Engaging Amateur Film: An Investigation into
User Interactivity at Archival Institutions
University of Amsterdam Heritage Studies: Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image Master’s Thesis
Nicholas Carbone 11108754 Supervisor: Manon Parry September 27, 2016
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to everyone that has allowed this thesis on amateur film archiving to be possible. I would just like to thank the University of Amsterdam for being one of the few universities to have a program on the academic study of film archiving and programming. I could not have completed this thesis without the help and support of my academic adviser Manon
Parry, our Thesis workshop coordinator Giovanna Fossati and the other students and faculty of the master’s program Heritage Studies: Preservation and Preservation of the Moving Image. I would also thank Brook Ewing Minner at Northeast Historic Film, Dorette Schootemeijer at the
EYE Film Institute Netherlands and Rick Prelinger at the Internet Archive for answering my questions about their institution’s archival practices. The libraries at the University of
Amsterdam and at the EYE Film Institute were also very helpful in allowing me to find more information about this topic. I am filled with gratitude for all of the support from my friends and family during this in-depth research and writing process.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 4
Collecting for the Nation 7
Collecting Regionally 12
Issues of Access 15
Contextualization 18
Chapter 2 25
Collecting for the Nation 26
Nationalized Access 33
Contextualizing the Nation 37
Chapter 3 43
Collecting the Local 44
Accessing the Local 48
Contextualizing Locally 53
Chapter 4 60
Collecting Internationally 61
International Access 66
Contextualization 69 3
Conclusion 76
Bibliography 83
Appendix 89
Interview with Dorette Schootemeijer 90
Interview with Brook Ewing Minner 98
Interview with Rick Prelinger 111
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Chapter 1:
Amateurs in the Archive
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Families often inherit the home movies of their deceased grandparents, people discover homemade works in the attics of their houses or archivists find amateur films in the unidentified sections of their collection. These works should not be thrown away or solely kept in storage, but rediscovered by the families and the general public. These films can be significant in how they represent a particular area, people or time period. Many scholars and archivists have worked to gain more public attention for these works, but most people are still completely unaware of the importance of this type of filmmaking. 1 In my view, archivists still need to have greater attention to this material in order for it to become more visible within audiovisual history.
In order to assess archival procedures with amateur film material, I will focus on how it is collected, accessed and contextualized at national, regional and international institutions. The
EYE Film Institute is the national film archive in Amsterdam, Netherlands and plays a significant role in the preservation of Orphan or non-copyrighted film material. Archivists at the
EYE collect amateur film along with the rest of Dutch professional film history under its goal of preserving the audiovisual heritage of the nation. My second case study is Northeast Historic
Film (NHF), an archive in Bucksport, Maine, which collects audiovisual material for the region of northern New England in the United States. NHF has stood as a pioneer of amateur film preservation since its founding in 1986 and clearly is different from a national institution because of its local focus. My last case study is the Internet Archive whose archivists often work against
1 Some of the most influential early texts on amateur film include: Fred Camper, “Some Notes on the Home Movie,” Journal of Film and Video (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, Summer-Fall 1986) 9-14. Richard Chalfin, Snapshot Versions of Life (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green Ohio University Popular Press, 1987). Patricia R. Zimmermann, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995) Also see: Margaret Compton, “Small-Gauge and Amateur Film Bibliography,” Film History Vol.15 (2) (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003) 252-271. 6 traditional archival values of access and preservation through its online platform. The Internet
Archive’s policies have no national boundaries which allows this organization to collect and provide access to work on an international scale. These archives all have amateur film material and their archivists provide for this material in unique and different ways.
The institutions I analyze showcase the diversity of current archival procedures and the need for a more unified approach toward archiving amateur film material. I have conducted interviews with archivists at these three institutions and researched material on their websites and in other publications about their work. This research will allow me to assess their various forms of collecting, contextualizing and accessing amateur films. From these results, I will determine how my case studies may benefit scholars, archivists, filmmakers or the general public in their use of amateur film.
My main aim throughout this thesis is to examine the current situation of amateur film archiving and to argue for a more interactive archivist position in the future. With the move towards digital, more possibilities will be available for the archiving of amateur films in the future, but this will also create more challenges for the twenty-first century archivist. In this new era, I argue for archivists to embrace the decentralization of collecting amateur films in order to allow for both digital access and online contextualization. Through the decentralization of archival practice, archivists can work with other organizations and communities to share resources and foster collaboration that can enhance the experience of amateur films.
This first section provides a survey of the main arguments about amateur film collecting, access and contextualization. My second chapter explores amateur film in a national archive with the example of the EYE Film Institute in order to explore how amateur film is collected, accessed and contextualized in combination with the rest of ‘professional’ film history. My third 7 chapter examines Northeast Historic Film in order to view how an archive dedicated to the community complicates the practices of national institutions. My fourth and final chapter investigates the Internet Archive in order to see how amateur film is provided for in a non- traditional archival environment focused on access.
This section’s overview of the historiography of amateur film archiving moves through four sections that are central to my argument which include collecting for the nation, collecting for the region, issues of access and issues of contextualization for amateur film material. This serves as the basis from which I will critique my case studies and determine the utility of such scholarly arguments in relation to archival practice. From this analysis, the archival and scholarly professions can better understand the complexity of the current amateur film archiving situation and the direction I propose archivists to move towards with this material.
Collecting For the Nation
The current scholarship on archival appraisal has investigated the subjectivity of selecting materials and how certain works become marginalized in archives. Although archivists often seek to discover the ‘value’ in the items that they view, archival scholar Terry Cook has observed that ‘values are not found in records, but rather in theories of value of societal significance which archivists bring to records.”2 Therefore, the works within an archive’s collection are not necessarily endowed with a certain ‘value’ akin to Walter Benjamin’s ‘aura’, but are constructed with meaning by the archivists themselves. The records selected by an
2 Qtd. in Sam Kula, Appraising Moving Images: Assessing the Archival and Monetary Value of Film and Video Records, (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003) 25. 8 archive are a reflection of the archivist’s subjective interests rather than of an ‘objective’ viewpoint to collect materials of importance.
Archivists always make some type of selection and some items will always be left out or overlooked within the vast array of historical records. As Derrida states,
…the limitation of the archive – the fact that the power, and often the social and political power of the archive, which consists of selecting the traces in memory, marginalizing, censoring, destroying such and such traces through precisely a selection, a filter, and which of course is made possible by, let’s say, the finitude, the limitation, let’s say of human power, of space, the place where to accumulate the archive and so on.3 The archive is always limited in some way because of the impossibility of retaining all of history’s traces whether national or non-national. Archivists then are left with a task of marginalizing history, but also valorizing what has been collected from it. They are in a position of power to determine and construct what is worth saving and what is not. This position of power led to the exclusion of amateur film and a number of other film types from archives during the twentieth century.
The Orphan Film movement, which started in the United States in the 1980s but spread further, fought for public archives to collect and preserve neglected film works such as amateur films, newsreels, and other non-copyrighted material.4 Archivists at these national archives then began to acknowledge and include ‘orphan’ film material in their collections.5 Media scholars
Julia Noordegraaf and Elvira Pouw have investigated how amateur films gain value from being
3 Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever” (transcribed seminar) in C. Hamilton, V. Harris, J. Taylor, J. Pickover, G. Reid, R. Saleh, eds. Refiguring the Archive (Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002) 4 [44]. 4 Dan Streible, “The Role of Orphan Films in the 21st Century Archive,” Cinema Journal Vol. 46(3) (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, Spring 2007) 124-128. 5 Ibid. 9 included within national collections.6 Amateur film’s inclusion in national archives appears to them as a value-adding process to material that is otherwise worthless. This posits a view of amateur films as insignificant works that should be fortunate enough to be included in archives regardless of how they are cared for. However, archival scholars Liz Czach and Guy Edmonds have both criticized how archivists at national archives still collect amateur film material within the confines of their past acquisition policies.7 According to Edmonds, amateur film fits within aesthetic or historical modes of collecting rather than disrupting the archival policies that had previously excluded them.8 I posit that archivists at national archives often create a one-sided view of selection that does not praise the amateur works, but actually the institution in allowing lower forms of film to be included in their prestigious collection. This connects to how Derrida and Cook display how archives were created in a way that lead to the marginalization of works such as amateur film. Archival procedures need to diversify in order to support amateur film work without diminishing its importance in relation to other film types.
Media scholar Patricia Zimmermann claims that amateur film’s marginalization in society is a result of the professionalization of filmmaking.9 Archivists have also created a significant bias toward professional works which has led to a film taste that suppresses amateur film works in the archive. Zimmermann argues, “Cinephilia represses history. It immobilizes images as rarefied
6 Julia Noordegraaf and Elvira Pouw, “Extended Family Films: Home Movies in the State-Sponsored Archive,” The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists Vol. 9(1) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, Spring 2009) 83-103. 7 Liz Czach, “Home Movies and Amateur Film as National Cinema.” Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, The Archive, The Web eds. Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young and Barry Monahan (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) 27-37. Guy Edmonds, “Historical, Aesthetic, Cultural: The Problematical Value of Amateur Cine Fiction,” in Small-Gauge Storytelling: Discovering the Amateur Fiction Film, eds. Ryan Shand and Ian Craven (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2013) 33-54. 8 Edmonds, “Historical, Aesthetic, Cultural: The Problematical Value of Amateur Cine Fiction” 33-54. 9 Patricia R. Zimmermann, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995). 10 objects, and cinephilia-and its correlative, archivephilia-are founded on a desire for the authentic, the uncontaminated, the untampered.”10 Cinephilia and/or archivephilia, in Zimmermann’s argument, represents the way in which archivists favor certain aesthetics of audiovisual heritage over others. This cinephilia, or a passion for cinema, posits a certain aesthetics of film that are more ‘original’ or ‘authentic’ than others which creates a marginalization of amateur films such as home movies which often appear similar to each other. In my view, this cinephile taste allows archivists to hierarchize filmmaking practices and dismiss the potential value that amateur film could have for the archive.
If an archivist aims to work against this cinephile taste then certain things such as auteurism should also be critiqued or disregarded in supporting amateur film. For example,
Scottish amateur film scholar Ryan Shand calls for a study of amateur fiction film to create an auteurism or an aesthetically-driven history of amateur film.11 Such a practice would create another hierarchy of amateur film and marginalize the non-auteur amateur filmmakers whose works also need to be acquired. I argue against the auteur-driven study of audiovisual material in order to better support works that do not have clear ‘authors’ or aesthetic styles. This would prevent archivists and scholars from praising one type of amateur work and further marginalizing certain amateur films.
Archivists often reinforce a hierarchy of filmmaking practices through the selectivity of their acquisition policies. Media scholar and archivist Rick Prelinger questions the ability of archivists
10 Patricia Zimmermann, “The Home Movie Archive Live” Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, The Archive, The Web eds. Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young and Barry Monahan. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) 261. 11 Ryan Shand, “Theorizing Amateur Cinema: Limitations and Possibilities,” The Moving Image: The Journal Association of Moving Image Archivists Vol. 8 (2) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) 57. 11 at national institutions to appraise the value of amateur film works such as home movies.12 Home movies, according to Prelinger, should not be selected in a way that ranks their value.13 Prelinger supports the possibility of an archive that can provide for all home movies. I approve of diminishing any stratification of amateur works, but I argue that national institutions as well as other institutions need to play a role in archiving these works.
Archival appraisal still applies to amateur film material because of the lack of funding and space within film archives today. Archivist scholar Timothy Wisniewski claims that “…the limited resources for funding are best utilized by open networks of communication and collaboration among archivists.”14 By working with other organizations, archivists can share facilities and resources that will allow for the maintenance of amateur film’s future. I posit that archivists should not see their role as giving ‘value’ to audiovisual heritage through their selection process. Instead, they should work with communities, individuals and other institutions for the safeguarding of as much amateur film as possible.
Amateur film can have different meanings for different organizations, but it should not be collected through such diverse acquisition policies in my view. Collection policies need to allow for a wide variety of works that better respect amateur film collections’ worth instead of maintaining its lessened status under a more selective policy made for professional film.
Although there is not only one organization that is suitable to collect amateur film material, I suggest that certain institutions currently have archival practices which are better suited to amateur film collecting than others. Amateur films create a disruption to film history and
12 Rick Prelinger, “Ephemeral to Canonical: The First 33 and the Next 100 Years of Collecting Useful Media” Lecture, Seminar on Useful Media at Beeld en Geluid. Hilversum, NL. November 6, 2015. 13 Ibid. 14 Timothy Wisniewski, “Framers of the Kept: Against the Grain Appraisal of Ephemeral Moving Images,” The Moving Image Vol. 7(2) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) 18. 12 traditional archival practices and other non-traditional archives are currently more suitable for acquisitions of this work. I argue that archivists at more traditional archives need to work with other organizations and individuals in order to safeguard and support amateur films’ potential difference from their prior acquisition mandates.
Collecting Regionally
Decentralized film archives began forming in regions with local film communities whose audiovisual work was marginalized by archivists at national institutions. Archivists at regional film archives in the United Kingdom such as the East Anglia Film Archive started accepting collections of amateur film as early as 1976.15 Other archivists at regional archives and organizations devoted to local heritage also came to collect this material around the world in the following years.16 Archivists were finally allowing a wider viewpoint on audiovisual history instead of maintaining a view of film history as solely professional. By having these less centralized archives, archivists there were better able to provide for the local film material of one particular area. The regional archive network of the United Kingdom and the Orphan Film movement in the United States reflect the alternative nature of this archival film practice that supports a wider view of audiovisual history. These movements worked against the established rhetoric of national archive appraisal policies in order to provide for a more local film heritage.
Amateur films often represents a film history for areas of the world without a developed film industry. French historian Pierre Nora writes that, “The task of remembering makes everyone his
15 “About the Archive,” East Anglia Film Archive, accessed September 27, 2016, http://www.eafa.org.uk/about-the- archive.aspx 16 See Caroline Frick. Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation. NY, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Also, Karan Sheldon, “Regional Moving Image Archives in the United States.” Cinema Journal. Vol. 46(3) (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, Spring 2007) 118-123. 13 own historian…Following the example of ethnic groups and social minorities, every established group, intellectual or not, learned or not, has felt the need to go in search of its own origins and identity.”17 Amateur film allows various groups of people to investigate their own identity through audiovisual material. This type of filmmaking gains importance because of the geographic area it represents instead of solely representing a nation’s most popular or praised films. An amateur film’s local and personal identity become central to its meaning instead of only its potential national identity. This emphasis on the local caused the formation of archives outside of centralized national archives.
Canadian archivist Sam Kula has argued that local film works need to wait in order to get selected by national archives instead of being collected by impatient regional archivists.18
Regional areas such as those in the United Kingdom or Canada want to have the power to choose what is remembered of their audiovisual heritage. These particular regions guarantee that their local material gets preserved and presented instead of passively waiting for acceptance by larger institutions, as Kula recommends. The selectivity of a national archive’s acquisition criteria usually prevents all the amateur films from a country to be included within the archive, but a regional archive may have the ability to include all of the film works of their location.19 This allows regional archives to prevent the marginalization of their local film heritage, unlike archives that are more selective. Regional film archives pluralize a country’s film heritage and allow these areas to have greater agency over their past.
