In 1981 Fred Chandler, Paramount's director of technical services, was looking for storage space in the studio's Hollywood vault when he happened across the long-forgotten footage from "It's All True". He found 250 metal film cans labeled "Bonito" and "Brazil", each holding held eight to ten rolls of black-and-white nitrate negative. Seeing a few shots of the "Jangadeiros" sequence, Chandler recognized it immediately. Orson Welles was told of the discovery but he refused to look at it. "He told me the film was cursed," said Chandler, who donated the film to the American Film Institute. Chandler raised $110,000 to fund the creation of a short documentary film—"It's All True: Four Men on a Raft" (1986)—using some of the footage.