Hell-bound Train

Hell-bound Train (c. 1930) is a silent film created by African American evangelists James and Eloyce Gist. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published or distributed in the US required a valid copyright notice and registration to secure protection. This film was produced independently for use in traveling ministry and church circuits. There is no record of a formal copyright registration for this film in the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) or the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database during the initial 28-year term. Even if a registration had been filed around 1930, the copyright would have expired in 1958 unless a renewal was filed with the US Copyright Office. No renewal records exist for this title. Based on the lack of original registration/notice and the absence of a renewal filing, the film has fallen into the public domain. The film was later rediscovered and preserved by S. Torriano Berry and the Library of Congress, but this preservation does not restore a lapsed copyright.