17 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations Vol. 26 (LA: University of California Press, 1989) 15. 18 Qtd. in Caroline Frick, Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation (NY, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 150. 19 Regional archives such as Northeast Historic Film and the Stichting Gronings AudioVisueel Archief (GAVA) accept all of their amateur film material they find within their region. There are regional archives that are more selective because of their lack of funding. 14
I contend that archivists at regional archives also have a closer connection to local communities in their location. On the Canadian archival situation, Laura Millar writes
“…archival materials are best kept as close as possible to their place of origin.” 20 Regional archives are often constructed as a part of the community in a way that emphasizes their location and embeddedness in that space. Archivists at regional archives may be able to connect better with their local area and create more of an awareness of the region’s potential for audiovisual heritage. This local material allows communities to begin constructing a past through their own audiovisual collections.
Film archival scholar Janna Jones declares that the amateur film From Stump to Ship (1930) brought together communities in Maine and subsequently led to the formation of the regional archive Northeast Historic Film.21 The formation of a regional identity through this film and this archive allows people to share in a local community otherwise marginalized within the larger
American identity. This regional identity, which was never truly valorized within national film archives, became constructed through the preservation and presentation of the marginalized amateur film heritage of the area.
I assert that archivists at regional archives and other decentralized institutions are better suited to collecting materials such as amateur films because of how they work to provide for marginalized culture rather than supporting more dominant, popular work. National archives can have amateur film material, but I claim that their archivists should refer to other organizations
20 Laura Millar, “Discharging Our Debt: The Evolution of the Total Archives Concept in English Canada,” Archivaria Vol. 46 (Ottawa, ON: Queen’s University and University of Toronto, Fall 1998), 104. 21 Janna Jones, “From Forgotten Film to a Film Archive: The Curious History of From Stump to Ship,” Film History: An International Journal Vo. 15(2) (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003) 193-202. 15 and communities for guidance on the amateur materials they have.22 Decentralized archives are often more equipped and sensitive to the individual groups they represent because of their embeddedness in the area, which allows them to prevent the marginalization of amateur film.
Regional archives should be praised for their support of marginalized material, but they should not be seen as the only archival organizations that can represent lesser known audiovisual identities. I contend that the work of regional archives should influence national and other non- national collections of audiovisual work in terms of how such work is acquired and supported.
Issues of Access
Film access is often in a binary relationship with film preservation especially in regards to historical film archival figures Ernst Lindgren, the first curator of the British National Film
Library, and Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française.23 Lindgren often represents the conservative voice of film preservation, while Langlois is the more liberally minded advocate for showing as much film as possible.24 These two figures from the early years of film archiving still come up in regards to current debates on the film archival practice.25 Issues of film access today concern problems with digital and analog film viewing and the ability of replicating analog film material digitally without ruining the authenticity of the film work.
The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) dictates that “When providing access to material by programming, projection, or other means, archives will seek to achieve the
22 Of course certain national archives are small enough that they are also quite dedicated to this form of filmmaking. For example, national archives in Columbia, Singapore, the Republic of Ireland, Austria and many others do dedicate themselves to collecting material like amateur films. 23 See Penelope Houston, Keepers of the Frame: The Film Archive (London: British Film Institute, 1994) 23-59. 24 Ibid. 25 For example, Leo Enticknap, “Have Digital Technologies Reopened the Lindgren/Langlois Debate?” Spectator Vol. 21(1) (Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest, Spring 2007) 10-20. 16 closest possible approximation to the original viewing experience.”26 FIAF asserts that archivists need to try to display material in as close a manner to its original experience, which could refer to film format, film speed, setting, among other things. These guidelines however appear to be confusing in terms of how amateur film is accessed because FIAF also states that archivists should not endanger the authenticity of a work for short-term use. 27 If archivists exhibit amateur films on their ‘original’ material then they would also be working against FIAF guidelines.
Digital heritage scholar Giovanna Fossati questions FIAF and argues for a viewpoint that sees
‘originality’ in the film content instead of the film format or the film dispositif.28 Through these means, amateur film can be widely accessed in order for people to view and potentially reuse amateur film material. With a wider view on access, archivists can provide for contemporary amateur filmmakers to incorporate such footage into their own works.
More traditional archivists argue to maintain the material presence of analog film in the presentation of their film material. This would most likely lead to the accessibility of amateur film history to only archivists and scholars because of the obsolescence of small-gauge film.29
Archivists such as Mark-Paul Meyer, head curator at the EYE, has argued for traditional projection of analog film material by film archives, but such a claim prevents the wider viewing of these works.30 However, film scholar Barbara Flueckinger contends that digital changes the material presence of the ‘original’ materials, but it does not change the content of the amateur
26 “Code of Ethics,” FIAF, accessed September 27, 2016, www.fiafnet.org/pages/Community/Code-Of- Ethics.html?PHPSESSID=osogt49jb0bm2utumf3lgcl9s0. 27 Ibid. 28 Giovanna Fossati, From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2009) 117. Film dispositif refers to the film experience or setting like the film theater. 29 Analog Video is also obsolete and in need of preservation and online access. The public would have to work with an archivist to view most of the amateur film material if they needed to see amateur works only available on analog film or video. 30 Mark-Paul Meyer, “Traditional Film Projection in a Digital Age,” FIAF Journal of Preservation Vol. 70 (Brussels: Federation Internationale de Archives du Film, 2005) 15-18. 17 film works.31 Therefore, I assert that digital will allow for a greater usage and accessibility of amateur film content that would otherwise be difficult for audiences to discover.
American film archival scholar Caroline Frick has also argued for a wider view on access for moving image material and a more minimal view of preservation.32 Frick proposes that the 21st century archive is access-centered and does not need to take the preservation of analog film as its main aim.33 Instead, she writes that archivists should seek to allow as much viewership and usership of the work in their collections in order to continue the work’s visual presence in the world.34 I defend providing access as a process of preservation, which could reflect a less material-focused preservation practice. Through the continual digital preservation or ‘refreshing’ of the digital material, the audiovisual material could be both accessed as well as preserved. I claim that access, particularly digital access, should be emphasized first for amateur film in the archive because of its ability to better represent audiovisual history to society and further prevent the marginalization of this work in the archive.
Although I do agree with Frick that more access should be central to archivists, a lack of analog film in the archive prevents the study and knowledge of the material presence of amateur film history. Frick often appears to view access as an alternative to material film preservation, but I insist that access should be viewed as a way for amateur film to remain present within society. The material preservation of film can also act as a certain guarantee of the work’s continued historical presence for study. Many scholars have emphasized the importance of
31 Barbara Flueckinger, “Material properties of historical film in the digital age,” NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies, Autumn 2012. 32 Frick, Saving Cinema, 173. 33 Ibid, 180. 34 Ibid. 18 looking deeper into the film stock and technology of film history.35 However, digital’s ability to connect with wider audiences and communities distant from the archive allows for clearer benefits from an emphasis on access.
On the issue of material film repatriation, Frick has also written that “The true benefit of film preservation, particularly one that begins with repatriating a ‘lost’ film, is the accessibility and use of the material by the public, not its simple survival and conservation in a cold vault.”36
Therefore, digital access permits a greater visibility for work that would otherwise not be discovered and could be seen outside of a nationalized area. In my opinion, archivists at regional, national and international archives then should work towards an online visibility for their work that can have more than a local-focus. I argue that amateur film should be seen as international audiovisual heritage that can appeal to an audience outside of its location and therefore should be accessed in a way that can provide for a wide viewership. Through greater collaboration with institutions, archivists can share material without the expenses and unnecessary problems of ownership that may hinder access.
Contextualization
Film archivists usually contextualize audiovisual materials prior to allowing for their access by the public. Traditional archival procedures support cataloging and other metadata creation for films by archivists that watch and research material alone. Amateur film material usually
35 Allan Kattelle, “Once, There Was Film ... Looking Back at Amateur Motion Picture Technologies.” Spectator - The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Vol.24(1) (LA: University of Southern California, Spring 2004) 53-64. He focuses on amateur film apparatuses. Marsha Orgeron, “Lenticular Spectacles: Kodacolor’s Fit in the Amateur Arsenal,” Film History: An International Journal (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013) 36-61. She looks at amateur film gauges. Barbara Flueckinger, “Material properties of historical film in the digital age.” NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies (Autumn 2012). She is less focused on amateur film. There a number of other studies in regards to this area of research. 36 Caroline Frick, “Repatriating American Film Heritage or Heritage Hoarding? Digital Opportunities for Traditional Film Archive Policy,” Convergence Vol. 21(1) (NY: Sage Publications, 2015) 122. 19 requires assistance from families or community members to sufficiently describe and contextualize the film work. With the availability of the internet, I argue for a greater inclusion of the online user in the contextualization of this film material.
The internet can act as a major way to engage people and create a wider knowledge of amateur film materials. Rick Prelinger argues against the fear of ethical transgression in showing films and to incorporate a way to view more of these works.37 Although access is necessary in order to allow the world to know about these works, I claim that ethics still should be an issue of importance for the archivists working today. Rick Prelinger’s and the Internet Archive’s disregard for any contextualization prevents viewers or users of amateur works from connecting more with this material. Amateur films are often impenetrable without contextualization because of their very local focus that otherwise might not connect to people outside of the families and communities of these works. I claim that these works should be contextualized and cared for in some way that helps people to engage with the work instead of solely having it online. These films could also display sensitive material that may potentially offend some of the public without proper background information.
In my view, archivists should be fearful of replicating the discourses of their colonial or prejudicial past that reinforce stereotypical or racist ideas. They should allow for a greater reflection on the audiovisual material they have of indigenous, colonized, or other marginalized peoples. The representation of the ‘other’ in the archive can be problematic without the correct sensitivity towards this material. Archival scholar Nina Rao also argues for a greater emphasis on cultural awareness within the archive.38 Rao desires a more sensitive approach for film works on
37 Rick Prelinger, “Archives and Access in the 21st Century,” Cinema Journal Vol. 46(3) (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, Spring 2007) 114-118. 38 Nina Rao, “Representation and Ethics in Moving Image Archives,” The Moving Image: The 20 indigenous populations or other measures which would help to assist archivists with the correct terminology to describe particular cultural collections.39 Although she insists on cultural awareness training, I declare that archivists should instead primarily refer to the communities represented in the work in order to be aware of the specific situations and reflect on the material that they have. In order to sensitively contextualize, archivists also need to take a position in critiquing the work within their collection and presenting a viewpoint that the communities involved would accept.
There is a large amount of amateur film preserved in vaults today, shown digitally online or sometimes even in movie theaters. The contextualization of this work is central in terms of how it should be presented to the public. Some communities assert their underrepresentation within archives and claim that institutions do not spend enough time to contextualize the various communities they represent.40 Amateur films present serious problems in terms of how people are depicted in the final work. Some scholars have advocated for a more ethnographic or community-centered approach in regards to contextualizing audiovisual material.41 Instead of solely relying on the ‘author’ of the video, it might also be of importance to directly contact the community represented in order to uphold a certain ethics of the work, according to these scholars.
Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists Vol.10 (2) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, Fall 2010) 104-123. 39 Ibid, 120. 40 Lynn Kirste, “Collective Effort: Archiving LGBT Moving Images,” Cinema Journal. Vol. 46(3) (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, Spring 2007) 134-140. Kirste argues for more intervention by the communities in the archival practice because archivists do not have enough time to contextualize their work. 41 Cecilia Morner, “Dealing with Domestic Films: Methodological Strategies and Pitfalls in Studies of Home Movies from the Predigital Era,” The Moving Image Vol. 11(2) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, Fall 2011) 22-45. 21
Although decentralized organizations such as regional archives are based in the community, there is no clear way in which this guarantees a better contextualized work for viewing and understanding. The ‘professional’ archivist often does a content description of the amateur film within the collection. The archivist should look to the community or even at other professional opinions in order to find potentially relevant information for an amateur film work. A professional archivist viewpoint on amateur film marginalizes the amateur filmmaker and conflicts with amateur film’s inclusion within the archive in the first place. The material itself is questioning the learned methods of film production and the traditional material acquired by an archive. Professional films can often be researched within a certain company or organization, while amateur works come from a personal filmmaker whose viewpoint is much harder to pinpoint.
In order to contextualize amateur film works, archivists need to include a greater input from the people connected with the film work. It is not acceptable for archivists to explain the content of film material without gaining information from the communities involved with the moving image work. Archivists and scholars such as Terry Cook and Andrew Flinn have often pushed for a greater connection with archivists and the community in order to break down hierarchies of knowledge within the archive.42 Through such measures archivists can better engage the public in understanding the archival procedures used in representing their audiovisual history. The
Center for Home Movies archivist Dwight Swanson posits that the archival field “needs to rely upon researchers and other viewers to uncover the most significant discoveries” of amateur
42 Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity and Community,” 95-120. Andrew Flinn,“Independent Community Archives and Community-Generated Content: ‘Writing Saving and Sharing Our Histories’” Convergence: The International Journal into New Media Technologies. Vol. 16 (1) (NY: Sage Publications, 2010) 39-51. 22 film.43 Instead of relying solely on professional archivist guidance, I claim that archivists should also accept amateur help or as Prelinger refers to it, ‘citizen archivist’ help. Such measures will help to eliminate the hierarchies present within archival knowledge and allow for a greater representation of the archival users viewpoints on the work.
I contend that the archivist should incorporate the internet user more within the process of contextualizing amateur film in order to include the wider public. Dutch archival scholar Eric
Ketelaar argues to use web 2.0 technologies in order to better engage with the populace on these ideas of contextualization.44 Finnish archival scholar Isto Huvila also supports the use of more participatory methods to connect the individual user with the archive.45 Both of these claims show the need for archivists to move beyond their ‘professionalized’ stance of working without anyone’s help. They propose an archival shift to the more communal or international online support to understand the material in archives. I affirm such claims for online archival support that work against traditional approaches and prevents a certain hierarchy of knowledge.
Archivists should involve more users with the archival process through the use of participatory methods such as social tagging in order to better contextualize their work. If amateur film material is digitized, then archivists should contact potential organizations and individuals interested in their material online. By digitizing materials, archivists can have their work online and widely visible in order to make other organizations and the public more aware of them. For example, the most watched video clip at the Texas Archive of the Moving Image
43 Dwight Swanson, “Dossier: Materiality and the Archive: The Tantalizing Challenges of the Home Movie Archive,” The Velvet Light Trap – A Critical Journal of Film and Television (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, Fall 2012) 59-60. 44 Eric Ketelaar, “Archives as Spaces of Memory 1,” Journal of the Society of Archivists Vol. 29 (1) (Abingdon-on- Thames, UK: Routledge, 2008) 9-27. 45 Isto Huvila, “Participatory Archive: Towards Decentralized Curation, Radical User Orientation, and Broader Contextualization of Records Management,” Archival Science Vol. 8(1) (Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 2008) 15-36. 23 website is a film clip of a Pakistani leader Ayub Khan and U.S. president John F. Kennedy.46
This implies a high interest from a Pakistani community in footage from the regional archive in the U.S. A scholar in Chicago, Illinois also recently discovered that the EYE Film Institute had rare footage of a capsized ship in Chicago from 1915 on their website.47 These examples of online access emphasize the importance of footage that archives have outside of the region or nation and the significance of reaching out or providing wider internet access to these materials.
