Lost Orson Welles film discovered in Italy.

Orson Welles lost footage from 1938 recovered

Lost footage shot by Citizen Kane director Orson Welles has been recovered.

Three short films from 1938 were found in a warehouse in north-east Italy. They were originally intended to be screened during a staging of the 19th Century comedy Too Much Johnson.

The movies were planned as prologues to each act of William Gillette's three-part farce but were never finished.

It was previously thought that the only known print was destroyed in a fire in 1970, according to the BBC.

Simon Callow, Welles's biographer, said the shorts represent "a very significant missing piece in the jigsaw of Welles's art".

He added: "It will tell us an enormous amount about his visual sensibility and indeed about his theatrical instincts."

Too Much Johnson was staged without the shorts at the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut in August 1938 but wasn't a success.

The short films, which weren't all intact, have been restored and will finally be premiered in September.