A lost Korean War film recovered, scored & edited 75 years later, blending rare color footage, humor, love, and three generations of family storytelling
ST. LOUIS, MO, UNITED STATES, February 11, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — “That’s The Package” is a rare, multigenerational film project built from lost and recovered Korean War footage, narrated by the original filmmaker and his wife, and completed seventy five years later by their grandson through original music and editing.
At the center of the film is never before seen sixteen millimeter color footage shot in the early 1950s by Frank Ginsberg while serving as a cryptographer the Korean War. At a time when most wartime documentation was captured in black and white, Ginsberg’s color film offers an unusually vivid record of daily life during deployment.
What makes the footage startling is not only its rarity, but its tone. Against the backdrop of danger and deprivation, the film is surprisingly light. It captures jokes, pranks, improvised physical comedy, and a platoon of young men messing around on ships, around camp, and between assignments. Both with each other, and with friendly locals. In frame after frame, the soldiers insist on joy as a survival strategy, turning boredom, fear, and brutal conditions into shared momentum.
Scott Ginsberg, Frank’s grandson, remembers the first family screening as a revelation.
“The first time grandpa showed our family his war film, right away I noticed his playful spirit. I even said to him, wow grandpa, in every shot, you look like you were having fun. But weren’t the conditions hard? Wasn’t it freezing cold up there? Weren’t you guys scared? Yes, he said. Of course we were. And that was the point. Life has its tough times, but it’s easier to get through them when you do it together, and do it with a positive attitude.”
After returning home, Frank’s reels were mailed back and forth, stored in a box, and eventually lost for decades.
“They gave me that wind up camera, and that’s how all these pictures got made,” says Frank Ginsberg in the film’s narration. “In those days you had to send the film to Kodak to be developed, and then they would send it back. I’d send the pictures back to Evelyn, and she kept them in a box at her house. Then we lost them when I came home, we had no idea where that box went. We didn’t find it until, what feels like 30 years later when we got into our current house. That’s when we finally found the film again.”
The recovered reels were digitized in the early 2000s by St. Louis’s own Creve Coeur Camera, preserving the fragile footage and making it viewable for the first time in decades. During the pandemic, Frank and his wife Evelyn recorded a full narration of the film, telling stories, identifying people, and reflecting on their early life, marriage, and wartime separation.
Seventy five years after the original filming, the project reached its final stage through Frank’s grandson, author, songwriter, TEDx speaker and filmmaker “Nametag” Scott Ginsberg. Scott composed original music and lyrics, produced the soundtrack with his band Esko! Esko!, and edited the full feature, creating a final piece that bridges three generations.
The songs written for “That’s The Package” draw heavily from the sound and spirit of 1980s soft rock, the music Scott grew up listening to during many of his core memories with his grandfather. The soundtrack uses melodic warmth to sonically place the film inside a living family history.
“This didn’t feel like making a movie,” says Scott. “It felt like finishing something that had been waiting to be finished. My grandfather filmed it. My parents preserved it. And I was lucky to be the person who helped it cross the finish line.”
“The title is perfect because this film is literally a package sent across time,” says Scott.
“That’s The Package” stands as a rare example of a seventy five year collaborative project, uniting wartime documentation, family storytelling, modern digitization, and original music into a single completed work.
It is a document of war and marriage, but also a document of temperament, how people stay human under pressure, how comedy and camaraderie function as survival tools, and how a family can carry meaning forward until it finds its final form. Esko, esko!
Scott Ginsberg
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