The material of one archive exceeds that of just the local or even national area which is why it is important to have wider access and greater engagement with other organizations and individuals about this material.
Conclusion
Through more digital access and participatory methods, archivists can better provide for the complexity of amateur films. More amateur films can be collected, accessed and contextualized through an embrace of digital technology. I assert that archivists should collaborate with each other in order to provide for a variety of amateur film collections both analog and digital. The audiovisual content of amateur film should be presented and preserved through digital technology which has more power in reaching a wide audience to access and contextualize the work. Amateur film, in this sense, can be utilized in ways that deter traditional or professional means of hierarchical practices of collection, access and contextualization.
46 Caroline Frick, “An interview with Caroline Frick of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image and the University of Texas at Austin Department of Radio-Television-Film,” Conducted by Editors, Velvet Light Trap (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, Spring 2013) 43. 47 “Footage of the SS Eastland Lying Capsized in Chicago River Discovered in EYE’s Collection,” EYE Filmmuseum, Published February 16, 2015, https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/about-eye/news/footage-of-the-ss-eastland- lying-capsized-in-chicago-river-discovered-in-eye%E2%80%99s 24
My argument supports further archivist experiments with digital technology to bridge the gap between user and archival institution. Once such measures are enacted, archivists will need to work on ways in which to make digital tools more useful for their contextualizing needs.
Through this they can utilize the internet to gain more interest in the work they have. From the analysis of my three cases studies, I emphasize ways in which archival work on amateur film can improve through a greater inclusivity and interactivity with communities through online archival practices.
25
Chapter 2:
Nationalizing Amateur Film:
EYE Film Institute Netherlands
26
The national film archive of the Netherlands, the EYE Film Institute, collects a variety of film materials to provide for its collection under the national mandate. I analyze the EYE’s inclusion of amateur films in its acquisition policy, the access their archivists provide for this material, and the way they contextualize it. My research relies on interviews and lectures from the EYE’s staff, available documentation on their collection, website information and other scholarly texts published about their archive. My argument highlights the advances that the
EYE’s archivists have made in providing access for amateur film material and critiques the ways they acquire and contextualize such work.
Collecting for the Nation
The EYE Film Institute Netherlands differs from many large national film archives in its embrace of the Orphan Film movement. Many public archives came to play a role with this forgotten material in the last two decades and the EYE is one of the more publicized archives involved in such a role. This institution has made Orphan material quite central to its interest with events that display lesser known parts of the archive.48 These types of events allow audiences to know more about the diversity of film history. The EYE started actively collecting amateur film for their own collection from 2007 onwards which has broadened their collecting parameters.49 Their archivists have worked to alter the perception of audiovisual history and
48 For example, the EYE’s collection of fragments of early film history (Bits and Pieces) that were otherwise lost are considered related to their type of support for otherwise neglected material from audiovisual archives. “Bits and Pieces,” EYE Film Institute Netherlands, accessed September 27, 2016, https://www.eyefilm.nl/collectie/selectie/bits-and-pieces. The EYE has also hosted the Orphan Film Symposium in 2014. See: “Orphans 9 in Amsterdam,” New York University, accessed September 27, 2016, http://www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/orphans9/. 49 Dorette Schootemeijer, Interview by author, July 18, 2016. See Appendix. They had been giving any amateur work to the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision which holds the Smallfilmmuseum (a large collection of amateur films), but eventually realized that this institution was not archiving or providing access to the material at all. Therefore, they began their own work on amateur film. Coincidentally, 2007 is also when Sound and Vision started paying greater attention to amateur film as well. 27 allow for an expanded knowledge of film history with their amateur film collection. However, I assert that there is still a hierarchy in terms of how the EYE treats its amateur film in relation to its professional film material.
The Dutch national film archive began in 1946 after the Second World War and was built from the existing collection of international art films held from the film club, Filmliga (1927-
33).50 The Filmliga exhibited major film art from the Soviet Union, France and Germany in order to influence Dutch filmmakers and theorists of the time period.51 The type of film art that the
Filmliga presented would shape the types of films and culture that the national film archive would continue to acquire and present. The EYE Film Institute’s connection to this art film organization still reflects the interests of the archive to uphold a certain artistic quality in the films they hold. These artistic works form the basis for how the EYE collects works that represent a supposedly ‘authentic’ or ‘original’ artistic view.
The EYE’s acquisition policy reads that their archivists must collect works that “have artistic quality (artistic content)” and other criteria state that the work must “have exemplary qualities for film and cinema culture” or “be unique (in relation to the Netherlands or the world).”52 This reflects their archivists’ criteria for artistically unique work to be a part of their collection. The acquisition policy allows the EYE’s archivists to reject amateur film because of its inability to connect with art movements, represent a well-known quality of film culture or be unique from many other works. Amateur films often do not relate well to the professional
50 EYE Collection Policy 2014-2017, 5. In 1946, the archive was called the Dutch National Film Archive, then in 1952 the name changed to the Netherlands Filmmuseum and in 2012 the archive changed its name to the EYE Film Institute Netherlands. 51 “De Filmliga: Film is geen lolletje,” De Filmkrant n. 203, September 1999, accessed September 27, 2016, http://www.filmkrant.nl/av/org/filmkran/archief/fk203/filmliga.html 52 Ibid, 6 28 experimentations that come from works by Joris Ivens or other art films that the Filmliga supported.53 Home movies can also look quite similar to each other which prevents them from appearing unique from each other. Therefore, I perceive that this type of work does not have as high of a reputation as other types of films that the EYE collects.
The inclusion of amateur films within the EYE Film Institute does not disrupt the prior cinephile and national agendas of collecting film at the archive. As scholar Guy Edmonds writes, the EYE includes amateur film within its standard collecting policy and does not allow such work to change its bias in supporting a certain cinema taste.54 Amateur film is still selected by how ‘original’ or ‘unique’ it is even when such a characterization can be difficult to judge for amateur works. These works may often appear similar to each other and differ from any popular or artistic film taste, which make them highly misunderstood or disliked by many viewers.
Therefore, selecting amateur works under the same criteria as art films marginalizes these works without giving them equal judgement alongside other more established film types.
The Dutch national archive represents a certain ‘cinephile’ taste and its archivists collect films that support such a taste. Film scholar Liz Czach argues that national film archivists prefer
‘auteurs’ which cause them to hierarchize the type of filmmaking they acquire.55 Such a viewpoint emphasizes the way in which national archives such as the EYE continue the taste standards of le politique des auteurs or the focus on author-centered artistic film works instead of supporting all forms of cinema. Not every moving image work fits within a clear ‘auteur’ creation and many works can have importance outside of this standard of taste. Once archivists
53 The exception being works like amateur films made by Joris Ivens when he was growing up. 54 Guy Edmonds, “Historical, Aesthetic, Cultural: The Problematical Value of Amateur Cine Fiction,” 33-54. 55 Liz Czach, “Home Movies and Amateur Film as National Cinema,” 27-37. 29 are more aware of the dangers of this type of cinephilia or auteurism, then they can better acquire a wider view of audiovisual heritage.
The EYE’s archivists utilize auteurism to include and exclude film works from their collection. One of the central tenets of the EYE’s goal is to collect and present auteurs of cinema history.56 This allows EYE to readily attract support and attention for the popular figures of cinema history. In my opinion, the archivists at the EYE work to support a cinephile point of view on film history which prevents non-cinephile work from receiving the same representation.
I contend that cinephilia creates a hierarchy where amateur film places bottom on the list of important film types. Ryan Shand argues for the inclusion of amateur film auteurism in order to support certain amateur fiction filmmakers.57 I disagree with Shand because of how such viewpoints prevent a wider acceptance and acquisition of non-auteur and non-fiction amateur film works by archival institutions. In my view, amateur film should be identified as a legitimate form of filmmaking that does not fit within traditional notions of taste.
Cinephilia prevents archivists from accepting a variety of film creations that could have meaning and in turn force a certain ‘taste’ onto all audiovisual work. By forcing such a taste, the intentions of the audiovisual work gets disregarded and the interests of the archivist become central to the work. The dogmatic nature of auteurism then should not dictate the only reason for the work’s significance. Amateur film deserves a wider viewpoint of taste that allows for its difference from professional filmmaking standards.
56 EYE Collection Policy, 17. 57 Ryan Shand, “Theorizing Amateur Cinema: Limitations and Possibilities,” 57. 30
The EYE’s archivists usually digitize some films, usually five or seven, from a personal collection which, in my opinion, conflicts with the way they treat other types of filmmakers.58 If their aim is to treat amateur film as the same as other film then it appears as though amateur film does not equate well to other filmmakers’ works. Why create an arbitrary amount to digitize from a collection that might only make sense together? The EYE, in this sense, provides access to parts of amateur filmmakers’ oeuvres, but not their whole work. Do they see these amateur filmmakers as auteurs or do they see them as content creators and the archivists work as editors to this material? The head amateur film archivist at the EYE, Dorette Schootemeijer states that she collects all film material from the same viewpoint which she supposedly judges equally.59
However, I contend that the EYE fails to adopt a taste that is more favorable to the differences that other film forms such as amateur film present.
My view is that archivists should be able to work with the creators and communities involved in amateur films to understand the significance of the film material. Such discussion and research may help to make sense of a whole collection and its potential significance for the future. The amateur films that are rejected should ideally be archived in some capacity. The
EYE’s archivists do not accept every amateur film collection, but they rather choose which ones fit with the rest of their film collection.60 This forces the work to fit within the rest of the cinephile tradition of the EYE’s collection in some way. Although families do often preserve their own materials, the EYE’s archive functions as a much more public space for filmmakers, scholars and the general public to discover these personal treasures of audiovisual history.
Archivists should be able to digitize or preserve via digital means in order for the work to remain
58 Dorette Schootemeijer, Interview by author, July 18, 2016. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 31 available in the future. I claim that it’s much more likely for people to look at this type of material online than on its analog format anyway. I recommend the EYE’s archivists to include an option for digital preservation and access alongside or instead of material preservation for their amateur film content in order to provide for a wider range of work.
The Netherlands has a regional film archive system that collects audiovisual material from each area of the country, which all work together along with the television and radio broadcasting archive, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. These institutions work together to provide for amateur film material, and they have uploaded a number of their digitized work onto the website Amateurfilmplatform.61 The EYE Film Institute does connect with these archives and this platform, but it is not as present on them as it could be.62 Archivists at the EYE should work more with other organizations to find a suitable place for all of the amateur film that they can acquire. I argue that the EYE’s archivists should upload more works on this digital platform because it will better connect to the local regions of the Netherlands. Digital can allow their work to be available for a greater network of organizations that prevents a sole nationalized view on their collecting. If the EYE digitizes what they collect, they also provide access to work that regional archives may not have the funds to support.
I disagree with Rick Prelinger’s argument against the inclusion of amateur films within national institutions.63 Such a view would imply that national archives will always marginalize this work, but I posit that national archives can work to provide for this material just as well as
61 “Amateurfilm Platform,” Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, accessed September 27, 2016, www.amateurfilmplatform.nl. 62 The EYE only has three or four films on this platform. 63 Rick Prelinger, “Ephemeral to Canonical: The First 33 and the Next 100 Years of Collecting Useful Media” Lecture, Seminar on Useful Media at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Hilversum, NL. November 6, 2015. 32 other institutions. Archivists at the EYE and Sound and Vision work with other regional organizations and they can work better to gain knowledge on how to collect and work with this material in their collections. These national archives should still collect material, but they can also share facilities and resources with other archives. For example, if the city archive in
Amsterdam cannot collect all the home movies of the region, then the EYE or Sound and Vision should be responsible for helping to save these lesser funded local collections. My point is that these national institutions should not only work to add value and praise to certain amateur films.
They should instead work together with the archival community to try to include as much amateur works as possible within their collections, even if it is only on a digital format.
In my view, the EYE’s archivists should try to adapt their acquisition policy to one more similar to their regional partners. The Groningen Audio Visual Archive (GAVA), for example, accepts nearly all of their film material. They take all works offered to them in relation to their region in order not to offend their amateur creators and collectors.64 They also digitize such work and share them on Amateurfilmplatform. Why should the EYE marginalize their work if GAVA can maintain everything? If they are both functioning as collectors of audiovisual material and they are trying to collect amateur works for all of the Netherlands then why should the EYE’s archivists be more selective than them? I argue for the EYE to better uphold the local film heritage of the Netherlands to allow greater film representation throughout the country. Instead of comparing the films they collect to other professionalized works in their collection, they should instead compare what they have to their regional partners. This will better help the EYE preserve a wider view of amateur film history.
64 Harry Romijn and Renee Duursma, GAVA, Interview by author, April 8, 2016. 33
If the EYE’s archivists can work more with these other organizations in collecting and providing for amateur film material then they will not appear as an archive that only supports auteur-centered film taste. It is beneficial to have such a wide variety of film materials both professional and amateur together in one archive in the EYE’s collections to display the diversity of film history. Despite this advantage, the EYE still collects amateur film under its past cinephile-centered acquisition policy. Such a plan does not allow for a sufficient collection of amateur film materials and causes me to suggest that EYE’s archivists should seek to work more with regional film archivists to share knowledge about archiving these film and to share any physical and/or digital space for such collections.
Nationalized Access
The EYE Film Institute works heavily for a greater amount of digital access to their collections. The Dutch government provided funding for a widespread digitization process in the last decade.65 Despite this funding, the archives supported had difficulty allowing their works to be accessed and used online without fear of copyright infringement. Amateur films collected have been impacted by copyright issues, but the EYE has worked in some ways to permit wider knowledge of the existence of this work in their collection.
The digitization project, Images for the Future (2007-2014), provided economic support to the EYE and other national archives in the Netherlands to digitize their analog material in order to preserve and provide public access to their collection.66 This project allowed EYE’s archivists to digitize a significant amount of their film collection to allow their material to be
65 “General Information,” Images for the Future, Netherlands, Accessed September 27, 2016, http://www.beeldenvoordetoekomst.nl/en.html 66 Ibid. 34 accessed by the public or reused by filmmakers. However, the EYE’s archivists were only able to have two percent of their collection available online and 0.17 percent of their collection available to (re)use from the creative commons.67
Copyright is a major problem for archivists trying to put their films online and the EYE’s collection despite being digitized, is generally unavailable online. These copyright laws display an ownership of the work and prevent the work from being accessed widely by the public unless institutions get approval.68 Such rights prevent organizations from showing the work if they cannot find the copyright owner for it. These are issues essential for archivists trying to allow access to more material, but I do not have enough space to discuss copyright at length here.69
Other than working to put some amateur work online, the EYE has held exhibitions that have shown this type of film work. It’s found footage exhibition in 2012 showcased works by artists such as Peter Forgacs who used home movies from the Dutch East Indies to represent the colonial past of the Netherlands.70 They have also hosted Home Movie Day and Orphan Film events a number of times.71 Such exhibitions with these works display their interest in including amateur film within their audiovisual presentation platform.
