if the film has any value beyond its antiquity, but he hopes to donate it to the UCLA film archive as soon as the restoration is finished.

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Fillmore locals will say goodby to the historic Fillmore Theater, affectionately called “The Show,” as the 77-year-old victim of the Northridge quake prepares for demolition.

As a boy, Robert C. Harmonson, 83, mowed lawns to earn the 10 cents it cost for the Friday serial featuring the likes of Tom Mix. During the early years of the theater, Harmonson recalls the seats were segregated.

“Kids sat in the first 10 rows and (Latinos) sat on the right side. Neither of them could sit in the left or the center.”

There was a fourth section of the theater.

Harmonson’s wife, Laura, said there were deluxe seats called loges, where big, comfortable chairs cost 50 cents. No hanky-panky was permitted anywhere in the theater, although as the only place to go on a date, she acknowledges that several generations of Fillmore residents probably got their first kiss in the darkened privacy of the movie hall.

City officials, who spent $13,000 for a new marquee when they renovated downtown several years ago, said they will try to salvage it in case another theater is built in Fillmore. Its demise means there are no movie theaters between Ventura and Santa Clarita.

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This week producers for an IMAX film tentatively titled “Earthquake Alert” were shooting interviews in Simi Valley. Crews for MacGillivray-Freeman, a production company specializing in the 70mm IMAX format, spent the week after the Northridge quake filming the destruction for a potential movie about the science of earthquakes.

One day was spent on the ground in Simi Valley and another was devoted to aerial shots, said a spokesman for the Laguna Beach company.