01.09.06

Some Film Preservation Links (and a Proto-Manifesto)

Posted in Cinema, Silent Films, Cinema History at 11:24 pm by Spencer

Film — not those new-fangled disc things but actual strips of film spooled up on reels — is an endangered species, and never more than now. It’s even worse for 16mm film, which very often is the last surviving format for thousands of films, especially short subjects. Sellers of new 16mm prints are dwindling very fast, those that are left are reliant on an even smaller number of labs even capable of producing 16mm prints, and the stuff you find on eBay is just getting older.

Without too much exageration, we facing a cultural and historic apocalypse directly comparable to the shift from nitrate-based film. Nitrate film stock was (and is) highly volatile and prone to decay; it was also what all films were printed on from the very birth of cinema until late in the 1950s. The result? Even by the most conservative of estimates, at least 80 percent of all films made prior to, say, 1930 are gone forever. Forever. Particularly decimated, for example, are films from unjustly neglected corners of the world, such as Scandanavia — bodies of work now (belated) recognized as being decades ahead of their time in advancing the most important art form of the last century.

True, there are important and vibrant archives preserving film, real film. MOMA and the Eastman House spring immediately to mind. The Library of Congress’ paper print collection has also been (rather belatedly) recognized as a precious repository of world film history. But the fact is that such archives are faced with a devil’s dilemma: by necessity they must focus their collections according to their own legitimate (albeit limited) priorities, and even within that context they are all too often severely constrained by the most basic considerations of budget and person-hours.

The reality right now is that home collectors (such as myself and, I hope, you) are truly the last bulwark against the devastating loss of thousands of films that deserve and need to be saved and preserved. Here at the brink of extinction, our purchases choices are severely limited — in five years, there will be nothing. Nothing. Just in the last two years, I’ve watched the market contract drastically. It will only get worse.

Whether you’re fortunate enough to be buying new prints or like most folks and buying carefully on eBay, you and I and all of us have a responsibility to cinema history, future cineastes, the filmmakers themselves to do everything we can to save as much as we can.

Part and parcel to this responsibility is observing at least the most rudimentary principles of good film preservation. CDs, DVDs and, indeed, 8-tracks come and go. Digitally-based media formats are built upon the notion of planned obsolescence — they are born doomed. Film — real film — is, on the other hand, utter simplicity: a series of still photographs that can be preserved in almost any format. The fact that we can today view the LOC’s collection of paper prints dating back more than a century and, indeed, view them as film or download them as Mpegs or watch them in yet another doomed format, RealVideo, is resolute testament to the importance of preserving these precious works while we still can.

To wit, here are some links providing some basic and not-so-basic information on the how-to of preserving film. Real film.

Film Forever: The Home Film Preservation Guide - Browse online or download a PDF of the whole shebang. Great stuff.

Image Permanence Institute (IPI) Storage Guide for Acetate Film (PDF)

IPI Media Storage Quick Reference (PDF)

Kodak film storage & handling tech notes — a number of wirthwhile articles, including info about melecular sieves. Unfortunately, the key distributer for molecular sieves — FPC — seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Some comparative info about chemical treatments including FilmRenew and VitaFilm, both of which are recommended. (From film-center.com)

National Film Preservation Foundation - wrapped in frames (stupid!) and pretty basic, but there ya go.

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