Through such presentations, amateur films have not only gained a certain ‘value’ through their association with a national archive as Noordegraaf and Pouw write, but they have also
67 Giovanna Fossati, “Film Preservation and Restoration” (lecture, Preservation and Restoration Class, EYE Film Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, October 8, 2016). 68 Paul Klimpel, “Copyright Law, Practice and Fiction: Rights Clearance for Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age with Examples from the Audiovisual Sector,” Creative Commons (National Library of Luxembourg, May 2013) 8-9. 69 For some more clarity on the issue read: Maurizio Borghi and Stavroula Karapapa. Copyright and Mass Digitization. Oxford University Press, 2013. And Barbara T. Hoffmann, Art and Cultural Heritage Law, Policy, and Practices. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 70 “Peter Forgacs-Looming Fire: 5 October through 1 December” (Amsterdam, EYE Film Institute, 2013), accessed September 27, 2016, https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/exhibition/p%C3%A9ter-forg%C3%A1cs-%E2%80%93-looming- fire. 71 Dorette Schootemeijer, Interview by author, July 18, 2016. 35 created new ‘dispositifs’ or settings to view these works.72 The online and in-house exhibition platforms allow for a variety of viewership for amateur films that do not have strict ideas for the presentation of these works. In this sense, the EYE’s workers aim to provide for various forms of access for its works through digitization and online access if possible. Although one may argue for greater restriction on these personal films, my argument is for a more accessible view of these complex, undiscovered works. The ‘original’ amateur film experience is impossible to recreate or approximate. These works can never be on the same format, which is usually the nearly obsolete 8mm or 9,5mm, or in the same exclusive setting of certain family members. This is why the International Federation of Film Archives’ demand for archivists to maintain the
‘original’ format and representation of film work does not clearly align with amateur film presentation.73 Therefore, archivists should have a more open conception of access that allows them to work with this material in a way that provides more for a wider viewership than for an ethics of ‘originality.’ This allows archivists to attain new dispositifs of viewing for this type of work that follows Fossati’s view on taking ‘originality’ to be the content of the work instead of the film format which is what we see at the EYE.74
The public is not aware of amateur film because of its general lack of representation in discussions of film heritage. In my view, archivists at the EYE should work to allow greater visibility of amateur film in a way that permits more understanding for this part of their collection. The EYE does not have amateur film as a central focus area, but it needs to become more central in order for them to legitimize their collection of this unique and different material.
72 Julia Noordegraaf and Elvira Pouw, “Extended Family Films: Home Movies in the State-Sponsored Archive,” 83- 103. 73 “Code of Ethics,” International Federation of Film Archives, accessed September 27, 2016, http://www.fiafnet.org/pages/Community/Code-Of-Ethics.html. This was written in 1997 well before amateur film became more well-known in the archival field. 74 Fossati, From Grain to Pixel, 117. 36
It should not be a part of the history collection of the EYE along with documentaries because of its enormous difference from these professionally made films.75 Amateur films deserve their own separate focus. These works have significance within a national archive and the archivists at
EYE have to utilize the work they have and try to better find an audience or users that can work with this material. What they have done is important, but there are more ways to involve users and get this work to be seen outside of the archive walls.76
Amateur film’s visibility benefits from greater involvement with the audience because of the material’s inability to function as pure entertainment or high art. Archivists at the Italian
Home Movie archive utilized their collection to create an interactive game to explore Italian cities.77 This game provides a unique dispositif for these amateur works and allows the audience to conceive of these works in terms of their geography. Such a digitally interactive game benefits the wider visibility and understanding of amateur film’s diverse uses. This is one potential influence that the EYE can have for ways to allow greater audience interaction with its amateur film materials.
The amateur film works present within the Dutch national collection represent not only a property of the Netherlands, but also a property of countries such as Indonesia. Although one could argue that Indonesia was a part of the Netherlands and thereby the works made there are technically Dutch and not Indonesian, I still posit that there is not a clear ownership here. In my opinion, the works should be made available to everyone and should be seen as more than just
75 Currently amateur film is included as a part of the history collection that the EYE has. It is not an official separate focus area for the EYE. 76 Dorette Schootemeijer has discussed the EYE’s goals to have more events with amateur film material in the future, potentially two amateur-focused events per year at the EYE’s new collection center which would definitely benefit the visibility of this area of the EYE’s collecting. 77 “Play the City Re-App,” (Bologna, IT: Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, 2015), accessed September 27, 2016, http://playthecity.homemovies.it/index_en.html. 37 the property of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands. By allowing for a greater accessibility of the works online, the EYE can better work with people from other areas such as Indonesia to share and understand the amateur works they have. Such sensitive material should not be seen as the product of one country, but of more people. These amateur films do not only represent the
Netherlands at a certain time, but also Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Therefore, archivists should not only take into account the national significance of the work, but also the international significance of it. By allowing for a wide form of access, the work should be able to reach out to both Dutch, Indonesian and other audiences that may be interested in them.
These forms of access allow the EYE to display amateur film in various forms to potentially permit wider understanding or at least viewership of this type of work. Access, however does depend on the contextualization by the archive which requires connections with the families and other peoples involved in the work. The wide and various forms of access of the
EYE do not connect to the many traditional archival practices that claim ‘originality’ in the format or other aspects of the film dispositif. This benefits the archivists at the EYE in allowing for unique ways of experiencing amateur film works. The contextualization of the amateur film work is also something that the EYE’s archivists are trying to improve on as their work becomes more digitally accessible to the public.
Contextualizing the Nation
The contextual information made about the Dutch East Indies home movie collections at the EYE can be a contentious one considering the issue of representing the non-Dutch
Indonesians present within the work. The EYE’s archivists do refer to the amateur creators and their families for any types of access that they have for their work, which is more than most 38 organizations often do.78 Should the archivists at the EYE only refer to the families that they get the work from? Or should they also be searching for advice on the representation of the
Indonesian ‘other’ often present within these home movies? I posit that the archivists need to work together with the Indonesian communities as well as other people represented to find a suitable contextualization strategy for the amateur film works they collect.
The EYE has received a significant amount of films from the Institute of the Tropics which includes a fair amount of ethnographic works on indigenous people in the Dutch colonies.79 Such a collection needs a heavy amount of sensitivity in regards to the people represented there. Contacting people represented would be an important step forward in allowing for greater knowledge of these people. Without significant contact with the people represented, these works appear as legitimizations of the type of categorizations and othering that ethnographic studies often did during colonial times. In order to prevent the misunderstanding between countries and communities, archivists should support any decolonizing projects with their material. With a greater sensitivity to this issue, the Dutch national archive can better confront their complex past with their prior colonies.
There needs to be a greater collaboration in order to better contextualize the amateur film from countries such as Indonesia. Even though the Dutch East Indies was a part of the
Netherlands when many of these films were made, there was still a hierarchy between Dutch or
European citizens and the indigenous Indonesian people there. Most of these works are in the archive or online with only some cataloging information and without much contextualization.
These potentially stereotypical representations of Indonesians at that time, in my opinion,
78 Dorette Schootemeijer, Interview by author, July 18, 2016. The archivists at NHF and the Internet Archive do not refer to their creators if there is any access. I will refer to this in their respective chapters. 79 Ibid. 39 supports a certain colonialist viewpoint of looking down on the indigenous of that country.
Therefore, archivists at the EYE must work to contextual this footage in order to decolonize their audiovisual collection.
In discussing the context of museums, Dutch museum scholar Jan Nederveen Pietersen writes that museums need to be self-reflective about the type of work they have and display a critical viewpoint of the colonialist collection they have.80 I follow from Nederveen Pietersen in claiming that archivists also need to be wary of the type of work that they have online and how it is contextualized in order to prevent a viewpoint that supports the Dutch colonialist past.
Nederveen Pietersen emphasizes that institution practitioners should not seek to be neutral, but instead to take a critical standpoint on this aspect of Dutch history and allow the viewers to be more informed about the difference of opinions between today and that time period.81 Therefore, the amateur films in areas such as the Dutch East Indies should be sufficiently critiqued before being exhibited by the EYE.
One significant way to guarantee a greater knowledge of these amateur film works is to reach out to more communities and organizations to work with in the contextualization of their works. By having a greater involvement from communities in the Netherlands and outside, the amateur films that the EYE holds can be better contextualized and dealt with in their collection.
Archivists in national institutions in New Zealand and Australia have greater involvement with indigenous people in the representation of the work in their collections.82 The archivists in those countries are continually in dialogue with the indigenous people on the contextualization of film
80 Jan Nederveen Pieterse, "Multiculturalism and museums: Discourses about Others in the Age of Globalization," Heritage, Museums and Galleries, ed. Gerard Corsane, (London/New York: Routledge, 2005) 163-183. 81 Ibid. 82 Nina Rao, “Representation and Ethics in Moving Image Archives,”104-123. 40 works that include them.83 I propose archivists at the EYE to take influence from them in referring to the Indonesians in terms of how they are represented within EYE collections such as the Dutch East Indies home movies. Although Indonesians are invited to work with the EYE’s collection, they are not specifically referred to in the contextualization of any particular film work.84
Through a greater online interactivity, the EYE’s archivists can better contextualize the works present within their collection. More people will be aware of the EYE’s works and can think of ways in which to interact and discover this aspect of film heritage. Such internet interactivity, is one way to provide a larger accessibility and understanding of what archivists do and how to benefit their knowledge. This way of opening up knowledge forms can benefit the
EYE in having greater interaction with the public to create a deeper contextualization of the films in their collection.
For an archive dedicated to wider access and digitization, fostering a community interaction with their work would help to support their main aims to bring greater interest to film history. By interacting with people in the Netherlands and outside of it, the EYE can have more people working together to understand the complexity of the work they have and be critical toward the indigenous representations present within their collection. Although more online interactivity may not bring more critical viewpoints, it will allow the archivists to identify potential opinions surrounding the collections they have and how to be sensitive about their interpretations.
83 Ibid. 84 Dorette Schootemeijer, Interview by author, July 18, 2016. 41
Through such methods the EYE’s archivists can better work to contextualize their collection and try to engage more with their users. Such an archive that is working towards wider accessibility should try to search for new and interesting ways to get users involved with their collections. This will not only help their users understand the archivists’ work better, but it will also benefit the archive in understanding the variety of reactions it can have from its community.
Not only should the work be interactive through measures such as social tagging, but they should also try to engage with other organizations and communities to make sure their material does not offend the ‘other’ present in their collection.
Conclusion
The EYE Film Institute represents an archive that has more recently come to seriously collect and provide access to amateur film. It has showcased certain uses of amateur film with its film exhibitions and garnered certain attention for Home Movie Day which has made amateur films more present to their audiences. Despite these strengths, the archivists at this institution judge amateur film along the same lines as their other film types which allow them to marginalize their amateur collection more in terms of acquisition and contextualization. The
EYE is in the position of power in terms of what it aims to take or leave behind in its relationship with amateur films. They should consider other measures that regional archives make in terms of how they collect and provide access to such material instead of maintaining their artistically geared collection policy.
Working with other Dutch organizations and international ones will help archivists at the
EYE to better work with their amateur film material. Despite amateur film’s small status at the archive, it can play a larger role in how the EYE deals with its Orphan film material. As a major figure in the Orphan Film symposium the EYE Film Institute should pay attention to the specific 42 issues that occur with this significant material. If more attention can be paid to their amateur film works then they can better provide for them and allow for a larger audience and understanding of amateur film’s complex position within film history. Dealing with its sensitive issues of representation will also be a major event for the EYE’s archivists in coming to terms with the
Netherland’s colonialist past. By involving Indonesia and other prior colonies or underrepresented groups in the contextualization and accessing of their audiovisual works, there can be a more sensitive analysis of their Dutch film works from their past. These are major ways that the EYE can be a more responsible institution in terms of its amateur film footage and move towards a future that can allow for a greater knowledgeability of this important footage of the
Netherland’s past.
43
Chapter 3:
Providing for the Region:
Northeast Historic Film
44
Local film archives present a certain contrast in their practices from larger national institutions because of their smaller area of focus. Regional film archives started to grow with the regional archive system in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s.85 Other regional film organizations would develop around the world afterwards with institutions such as Northeast
Historic Film (NHF), which was the first regional archive in the United States devoted to an area’s audiovisual material. NHF is a non-profit moving image archive of northern New England
(Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts) that was incorporated in Bucksport,
Maine in 1986.
My investigation of this archive particularly focuses on how their archivists confront issues of collecting, contextualizing and accessing amateur film with their regional focus. I will utilize an interview I conducted with the current executive director of Northeast Historic Film, information from the NHF website and other newspaper articles and policy documents about the organization in order to shape my analysis. I investigate the formation of this regional archive and how their archivists are able to interact and collect material from the community in a way that decentralizes archival practice. Through this analysis I support NHF’s valorization of amateur works, but not their current process of contextualization. This section investigates the origin of NHF, its decentralized policies of collecting and contextualization and a critique of its traditional access procedures.
Collecting the Local
As I described earlier, Northeast Historic Film’s origins came from the popularity of
Karan Sheldon’s and David Weiss’s screenings of amateur films such as From Stump to Ship,
85 “About the Archive,” East Anglia Film Archive, accessed September 27, 2016. 45 about logging in 1930’s Maine, which garnered high public interest in 1985.86 From the success of this theatrical exhibition, Sheldon and Weiss searched for more amateur films to screen and discovered the poor physical condition of this material.87 This was the impetus for them to begin an archive to save this type of localized film and provide it for public usage. Instead of making their own documentary, Sheldon and Weiss chose to preserve works that could be used for a number of documentaries.88 In this sense, the archivists at NHF work to prevent the exclusion of local histories from the archive in order to allow them for public use and exhibition.
Local histories and memories are becoming more central in the archival field. Historian
Pierre Nora argues that every social group “has felt the need to go in search of its own origins and identity.”89 A greater amount of communities and locally focused archives are creating and fostering their identities through audiovisual materials. Amateur film can play a larger role in reflecting a Maine identity or a Japanese-American identity.90 These communities should have a right to collect their own material and provide for it instead of waiting for a larger organization to listen to them. Sheldon and Weiss followed this pattern of creating an institution dedicated to the particular community of northern New England instead of lobbying for its inclusion in other already existing archives.
NHF represents the individual movement of Weiss and Sheldon to work against the established rhetoric of traditional archives in starting their own archive dedicated to a more local
86 Jones, “From Forgotten Film to Film Archive,” 193-202. 87 David Weiss, Interview by Abigail Curtis. “Northeast Historic Film Co-founder Reflects on 30 Years of Archiving, Preserving Celluloid History,” Bangor Daily News, September 16, 2015. 88 Ibid. 89 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 18. 90 For more information on such uses read: Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories. Eds. by Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
46 area as opposed to a national or studio archive. Scholar Caroline Frick emphasizes the “less formal, more individualist manner” of decentralizing film preservation in the United States compared with the regional film network of the UK.91 The founders of NHF saw how the non- commercial audiovisual history was marginalized by archives and began a way to preserve the amateur film collections in order for them to be saved. In representing this region, NHF displays the importance of community involvement in preserving and collecting local audiovisual material. This individual endeavor has benefits in bringing groups of people together for the benefit of the region, thereby encouraging greater personal involvement in the creation and functioning of the archival system. People within the community can better judge these films for inclusion within the archive and determine their importance for their own local heritage.
NHF’s archivists work against current views of what to preserve in relation to commercial or artistic quality and nationalist agendas. One of the main criteria for acquisition by
NHF states that the work should be “related to the northern New England region through location, subject, maker, source or other connection.”92 Their collection policy does not collect work by any aesthetic standard that favors more professional audiovisual material. Sheldon and
Weiss realized the value of amateur film when many other archivists were still only searching for professional works. In order to provide an audiovisual identity of northern New England, they utilized material that was viewed negatively in regards to the rest of film history. Instead of focusing on the aesthetic or the professionalism of the work, they aimed to collect work that connected to their community and sought to include all audiovisual work from the area. This prevented the creation of a hierarchy in their selection policy. They could better provide for the
91 Frick, Saving Cinema, 149. 92 “Curatorial Policy,” Northeast Historic Film, August 24, 1995. 47 region through such a collection policy that did not seek to only include the aesthetically
‘original’ or ‘authentic’ work of the nation. This allows NHF to accept a wide diversity of film formats and styles that connect to the region.
Northeast Historic Film’s acquisition policy states that they collect material ‘unique’ to northern New England or otherwise likely to be damaged or lost.93 The current executive director at NHF, Brook Ewing Minner, states that she does not discriminate against any film type from the region in terms of their collection policy and that they take everything offered to them that connects to the region.94 Of course selection is still present within their archive, but the selection is much more specific than a national archive or other less locally-focused archives. They do not deal with the vast amount of commercial or more professional material that national archives often deal with, which allows them to take in more works that reflect different aspects of society such as amateur films, local television, corporate films, pornography and other things that might otherwise not get selected for inclusion by larger institutions.
Despite the inclusion of various materials, NHF’s archivists are not directly involved in searching for amateur film materials. Archival scholar Howard Besser posits that archivists
“need to proactively seek out material (particularly moving image material) that today may be thrown away routinely, but in the future may prove historically or commercially valuable.”95 He claims that archivists at any institution need to investigate in order to find significant audiovisual material that may be of their economic or cultural benefit. However, Besser does not particularly address regional archivists or point out the exact type of research necessary to find such work. Of
93 Ibid. 94 Brook Ewing Minner, Interview by author, May 16, 2016. See Appendix. 95 Howard Besser, “Digital Preservation of Moving Image Material?” The Moving Image Vol. 1(2) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 44. 48 course, NHF aims to save as much work as possible, but the lack of funding for NHF prevents it from searching for film works.
The regions of a country should not wait for significant items by the local public to be collected by more centralized areas. In my view, individuals should work to create their own heritage to support and preserve. Archivists at NHF work to care for a local film collection in a region that they are also a part of. This allows the organization to better engage with that area instead of leaving the works from northern New England to be collected by a larger national institution. An archive that is situated within the area may create a greater awareness to its audience in terms of the audiovisual heritage there.
Accessing the Local
Northeast Historic Film not only works to preserve and collect northern New England’s heritage, but it works to “provide public access to the history and culture of the region embodied in it.”96 Sheldon and Weiss began NHF as film programmers of Maine film culture through the exhibition of From Stump to Ship. This experience shapes the current policy at NHF to provide access to their collections in order to garner more interest in the area of Northern New England.
NHF’s archivists have had various forms of film access throughout their years, but they have yet to fully embrace wider forms of digital access to their collections.
I assert that NHF’s archivists needs to focus more on their access procedures in order to allow for a greater understanding of the work they collect. Archival scholar Snowden Becker argues for archivists to have a balance between access and preservation using the example of
96 “About Us,” Northeast Historic Film, oldfilm.org, accessed September 27, 2016 49
Home Movie Day.97 Although I disagree with Becker about the presentation of analog film at
Home Movie Day events, I agree with her about allowing access to be emphasized more for archives. In particular, I posit that digitization should be more central to the archival procedure and come before contextualization or other tasks. Therefore, archivists at NHF should allow for the visibility and understanding of their amateur film work instead of solely keeping it in a vault that does not allow for wide forms of access. If NHF presents analog amateur films, then they would be endangering the analog film ‘originals’ of the works, but if these works were presented digitally there would be no risk to the ‘originals’ and they could also be uploaded online for wider visibility and use.98
Online access is not the only form of access required for amateur films. I suggest that
NHF’s other public events also allow a greater understanding of their archival work with amateur material. Presentations, exhibitions and symposia held by or given by NHF has been an important aspect of their history. For the last eleven years the NHF has hosted symposiums about a range of topics in relation to non-commercial audiovisual materials.99 These events have allowed NHF to attract national and international attention from scholars, archivists, and the general public toward its mission to preserve non-commercial film and video. Presentations from
NHF staff can even be commissioned for other organizations to hold in order to spread the importance of their collection.100 Therefore, NHF’s archivists display their motives to act as a mouthpiece for the issues that concern this type of preservation and exhibition that was for so
97 Snowden Becker, “See and Save: Balancing Access and Preservation for Ephemeral Moving Images,” Spectator – The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Vol. 27 (1) (LA: University of Southern California, Spring 2007) 21-28. Home Movie Day is an event that occurs each year where citizens of a region bring their analog film or sometimes analog video material to watch in a public theater. 98 Admittedly, this might lose the immediacy of the event. 99 “Symposia and Roundtables,” Northeast Historic Film, oldfilm.org, accessed September 27, 2016. 100 “Presentations”, Northeast Historic Film, oldfilm.org, accessed September 27, 2016. 50 long without support. This also develops an audience and an appreciation for what they do to educate people on the history of this particular area. Through all of this promotion and information of its activities, NHF’s archivists help to garner more support and general understanding from the public about their day-to-day operations and their new projects.
The video loan service of NHF has allowed a widespread view of their films and was a strong component of how they tried to make their works more accessible to the public. It began with 14 titles in 1991 through their Moving Image Review, but grew to 300 by 2000.101 This loan service provided a way for the public and educators to have access to the collection of amateur works that would not be available otherwise. This material now needs to be available online.
Most people do not even own a VHS player anymore and home video in general is something that no longer reaches the same amount of people that digital access can. Only a few films or film fragments have been available on Youtube and through NHF’s website. This technological change to digital can be a strong way of connecting with more people, but it can also be a major obstacle for future operations.
NHF’s archivists need to make their work more digitally accessible in order to embrace twenty-first century archival practices. Audiovisual work should not be seen as solely a part of one particular area with archivists in charge of who gets to view it, but films should be at the fingertips of as many people as possible. Digitization of their collection needs to occur in order to have not only easier access to the collections at Northeast Historic Film, but also to foster a greater knowledge of northern New England’s film heritage. Their executive director Brook
Ewing Minner has complained about the lack of knowledge in northern New England about what
101 “History,” Northeast Historic Film, oldfilm.org, accessed September 27, 2016. 51
NHF does.102 I argue that a change needs to happen in terms of online visibility in order to have a stronger impact on people’s knowledge and awareness of amateur films. Without such a visibility, the NHF collections are lost to a significant amount of people. As scholar Caroline
Frick has stated, “The true benefit of film preservation…is the accessibility and use of the material by the public, not its simple survival and conservation in a cold vault.”103 Through a more significant online presence, NHF has a better chance at engaging with a wider audience that would be interested in researching its collections.
The acquisitions of NHF may appear local and specific to the northern New England region, but the collection includes material that can have a wider significance. Not only does this amateur footage have regional importance, but it could relate to a certain group of people that may not only be in one region such as African Americans or Native Americans. NHF’s collection also connects to the entire nation because of how some of their works are included within the national archive.104 Their amateur films also attract international viewers because of significant travel footage such as their Adelaide Pearson collection with footage of Mahatma
Gandhi.105 I assert that the work in NHF should better engage with the rest of the world through an international online community.
The analog film and video material along with the film equipment that NHF collects all allow for the material history of amateur film. This is something that cannot be accessed online and it is something that can truly enrich the wider history of amateur film. NHF works to display
102 Brook Ewing Minner, Interview by author, May 16, 2016. 103 Frick, “Repatriating American Film Heritage or Heritage Hoarding?” 122. 104 Works from NHF collections like From Stump to Ship (1930) and The Making of an American (1920) have been included within the National Film Registry. 105 “Gandhi in Color,” Northeast Historic Film, accessed September 27, 2016, http://oldfilm.org/content/gandhi- color-1. 52 this equipment in their film theater in Bucksport, Maine, but they do not heavily discuss this equipment outside of their venue. I posit that NHF’s archivists should better include this as a part of amateur film history and as a way to emphasize the material presence of this history online.
Especially as an archive that has a wide breath of amateur film material, I argue that NHF’s archivists should try to utilize this collection of equipment and different film formats to contextualize amateur film history. The material history of film has attracted attention among archivists and academics, but maybe these archival holding at NHF could allow for a wider engagement with this material that can expand its small appeal.106 The apparatus collection and other technology of the collection could engage viewers in unique and more active ways about certain film viewing experiences that could connect to amateur works locally, nationally or internationally.
The internet appears as the only plausible solution in striving for wider viewership and acknowledgement from the average citizen. Online access and other activities will create a greater acknowledgement of the rich history that northern New England has in terms of its amateur film collection. However, the internet is not the only way that NHF could create greater awareness of its archival holdings. NHF should also work with other institutions and organizations to create greater knowledge of its holdings. Although NHF is well known in academic and archival circles, other organizations may spread knowledge of the significance of its large collection. By greater collaboration with other organizations, NHF can share resources, knowledge and also spread information on the importance of their work.107
106 See publications such as: Exposing the Film Apparatus. The Film Archive as a Research Laboratory, Eds. Giovanna Fossati and Annie van den Oever (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016). 107 Ewing Minner did mention trying to work with other regional organizations to try to collectively digitize their audiovisual materials, but this is still in its very early stages if it does even occur. 53
Insufficient funding is one of the major reasons for the lack of digital access for all of the
NHF collection. Although my thesis will not delve heavily into the way an archive is funded, this does play a large role in work that archivists can do with their collection. The NHF relies on grants, donations, sales from its stock footage, digitization sales, film screenings and storage space renting unlike a national archive which mainly relies on government funding.108 This minimal type of support leaves the NHF with a small staff that does not have the funds to provide for the digitization of its whole collection or for a deeper investigation to fully contextualize all of its material. This prevents the archivists of NHF to fully reach out to wider areas to create a deeper interest in what they do.
Contextualizing Locally
Regions of a nation have different levels of knowledgeability about how their culture should be represented in the archive. People living in Washington D.C. might not necessarily know about the northern New England area or other areas of the United States such as Alaska or the mid-West. These areas and their own people need to make aspects of their own culture such as amateur film provided for through collecting and contextualizing their work. Without such labor, these films will be lost or misunderstood by the general public.
Decentralized audiovisual collections foster a greater attention to local situations and contexts. Peter Margry on Dutch regional archives claims that centralized archives might be more cost-effective, but decentralized archives allow for greater knowledge of what one has and easier access to it.109 Instead of having a national, centralized archive for audiovisual materials,
108 Brook Ewing Minner, Interview by author, May 16, 2016. 109 Peter Margry, “Collective Management in Dutch Regional Archives,” The American Archivist Vol. 56(1) (Chi- cago: Society of American Archivists, 1993) 76-83. 54 regional archives allow for a more in-depth knowledge of material that represents the province or region. Regional film archivists, in my opinion, may provide more information for the researcher and foster a greater connection with the community. The exhibition of From Stump to Ship brought together a community that led to the foundation of Northeast Historic Film. This community-centered regional archive then appears to provide for greater knowledge of the area it represents which helps in terms of not only collecting, but also of contextualization. Karen
Sheldon also suggests that the archivists of regional archives are better able to contextualize their material because of their ability to understand the “significance of a particular collection both in relation to other collections within that institution and in the culture of the region.”110
Although Peter Margry and Karan Sheldon make strong points for the creation of regional archives, they do not address how the entire region can have a voice in the archival activities. Archivists might have more knowledge of a small regional film collection, but this still does not entail that the entire region is represented through their work. Archivists at NHF do not refer to the creators of amateur films before providing access to their work, unlike archivists at the EYE.111 This allows NHF to exhibit work without having any need to actually cooperate with figures in their community. I assert that this traditional viewpoint of an archive working for a community at a particular location is not sufficient enough in this digital-centric world. Through online interactivity, I argue that archivists can better interact with interested users to contextualize their materials.
Northeast Historic Film’s archivists work with communities to contextualize certain material by holding screenings of films with members of the public and archivists to write down
110 Karan Sheldon, “Regional Moving Image Archives in the United States,” 118-123. 111 Brook Ewing Minner, Interview by author, May 16, 2016. 55 any feedback.112 This type of work brings the community into contact with the archivist cataloger in order to contextualize the material. NHF fulfills many of the scholarly arguments by
Terry Cook and others to bring the archivist in contact with the community, but I still posit that
NHF could benefit from a greater integration of online tools to improve this contextualization process. NHF’s archival process still creates a contextualization dominated by what the archivist accepts from the community. The internet could also function as a significant source to document the archival material within the NHF archive and further break down barriers of knowledge production.
One initiative to better document NHF’s material happened in 2010 with the government funded project Moving Images of Work Life 1916-1960. NHF had cataloguers and interns describe fifty collections of films that were about men and women work life in northern New
England. NHF explicitly claims that through this online catalogue “many more people will know the collections exist.”113 The cataloguers gave filmographic information, summaries of each film, biographical and historical notes, search terms, and clips and images to understand more about the material there.114 Through such means, NHF wanted to make researchers, producers, and the public aware of what they had for them to utilize. Through this cataloging project, the NHF provides for better access to the materials, but many other collections still need to be described by them. The amount of material to catalogue has increased as the archive receives more material. This traditional cataloging method does not appear to function as quickly as social tagging could. Social tagging also allows for the archivist to engage with the community and gain a clear knowledge sharing between the user and the archivist.
112 Ibid. 113 “Moving Images of Work Life: 1916-1960,” Northeast Historic Film, oldfilm.org, accessed June 17, 2016. 114 Ibid. 56
The internet can break down boundaries between amateurism and professionalism in terms of cataloging and contextualizing archival material. As media scholar Julia Noordegraaf states in relation to social tagging, it helps to democratize the archival practice in order to create a system that decreases the role of the archivist as the gatekeeper of knowledge.115 No longer would a user need to rely on the archivist’s metadata procedure to contextualize the holdings, but instead the user could play a role in giving meaning to the work they research. Users do not have to be submissive to the archival information, but they can actively engage with the contextual material of their historical subject.
NHF’s archivists have an online catalog with clips from their films and documentation that help to contextualize their collection. This online catalog functions as a unique form of access that allows the user to understand the complexities of the work in their collection albeit without seeing the actual work. This information gives significant insight into the historical factors that shape the work, although it may hinder the multiple meanings that come from the audiovisual work itself. It can create a certain hierarchy of understanding that prevents viewers and users from questioning the knowledge it provides. Contextualization helps to make viewers better aware of the type of histories present within the collection, but it needs to be presented in a way that allows for more input from the audience, in my opinion.
Without much digitized material, NHF provides more for the material preservation of film instead of focusing on allowing access for the content of their work. This provides for a more conservative and research-based view on the works in the collection which prevents a wider input from the potential viewers of their amateur film material. Archives that are more
115 Julia Noordegraaf, “Who Knows Television: Online Access and the Gatekeepers of Knowledge,” Critical Studies in Television Vol. 5(2) (London: SAGE Publications, Nov 2010) 1-19. 57 present on the internet would spend less time contextualizing its collection and more time on the technical aspects of digitization as we will see in my chapter on the Internet Archive. Karan
Sheldon argues that a regional archive such as NHF has archivists that are more specialized in order to guide the researcher through certain parts of the collection. However, the traditional archivist specialist no longer functions well for an archive as large as NHF and for an archive in the current digital-centered world. If more material were accessible, more researchers could investigate the collection to contextualize that work or utilize that work in some capacity.
Although there have been no issues in regards to the ethics of access to NHF’s holdings, there are significant amateur films that could pose challenges to the archivists there. NHF does hold material from travel films that could stereotype or look down upon non-Western cultural practices. Issues of race may also pose a serious problem in terms of how African Americans are portrayed in certain amateur films.116 These types of works are never brought into contact with archives from the country they were filmed in or discussed with people sensitive to certain issues.117 Despite the lack of complaints, this does not mean that the work should be left without care in the archive. This work could benefit heavily from a wider range of study and introspection. NHF does not have wide access to most of their collection so this issue of ethics may affect them less. I assert that it should benefit NHF’s archivists to communicate more with organizations and individuals in order to consider the representation of certain communities or peoples.
A sensitive or ethical archivist can bring this work into contact with communities that can contextualize it in a way that supports their viewpoints on the work. As archival scholar Nina
116 Ewing Minner discusses an off-color joke present in an online clip that could cause certain discomfort in the interview. See appendix. 117 Brook Ewing Minner, Interview by author, May 16, 2016. 58
Rao states, archivists need to have a greater cultural awareness about the material that they have.118 Archivists of a majority culture should not speak for the other minority areas of the world. NHF’s archivists need to refer to the ‘other’ in order to allow for a sensitive and ethical contextualization of the audiovisual work they have collected. On the internet, the representation of the other can be addressed and brought to light by those communities in the same way that the rest of a region contextualizes itself with NHF’s archival practices. I assert that the archivists of
NHF should allow communities and all of their identities to have a voice by collaborating with other organizations and individuals to contextualize the work they have.
Without wider online interactivity with its community, Northeast Historic Film primarily maintains a gatekeeper of knowledge presence in order to provide clear and ‘professional’ knowledge about amateur films. Therefore, the major difference between the national and regional archives I have examined lies in the ability for the region to garner more material from that area, know about that area more and connect more with it in order to contextualize its work.
The NHF’s archivists maintain a hierarchy that controls the information of their material in a way that does not permit the sharing of knowledge between individual user and archivist.
Conclusion
Archivists need to cooperate with other organizations and individuals in order to break down hierarchies of knowledge and allow for a greater collaboration that should benefit archivists both intellectually and economically. Although regional archives such as NHF are more local, this still does not guarantee successful attention to their work. Amateur film benefits from wider accessibility and viewpoints that allow it to have meaning beyond the cold vaults of
118 Nina Rao, “Representation and Ethics in Moving Image Archives,” 104-123. 59 the archive. The film material of an archive needs to be accessed and contextualized in order to allow users to better interrogate their work. No longer can archivists maintain their distance from the rest of the world, but I contend that they must depend on outside parties to contextualize, access and support the type of work they do. NHF’s archivists have held significant access and contextualization events, but I posit that they need to allow for digital technology to open up greater possibilities for their user groups.
60
Chapter 4:
Universal Digital Access for All Amateurs:
The Internet Archive
61
With the onset of the internet, archival material has become more international in its ability to be collected and shared. The Internet Archive, which was founded in 1996, functions as an organization that is aimed at providing ‘universal access to all knowledge’.119 This motto clearly works against the approach of most traditional archives through its non-discriminatory collection and access model. This digital-centric archive then represents a certain contrast with the prior institutions that I mentioned and serves as an example to assess the positive and negative elements of the digitization of audiovisual materials. I will analyze this archive by examining its online website, Youtube interviews with its creators and workers, online articles, academic articles and my own interview with its central film archivist Rick Prelinger. In this chapter, I investigate and critique the Internet Archive’s open forms of collecting, accessing and contextualizing amateur film material.
Collecting Internationally
The Internet Archive began as an organization that wanted to prevent the internet from being as lost as other significant mediums such as books, cinema, television, and radio were during their infancy.120 The Internet Archive soon grew to include books, movies, video games and music within its mandate by 1999.121 One of its founders, Brewster Kahle, is the current director of the archive and explains that “we should take advantage of our new technologies to open society to make a universal library…”122 Through this desire for universal access, Kahle and others sought to include various media on the archive’s servers in order to create an all-
119 Brewster Kahle, “Toward Universal Access to All Knowledge – Internet Archive,” Journal of Zhejiang University Science A, Vol. 6(11) (Berlin, Germany: Springer Science and Business Media, 2005) 1193-1194. 120 “About,” Internet Archive, accessed September 27, 2016, https://archive.org/about/. 121 Marilyn Rackley, “Internet Archive,” Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition (Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Taylor and Francis Group, 2010) 2973. 122 Kahle, “Toward Universal Access to All Knowledge,” 1193. 62 inclusive environment for all media at the Internet Archive. The archive then provides a platform for all media to be made use of anywhere in the world.123
Archivist and collector Rick Prelinger works with the Internet Archive to provide for his large collection of ‘ephemeral films’ from his own Prelinger Archives as well as other audiovisual works which are accessible on the website. The Prelinger Archives hold 60,000 films of various types – corporate, educational, and amateur – or as Prelinger calls them ‘ephemeral’ works.124 In 2001, Prelinger joined together with the Internet Archive to put a number of his works (now 6,500) online for free.125 At first, Prelinger was insecure putting his material up online because of the fear of losing money through its open access, but then he quickly realized the potential in this endeavor.126 Interestingly, the works in his collection increased in sales after their exposure on the Internet Archive.127 By showcasing the work of his collection, Prelinger was able to create a wider knowledge of these works which allows for its greater visibility to both professional filmmaking companies and public users.
Since 2002, the Prelinger Archives have also been included within the Library of
Congress for their ‘aesthetic, cultural and historic’ significance.128 Therefore, some of the material held on the Internet Archive database is material that can be deemed of national importance. The archive is officially based in San Francisco, California, but its materials can
123 The Internet Archive is banned in some countries, but it is available in many countries and territories. 124 “Bio,” Prelinger Archives, accessed September 27, 2016, www.prelinger.com. 125 Ibid. 126 Rick Prelinger, “Rick Prelinger – Online Archives, Creativity, Serendipity,” Youtube, Uploaded January 24, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwf4hOAa5gU. 127 Rick Prelinger, “Rick Prelinger Explains Why He Likes the New Orphan Works Act,” Youtube, Uploaded May 18, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fnlJKAf-bE. The reason for the increase in sales is because he charged for an official paper trail for the films and high quality versions of them. The digital copy on the Internet Archive is not so easy to incorporate into a film. 128 Craig D’Ooge, “Library of Congress Acquires Rare Film Collection,” Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2002). 63 come from anywhere in the world. A number of organizations within and outside of the United
States have materials there, which allows the Internet Archive to work without the questions of national or regional significance.
One example is Flemish artist Jasper Rigole who holds his digital collection IICADOM
(International Institute for Conservation, Archiving and Distribution of Other People’s
Memories) at the Internet Archive. This is a collection of home movies that Rigole collected primarily from the Ghent, Belgium area.129 These works are preserved and presented on the
Internet Archive while the material presence of them is used for Rigole’s art exhibitions.130 Such an example shows how a variety of people and organizations can utilize the archives without restrictions of where in the world the archive is based. Therefore, the Internet Archive is able to function as an institution that is not restricted by any national boundaries in its approach to collecting and providing access to materials.
The archivists of the Internet Archive also support the notion of personal archiving because of how anyone can upload material to the website. An average user is able to be a part of the Internet Archive and have their own individual works preserved and shared with others. This greatly contrasts with the acquisition policies of national and regional archives where a person’s work needs to be accepted by the institution. The individual then has greater agency over what is preserved and what is seen on the website. The home movies they have are still in their possession, it is just the digital image that is archived by the workers at the Internet Archive.
This permits a wider visibility to their amateur creations that can have more than just value
129 “Info,” IICADOM, accessed September 27, 2016, http://www.iicadom.org/node/51627 130 Ibid. 64 added by being in a national or regional archive. Their work then gains international significance because of its ability to be seen and used all over the world on the Internet Archive’s servers.
The database of the Internet Archive also does not have a hierarchy of film material present within the collection. There is no definition of what is aesthetically, culturally or historically significant as there is with other archives such as the EYE Film Institute or the
Library of Congress. This archive sees all of its material equally in the sense that everything is accepted that is given to it. Of course the owners of that material decide how much information they want to give about their work, but otherwise the material is free for others to utilize. The acceptance of all film materials allows one to disregard the cinephilia or archivephilia that
Patricia Zimmermann discusses in regards to the archive.131 Amateur film does not place low on the agenda of the Internet Archive because it does not seek to support primarily professional filmmaking as other archives do. The archivists at the Internet Archive do not select material for inclusion. Anyone can include their work on the Internet Archive’s web server. If someone wants to save their material then they can upload it online instead of being selected or rejected by other institutions.
By including everything, the Internet Archive helps to display the way in which the traditional archival appraisal policy becomes insignificant in regards to the availability of digital materials. Kahle writes that:
Advances in computing and communications mean that we can cost-effectively store
every book, sound recording, movie, software package, and public webpage ever created,
131 Zimmermann, “The Home Movie Archive Live,” 261. 65
and provide access to these collections via the internet to students and adults all over the
world.132
Everything has the right to be preserved digitally on the Internet Archive, which prevents the marginalization that might occur because of the overflowing materials in archives’ storage areas.
Digital allows for amateur film to have a place and to be seen without being separated from other works or implicitly judged in comparison with professional films. The work of the Internet
Archive then helps to limit this selection criteria or tastemaking of archival holdings. The archivists there do not want to show the importance of their holdings and the value that they have to the world, but instead allow the internet user to have access to materials of the past in order for them to create their own value from the work.
The archivists of the Internet Archive primarily provide for the content of the audiovisual material that they have.133 The archive does include some analog film items, but most of the audiovisual materials are preserved by the institutions or people that allow the Internet Archive’s archivists to host their material. The archivists at the Internet Archive then only care for the preservation of the content image of the work and not the other significant material aspects of audiovisual heritage. This can be a problem for scholars and filmmakers interested in the materiality and technology of media history.
I support the Internet Archive’s policy of appraising accessible digital works instead of focusing on the preservation of the analog or digital ‘originals’. If the works cannot be accessed
132 Kahle, “Toward Universal Access to All Knowledge,” 1193. 133 There is a material archive also included within the collecting mandate of the Internet Archive and it does include some audiovisual material. However, most of the collections available online are not within the Internet Archive’s own material film collection. Brewster Kahle, “The Internet Archive: An Interview with Brewster Kahle,” Conducted by Ana Parejo Vadillo, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century Vol. 19 (Cambridge, UK: Open Library of Humanities, 2015) n.p. 66 or known about because of the cold storage of the collection then the films are currently lost to the public and unable to be explored in any way. By having the material online, the films are more available and can be a part of society instead of being collected for storage with an uncertain level of access. The risk in mainly saving digital files is worthwhile in permitting these works from being forgotten in the archive or thrown away.
International Access
Rick Prelinger’s connection with the Internet Archive has led him to play a larger role in the argument for greater access to archival material. He has repeatedly argued for archivists to stop playing the role of ‘gatekeeper’ and to start opening the doors of their archives to the wider public to see what they have.134 The archivists at the Internet Archive play this anti-gatekeeper role of permitting as much access as possible to their material regardless of any other factors.
Prelinger has often viewed the lack of access as a way to maintain hierarchies of knowledge that prevent a wide number of people from knowing information about history.135 By allowing anyone online to have access to this information, Prelinger claims that people can intervene in history in some way and reflect on their place in society instead of only allowing that to happen through academic and intellectual work.136 This then allows people to gain more agency over the world around them through the knowledge of audiovisual or other media histories.
Some archivists still require academic or other certification in order to use the materials of their archives.137 This type of hierarchy prevents non-academics or non-industry professionals
134 Prelinger, “Archives and Access in the 21st Century,” 114-118. 135 Ibid. 136 Prelinger, “Rick Prelinger – Online Archives, Creativity, Serendipity.” 137 I have personally had to display my academic credentials in order to gain access to certain film archival collections. 67 from utilizing the material of archives and supposes that such people are not suitable for understanding the complexities of these resources. This is what the archivists at the Internet
Archive work against with their online database that supports any type of usage for their materials.
The vast array of materials can be used from the Internet Archive to create a person’s own film. The leisure or amateur pursuit of filmmaking is more viable for people working with all the available material on the Internet Archive to download and use. Approximately 7,000 of these works have been downloaded and 80,000 derivative works have been made from the material available through 2012.138 In this sense, the films present on the Internet Archive have a life after being uploaded because of the possibility of being in another person’s film. There is no hierarchy of filmmakers working with the collection. Anyone can be involved in working with the material present on the website without any monetary or bureaucratic procedures.
Prelinger heavily criticizes filmmakers that only want to show their work in a theater or another larger platform rather than the lower presentation form of the internet.139 He argues for a de-hierarchization of these film areas and finds that the internet should not be viewed as a less significant venue for filmmakers and artists.140 The internet provides a form of a viewing different from the theater or the television, but this type of viewing should not be undermined by the potential extravagance or value-adding that other venues have. By democratizing the way we look at film materials then the display of such things on the internet screen can be accepted. The online platform of viewing, in my opinion, needs to be seen as a legitimate platform to watch
138 Rick Prelinger, “Rick Prelinger Explains Why He Likes the New Orphan Works Act.” The Internet Archive generally does not keep track of exact information on number of derivative works. So, it is probably much more than this number today. 139 Prelinger, “Rick Prelinger – Online Archives, Creativity, Serendipity.” 140 Ibid. 68 works for entertainment and/or reuse. As Fossati states, it provides a new dispositif of viewing these works that sees their ‘originality’ in the content of the work instead of their material presence.141
The archivists at the Internet Archive have made great strides in making their organization more well-known to the general public through their online platform. The accessibility and popularity of the Internet Archive has allowed the organization to make a larger name for itself and direct attention to the work present on its website. As I stated earlier, the publicity following Prelinger’s inclusion of 2,000 films from his collection allowed the sales of his work to increase. Many people are aware of the Internet Archive, especially in regards to its
Wayback Machine for older webpages.142 This allows people to know more about of the type of work that its archivists are doing and allow for a greater attention to material such as amateur film. This does not directly link to more knowledge about amateur films, but the online presence of the Internet Archive works in its favor in terms of potentially gaining more interest from the public. News articles and newly archived items for free often appear from the Internet Archive which allows more knowledge to appear about the types of materials that it has.
The ability for the Internet Archive to have such a wide variety of material and a technical-focused website allows it to connect with a variety of young and old users. Archives such as Northeast Historic Film are somewhat lesser known outside of academic or archive communities.143 The Internet Archive aims for an audience that is not only looking for scholarly
141 Fossati, From Grain to Pixel, 117. 142 The Internet Archive only keeps track of the amount of downloads so one cannot be sure of the exact popularity of its website or what people actually create from the material used on it. Rick Prelinger, email interview by author, May 26, 2016. See Appendix. 143 Brook Ewing Minner, interview by author, May 16, 2016. Minner complains about the lack of knowledge of NHF even in the small town it’s located in. 69 work, but aims to appeal to people that are looking to do something during their leisure time.144
This popularity has also led it to be a significant proponent in the fight for copyrights on Orphan films. Brewster Kahle filed a lawsuit in 2007 in order to challenge current law that prevents organizations from putting works online unless they were accepted by the copyright owner.145
This challenge did not succeed, but it shows how significant the Internet Archive is within the
Orphan Film movement and how the archivists there are trying to make works such as amateur films and other non-copyrighted works more available to the public. Their work in regard to the
Orphan Film movement emphasizes the notable work they have tried to do in order to allow for a greater knowledge of material such as amateur film.
Although the Internet Archive has gone through major efforts to provide online access to material, it has not displayed any other means of engaging users to work with its material.
Amateur films are available on the Internet Archive, but it is uncertain if they are well-known or utilized in some way. There should be some way in which the archivists at the Internet Archive provide for their material in more ways than just uploading it to their website. Contacting organizations or other people could be one way to better engage wider audiences to their diverse collections of amateur film work.
Contextualization
One could argue that the role of the Internet Archive’s archivists is to provide access to their work and not to control the authenticity and preservation of such work.146 That is the role of
144 The Internet Archive has a significant number of video games, concerts and webpages that people heavily use as well. 145 Andrea Foster, “Court Rejects Archivists’ Call to Ease Copyright Limits on ‘Orphan Works’,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 2, 2007. 146 Rackley, “Internet Archive,” 2973. 70 the institution or person that uploaded the work and not the work of the Internet Archive.147
However, this then shifts a greater responsibility onto the individual or those organizations outside of the archive.
If the filmmaker of an amateur film has material on the Internet Archive, then how should they be expected to know the best ways to contextual their material? I perceive the role of the archivists at the Internet Archive as providing for the viewing of material and therefore more technically focused. Therefore, their archivists do not seek to spread a particular agenda, but in fact allow for the various agendas of everyone else. The Internet Archive’s archivists do not necessarily give international, national or local value to the materials that they hold. The user is the one responsible for creating value from the film works instead of the archivist or technicians working at the Internet Archive. This is what truly differentiates the work of the Internet Archive from that of the EYE Film Institute or Northeast Historic Film.
Organizations dedicated to national and regional areas do have the right to contextualize their work for their purpose, but those archivists should be aware of how their ‘professional’ viewpoints inscribe a meaning that does not need to be present. Films deserve to be contextualized in various ways so archivists at organizations such as the EYE and NHF can choose to display their subjective positions, but they should work to incorporate other voices through social tagging or other measures. Archivists in this sense should provide for a variety of voices and opinions to be heard or created through the access of their moving image materials.
Brewster Kahle discusses the role of the Internet Archives as “just a small hub, but the real work going on towards figuring out what should be archived and how should it be
147 Rick Prelinger, Interview by author, May 25-26, 2016. See appendix. 71 represented is really going on by thousands and thousands of enthusiasts…”148 Therefore, the
Internet Archive is an organization that provides material that other people will use and should just be seen as a hub for content sharing and using. There is no clear contextualization or introduction to much of the material on the Internet Archive website. The archivists of the
Internet Archive are also generally unaware of the vast array of material they have online.149
Should such an organization that receives so much footage, especially the personal footage of amateur film, be responsible for having the material contextualized? Should this aspect of the archival role be given to outside ‘enthusiasts’ of the collection? What if these people are not aware of the type of sensitivity and details necessary for all of the audiovisual work uploaded?
When examining the amateur film work online, I noticed that certain collections were more contextualized than others depending on the person or organization that has uploaded the materials. For example, an organization titled Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies has all of its film materials uploaded on the Internet Archive. These home movies are heavily contextualized by the family members that have donated their works to the organization.150
Therefore, these materials have stronger contextual material that will benefit researchers that are looking into these types of home movies. While the Prelinger Archives has barely any information available on most of their home movies on the Internet Archive website. Only brief descriptions such as, “Home movies of a vacation trip to various sites in Europe. Naples, Rome,
Venice, Nice, Marseille.”151 The Internet Archive then appears as an organization that does not
148 Brewster Kahle, “American Artifacts Preview: Internet Archive – Founder Brewster Kahle,” C-Span, Uploaded Nov. 6, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlyO0ZWWZ6k 149 Rick Prelinger, email interview by author, May 26, 2016. There are volunteer moderators that examine the Internet Archive website, but they seldom examine any amateur film material. 150 For example, the “[Home Movie: Bohulano Family, Amusement Park]”, Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies, accessed September 27, 2016, https://archive.org/details/CAAM_00090. 151 “[Home Movies: Into European Waters,” Prelinger Archives, accessed September 27, 2016, https://archive.org/details/0980HMIntoEuropeanWaters. 72 try to shape the materials it has under its mission, but instead solely has the materials online for viewers to contextualize or understand by themselves. It connects more with Youtube or Vimeo than with other traditional archival organizations.
Maybe this alternative proposal for archivists will particularly suit the way amateur filmmakers work with the medium. Instead of looking to the archivists to contextualize and give meaning to the materials, one should view the archive as a meeting place for content and their creators whether they are artists, scholars or the everyday individual user. However, I view certain ethical problems in regards to the presentation of this amateur film work, even if it does give agency to the creators of the material in the archive to activate their own material and give it meaning. By having a more active hand in examining the work on its servers, the archivists at the
Internet Archive can better prevent any misunderstanding that may come from stereotypical or racist depictions on its website. There is also work that may be completely lost to the public because of how incomprehensible it may appear to certain viewers. More contextual information would benefit such clips in being understood and utilized in further research and film projects.
The current state of amateur films on the Internet Archive website displays the need for greater individual or audience involvement. Scholar of personal archiving Donald Hawkens argues for the Internet Archive’s archivists to work more with community collections and criticizes their collection for being fragmented and incoherent with materials that may require or deserve restricted access.152 Such a critique shows how the archivists at the Internet Archive needs to better address the potential misunderstanding of such work. The personal work of amateur film can be problematic in terms of who is represented and how people are depicted. In
152 Aaron Ximm, “Active Personal Archiving and the Internet Archive,” in Personal Archiving: Preserving Our Digital Heritage, ed. Donald Hawkins, (Medford, NJ: Information Today Inc., 2013) 196. 73 my view, the archivists of the Internet Archive should be trying to reach out to other organizations and communities in order to understand and realize the significance of the work on its website.
Nevertheless, I argue that archivists should still question the whole professionalization of their field of study and begin to prevent a hierarchy of information about amateur film works.
Patricia Zimmermann writes that “professionalism, then, can be explicated as a system of technical rules insuring access to the economy for only a qualified and privileged few.”153
Instead of fostering this professional system which allows for the marginalization of amateur voices within the process of understanding a film work, archivists should work together with the amateur archivists of the world. The cataloging and contextualizing of the Internet Archive material should be done by not only those who upload the material, but also those who are interested in the material.
A person that uploads material onto the Internet Archive’s server is the only one able to change any of the particular information about the work. This still sees the final work as having one particular author instead of identifying the potential complexities of ownership of the work.
For example, travel films such as the one I mentioned earlier from the Prelinger Archives could be seen as not only a part of the American family that went to Europe, but also as a part of
European culture. Then why are Europeans not included within the contextualization of this work? Having a more open website that includes outside viewpoints would benefit the contextualization of such work.
153 Zimmermann, Reel Families, 3. 74
Web 2.0 technologies such as social tagging help to allow the works on the Internet
Archive to have more of a presence. Especially for films that are given barely any contextualization, it would benefit to have users describe the work more and allow it to be understood more broadly. By including audience members instead of just the filmmakers themselves, the Internet Archive can have a greater inclusivity of opinions and voices for the amateur films present in its collection. Such a method is already enacted for literature with the
Internet Archive’s Open Library, so it should become something that their archivists can create for its film materials. Otherwise, one can contact the archive if there is a problem with the display of a certain film, but it would benefit the archive to allow the access of the work to be open not only in terms of watching, but also in terms of contextualizing the material.154 This material is significant in terms of how people research and investigate aspects of the past and would help others seek to give information about the complex amateur works available on the website.
Without more connection to its audience the archivists of the Internet Archive play the role of being a collection of stock footage material for their users instead of attracting a deeper engagement or interactivity with its archived footage. Access should not only be the availability of content on the internet, but also about finding an audience as well. Many people are not aware of the notable material on the Internet Archive’s website and amateur film in general has yet to be heavily developed in terms of its visibility. Therefore, it should be the role of archivists to try to provide a future for their material that is more than just filling internet space and waiting for a user to discover it. The Internet Archive’s archivists replicate the problem of preserving film in
154 Rick Prelinger also claims that there were no complaints with any of the amateur film material on the website. Email interview with author, May 26, 2016. 75 storage and waiting for a researcher to discover the work’s significance. By having films online, they do not necessarily create an audience for the material. Archivists need to work towards engaging with users in order for them to discover and investigate the complexity of the film material on the Internet Archive website.
Conclusion
The Internet Archive represents the shift from archives worrying about the preservation of ‘originals’ to the ability of accessing their wide collections. The Internet Archive and its work as a digital repository for audiovisual material stands at a critical point in the argument for more accessible collections in the 21st century. The popularity and accessibility of the organization reflects the concerns of a society that is becoming increasingly dependent on the items available on the internet. The people that make films no longer need to even pick up a camera, but just need to go online and put together material. The archivists at the Internet Archive are able to provide for these new users of audiovisual material that no longer want to play a passive role in the collecting and accessing of moving image material. Therefore, amateur films and amateur filmmakers can truly have a voice in an archive that breaks down all the hierarchies of collecting and accessing works such as the Internet Archive does. Despite this strength, I still argue for greater interactivity with the viewers and users of the Internet Archive’s materials in order for them to be more well-known and contextualized by audiences in the future.
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Conclusion
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The EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Northeast Historic Film and the Internet Archive all represent unique and different examples of contemporary amateur film archiving. My analysis of the collecting, accessing and contextualizing of amateur films by these institutions has yielded significant results that reflect the needs for greater interactivity between the public and the archival profession. In this section, I conclude my argument with an assessment of my results and pinpoint further areas of study for archivists and academics to build on my viewpoint.
Collecting
I critiqued the collecting of amateur films according to the aesthetic taste of the organizations or archivists involved. Archivists at institutions such as the EYE Film Institute still marginalize amateur film by negatively assessing it alongside professional film works. The selectivity of this archive causes collections to be rejected on the merits of taste. I argue that such a selectivity should not be a part of current archival acquisition policies.
Northeast Historic Film works against such selectivity of institutions by preserving any works related to norther New England. Archivists at NHF collect all variety of amateur films and do not seek to convey the aesthetic taste of its regional film collection. This clearly represents a manner in which archivists could look to in preventing traditional archival practices from marginalizing this material. This may seem infeasible because of space constraints, but the
Internet Archive also presents an alternative that supports wider collecting parameters.
The Internet Archive does not have a clear acquisition policy and allows anyone to upload their digitized amateur works for digital preservation without any costs. The archivists there are able to hold many digital files of film material which prevents any type of selectivity 78 that would disregard amateur works. Individuals and institutions that utilize the Internet
Archive’s service are then able to decide what is valuable to save instead of the institution itself.
Archivists at the Internet Archive and NHF represent a decentralized approach to amateur film collecting that allows the individuals that use the archive to have more power over what they want to preserve. Although the Internet Archive allows for such a wide array of works through their policies, their archivists as well as the ones at the EYE and NHF do not seek out works that might otherwise not find them. By having a more active acquisition policy, archivists can work against societal notions of value and collect works that might otherwise be lost within a person’s film collection.
Archivists should still strive to foster connections with communities and individuals in preserving work and allowing for a wider knowledge of the collecting they do. I argue that greater research should occur to find works that are still outside of the archives in order to discover unknown amateur works. If archivists are unable to search for works then scholars and other researchers should take it upon themselves to perform this type of work. Archives do not hold everything and there is work of potential importance outside of these institutions that needs to be interrogated in order to assess its research value for the future.
Access
Questions of ethics surround the ability of film to be shown on digital or analog or even at different viewing locations, but these issues are usually not discussed in terms of amateur film.
This work, often far removed from how it was originally seen, does not have many advocates demanding for more restricted forms of access. The institutions I analyze do not have confining notions of how amateur film should be viewed. However, the EYE does refer to the filmmakers for any access related event as opposed to NHF or the Internet Archive. Archivists as well as 79 amateur filmmakers are usually trying to allow for the viewing and using of amateur film in as many ways possible without regard for its viewing format or film dispositif.
Underfunded archives such as NHF need to work to allow for a greater amount of their collection to be digitized and accessible to the public. The old-fashioned forms of access that
NHF has needs to change to allow for online viewing that can attract greater audience interest.
Through greater collaboration with other archives and organizations, NHF should try to achieve more support for digitization and access procedures. Working together with other institutions can foster beneficial connections between regions and peoples of the country that should better provide for their amateur collections.
I assert that online access is a central way to allow more viewership of the amateur films in an archive’s collection. Copyright is one major issue that continues to prevent access to audiovisual material. Despite this, both the archivists at the Internet Archive and the EYE Film
Institute have worked hard to provide wide forms of digital access for amateur film material.
Along with this access, all of my case studies have also worked to showcase some of these works through reuse, exhibitions or symposiums.155 Such access events have allowed for a greater knowledge of amateur film works. By mixing both online and real-time events, amateur film’s significance can have a wider awareness and interest for the general public.
In my view, amateur film should be present in more diverse forms of access that allow for a greater audience awareness of this material. Solely putting material online is not enough.
More work needs to be done to engage and reach out to audiences through online and other platforms. Archivists at the Archivio Nazionale de Film di Famiglia (National Archive of Home
Movies) in Italy have created online games from their amateur film collections such as Play the
155 Admittedly, the Internet Archive does not showcase the reused work, but does provide for its collection to be reused. 80
City to investigate geographical views of Italian cities throughout history.156 Such events can allow for a greater knowledge of amateur film and permit a greater interactivity with the public and the archive. In my view, archivists should continue to create new and inventive ways to allow for more awareness of this rich film form.
Contextualization
Communities are often seen as the answer to many problems in regards to the complexities of amateur film contextualization. With a greater reliance on technology, social tagging has gained prominence in certain circles as a way to include the public in contextualizing amateur film material.157 Despite this desire to include greater input from individuals through social tagging, none of the organizations I studied have gone through any testing to include this as a part of their practice.
Northeast Historic Film often reaches out to communities to help contextualize their work. Their archivists have not been able to digitize enough amateur film material to allow for any social tagging projects, but they have worked to hold meetings with communities to get information about the films that they have. This contextualization method displays how important such contact can be to understand amateur film material. Such a direct involvement with communities helps to make the work of the archive more personal and allow for greater input from individuals outside of the archival profession.
156 “Play the City,” Archivio Nazionale de Film di Famiglia , accessed September 27, 2016, http://playthecity.homemovies.it/. 157 See works such as: Julia Noordegraaf, “Crowdsourcing Television’s Past,” TMG, Tijdshrift voor Mediageschiedenis (Amsterdam, Het Spinhuis, 2011) 108-120. Oomen, Johan, Lotte Baltussen, Sander Limonard, Maarten Brinkerink, Annelies van Ees, Lora Aroyo, Just Vervaart, Kamil Afsar, and Riste Gligorov. “Emerging Practices in the Cultural Heritage Domain - Social Tagging of Audiovisual Heritage”. In Proceedings of the Websci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-line, 2010.
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The Internet Archive’s archivists also allow their individual users to include contextual material that they deem suitable for their film work. This often leads to work that is without any contextual information and can create an environment where people may become offended by the representation of certain communities or people. Although none of the organizations I studied have received complaints, potentially sensitive material present online could lead to misunderstanding and confusion. The same misunderstanding could occur for the EYE in terms of its lack of contact with Indonesians for the contextualization of its amateur work in the Dutch
East Indies.
I posit that archivists working at the Internet Archive should spearhead certain movements to gain greater involvement from their users through web 2.0 technology.
Considering the success of their social tagging events with Open Library, the Internet Archive should also allow for this wider audience involvement with their amateur film material. Archives such as the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, which holds a number of amateur films, has included social tagging as a part of its online platform. I contend that more social tagging experiments should be studied in terms of how these contextualization methods incorporate society, receive useful information, and achieve high levels of involvement. Such methods such as social tagging are in their early stages and need organizations that are willing to experiment and explore the possibilities of including a wider engagement with various online users.
In conclusion, my argument has shown the need for archivists of amateur film to be more interactive with other organizations and individuals. The archival profession must allow for more possibilities of working together and including the user in its process of collecting, accessing and contextualizing amateur films. By taking the accessibility of the amateur film material as the focal point of the archival mission, archivists can work toward including as many voices within 82 their processes in order to best provide for the diversity of audiovisual representation. I claim that amateur film deserves greater attention and through more open archival procedures archivists can support its growth and awareness. 83
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__ “Morphing History into Histories: From Amateur Film to the Archive of the Future.” The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists Vol. 1(1). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, April 2001. 108-130.
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Appendix Interviews with Institutions
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Interview with the Amateur Film Collection Specialist, Dorette Schootemeijer, at the EYE Film Institute Netherlands: 91
Nicholas Carbone: When did the EYE start collecting amateur films? Why did they start and for how long have they been going? Dorette Schootemeijer: In 1988, the Filmmuseum changed when Eric de Kuyper and Hoos Blotkamp came. They both are art historians I think. She was a working at the ministry of culture here first. He was the intellectual. They both get this opdracht(mission) to do the job. Then the real things started. The Filmmuseum started getting a lot of material. You have to have an idea of what’s in the vaults and then formulating their ideas on what we want to do with it. Before that period, it was more amateur work. Only providing storage and they were happy to have it. At the same time, if Jan de Vaal, the first director, went to France he gave one of the copies away. Because he thought, that’s a good idea, to give it to them. But then of course it was a copy related to the Netherlands which is more of our interest than theirs. Just to have an idea. It’s an example, it’s one of the bad examples of course. There were of course a lot of good examples because he took care of everything he found. There were of course already a lot of amateur films, reduction copies because this is different isn’t it. You have the reduction copy of fiction films which were there already because they had their relation in the Netherlands or somewhere like institutes, educational institutes and so on. After being abandoned they came into the museum. This is not what I was planning on archiving. I didn’t count them in the whole collection. I would put them aside. Our collection is about 1900 titles and then counting collections of Indonesian films, of the former Dutch East Indies which are actually also documentaries. And some fiction and so on. So, it is a bit difficult to differentiate because it is a bit of a historical collection. There’s a part of the former Dutch East Indies collection, there are the amateur films and there are the reduction copies. And they all were together at a certain point in the small film collection. At a certain moment there was a policy change and it started when the man who was head of the Smalfilmmuseum which is now in Beeld en Geluid, died suddenly and a lot of the important titles are with us and a lot of the former 16mm or 8mm film which were really amateur material, not related to other things in our collections we donated before that time to the Smalfilmmuseum. But they didn’t do much with it back then, Beeld en Geluid. Now they do. It was a sleeping collection. We had to decide what to do and then there was the Home Movie Day coming up which was quite interesting. And we were of course befriended with the people from SuperSens. Of course there was a lot of people in-house that make their own amateur material. At a certain point we thought, yeah we should participate. We’re going to have a Home Movie Day ourselves. It was in 2007. As your looking back in policy terms there were a lot of changes in ideas with this collection. The people watching amateur material were not participants as in the beginning now there could be everyone, you and me, so there was this change. And the other change was the reuse of the digital area. So, we had to reformulate our ideas and our point of view. So, 2007. Some years before that it started already. We had of course amateur material which we were very proud of. But this was always material related to the rest of the collection. That’s why I gave you the short explanation of amateur film at the EYE. There are the films about the former Dutch East Indies. There are films on important historical events, periods. But also important persons, captains of industry, authors, painters, artists…they also made their amateur material and the material came in the museum. And we didn’t have an idea if we wanted to have it. And if it fit in a program then it was viewed and selected. It was decided what to do with it. There were of course the private, amateur work of the professionals. As you know, Joris Ivens, Tuschinsky. 92
There’s also the found footage material which is made with artistic films, experimental films, and with unknown amateur material or known amateur material. In 2007, there also was a turning point because at that moment the project Images for the Future started. So, there was a lot of money coming into the Filmmuseum. Finally we had the opportunity to have somebody to view everything or to try to view everything because I started to do so at that point. At the halfway point, another 600-700 films came in. We started with Home Movie Day in 2007 and then a lot of people became more aware of the preservation of amateur works by the Filmmuseum. So, the news spread and we got more material. Before 2000, no amateur material was coming in because people stopped collecting it or it was so specialized that it wasn’t getting to the Filmmuseum anymore. The amateur and the safety reduction copies and so started to come in large quantities to the Filmmuseum from people who died and also from those who wanted to clean up the houses of their parents. Every February to mid-summer we get a lot of this material. And we always relate to cleaning up people’s attics and so on. Very pragmatic. This is the way it formed. NC: Then had the policy changed in 2007 or before that? Where instead of only collecting material by historical events or by artists you started collecting material of anyone? DS: That’s true. But I must say that there is one thing we try to avoid. Of course Beeld en Geluid is collecting amateur film and they did already for a long time because they have the collection of the Smalfilmmuseum. And afterwards they did so as well. They got material from people really working in film leagues. The regional leagues and so on. So, we tried to avoid collecting that kind of material. But that’s not always possible because people don’t know the history of the filmmaker. Even if it’s their own father they forget to mention that he is into such a league. Of course we both, Beeld en Geluid and EYE are both collecting and we share in this mission. The Dutch government gave us both this mission and we really want to do this together. We also have a lively dialogue and exchange of collections in a way. I imagine once a year. If I get the idea that it’s not for us, I immediately send them to Beeld en Geluid. Or if it comes in and then I find out, then I’ll send it later on. There are these two opportunities. NC: Do you work with them on their Amateurfilmplatform? DS: Yeah, we are also sharing that. I must say there are only four or five films now from us on there. Only the winners of the Home Movie Day over the last years. We have the intention to do more and if there was not this moving and all of the problems of the collection getting locked up and doing all the backlogs immediately on a short notice I would have already sent much more material to them for the platform. Of course if you want to do so you have to clear up your rights. Which is a task we really should do and we didn’t do so for home movies. Before sending materials for the platform we have to clear any rights issues. NC: So, there are issues sometimes. DS: Of course. If people give their collection to EYE, we don’t claim the rights unlike the Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid which says make a notation and sign it, we claim the rights from now. We, at the EYE, say no we don’t want to do so. You are the owner, it’s your claim and we are going to negotiate if somebody wants to work with the material which is much more difficult. It’s a bit more difficult. We think it’s more correct. You can also argue for their point of view. It’s much easier. 93
NC: So, when the EYE takes amateur films you don’t say you no longer have the rights to those films. You say no we’ll ask you whenever we do anything with it? DS: Yeah, we ask them if we can use it for putting it on a server. We can ask them if they want everything back if it has vinegar syndrome or if it has to be thrown away. We ask them. It takes much more time. It’s more negotiating. That’s our policy. These are the two differences. They do the Small film collection and they have the Amateur Film Leagues and they want to own the rights. And we have all the collections we just started to collect since 2007, but we don’t claim the rights. But we want to work together by mail and so on to talk. NC: Do you also talk to the other regional archives? DS: Yes, of course. We have already a lot of material from the regional archives if it is amateur or if it is more documentary. Most of the time it is a documentary of the region. And they have it in a reduction copy or an extra copy. And we have already the original and they don’t want to keep it. They don’t have good conditions for it so then it comes here and we organize digital copies for them. This is also a part of the job, but it is not so much on amateur more on documentary materials. Although there are some interesting amateur collections coming from some of the regional archives. NC: Are you selective about the amateur films that you take in? DS: Yeah, of course. We do the selection at the doorstep. This is also my job. I do it for all the film material coming into the EYE. So, first of all I have to think it over if it is for us. I was also responsible for the large Dutch film collection, but for other collections I know a bit less about it. I have my colleagues and curators to ask if they think it is important. In fact they are responsible for the other things. So, there is the selection at the doorstep and then the material is coming in. Then there is the viewing of the material and then there are two responsibilities or you leave it to the people working at the registration area. They write down some technical facts, some basic information about the material. The thing with amateur is that they throw away from time to time the cans which have all the information and then they put it in a new can and then I have the film in a new can and I don’t have anything. In the end, this is why I am the only curator doing the registration from time to time because I need to have all this information. And saying it is not totally true because we are doing all these backlogs in this transitional period and my colleagues are also doing backlogs and registration because from time to time it is more handy to do it by yourself. It works much quicker. And then at certain end you are looking at the criteria for having the film and the film is not sleeping in the archive, but having it digitized or analogue duplicated. We see if it is exemplary for the collection. We see if it is stylistic, thematically or technically in good shape or interesting. Then we see if it fits within the large EYE collection because of these two things. One thing is the context and then the other thing is the appreciation. So, these two things are the criteria actually, differentiated of course. For a collection of twenty examples you choose five or seven. It must be very interesting if there is more. But there are from time to time there are collections which are really gems. NC: So, one person brings in twenty films and you would look at them and maybe take five or seven? DS: Yeah. 94
NC: So you then are judging them on the same criteria you would judge the rest of the collection. DS: Yeah. And the thing is that you have art historians or film historians and you have a really long experience viewing and judging films. Or judging things around you. It is also the way of looking at things, but maybe you know this. This is your background. The way you’re looking at things. NC: It’s very subjective. DC: Yeah, of course. This of course was one of the ideas of Hoos Blotkamp and Eric de Kuyper. This was one of the points they really made for their policy. Of course it is subjective and of course we are not from the street. We have this educational eye. You have this educational viewpoint. This is why besides digitizing the things we also put them in the vaults in the best condition because there could be a new generation that could rethink it and change their mind on these films. NC: Do you try to contact other organizations if you don’t want all of the films? DS: Yes, but that is quite a process. As I told you we don’t claim the rights, we have an owner’s statement according to the museum world and then if you don’t want the material first you go back to the former owners then you ask them. Even if it is a donation. There is no difference in donating or having a temporary year. In both situation you go back to them to ask what to do with it, if they want it back. Then if they don’t want it back we will put it on a list. We did so with a large collection of the KIT (Koninklijke Instituut voor Tropen). They donated us at a certain point around 850 titles which are actually put beside to be demolished and then one of the former researchers from here saw it and said no let’s bring it to the Filmmuseum. It came in with the remark, you may do what you want with it but even then we ask, because there was some amateur material, we ask if it is true after doing a year of all the research. We took most of the amateur material and some of the documentaries which were of interest to our collection, but more for a lot of news reels. We first put it on a list. We published it somewhere like FIAF so people could address themselves to us to ask for titles, but finally we sent nearly everything to the Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid because they wanted to have it. Of course the Dutch news reels should be there so they were already excluded from this list. NC: So, then you kept some of the material like amateur film? DS: Yeah, we kept some of the material like amateur film and Beeld en Geluid got the news reels and so on and a lot of film produced with money from the government because they own the rights of that material so they should have it and then there were some other titles going to a South American archive which we gave them. We are already working for years. I started in 1997 at the archive, before that I had a research job here. But actually we had already started to think about deaccessioning films. Actually it’s always a long process. Deaccession is not something you start today and then at the end of the month everything you don’t want is out of the vaults. Already for two years we’ve been doing this before the move and we have some work for the next two years. NC: Are there ways that you are searching for more amateur film material? DS: Yeah, we do. If I know there are collections I try to…For instance, I know that a lot of the captains of industry from the late 19th century, they have made their own family films and we 95 have already a lot in the archive. And from time to time I try to find out where is more, but this is not structural I must say. The only structural thing is with Home Movie Day and then it’s always on selected themes. NC: Do you have people come in with their 8mm reels and you just show them on Home Movie Day? DS: This is what we do. But the last two years we couldn’t because of this move…We did it the first four years and then the last three years we did it a bit different. Already three years ago in the museum we found out that it was not so logical with all these….We had projection in the program here upstairs and then downstairs we had people coming in with their materials and the people from restoration and the P&P[Preservation and Presentation] students giving some information on what to do with it or helping to project it. As we found out it was not so logical because people would get lost in the building. There is not a logical movement to get from downstairs to upstairs here. So, people were lost in the program and they went to other parts of the program. And we had three different parts. So, at part two we lost half of the group and at part three there was nearly nobody. So, we found out it was not such a good idea. So, then we decided to just not do this for some years and get an idea on how to transform it. Then next year we had only a smaller program combined with another film program in the house which was pragmatic. It was also on…I can’t remember what it was. But there was something else in-house which made it a bit difficult. There was somebody planning it who didn’t realize we had Home Movie Day as well. So, then we did it on a bit of a smaller scale. And of course last year we were told not to do a large program. So, we did something from the collection which was already there which was also a kind of pilot for the new building. Because in the new building we are planning to give twice a year a program with large amateur films – amateur documentaries or amateur travelogues or so on – which we have in the collection. We have very interesting, large films which are with a lot of information, families still living and people interested to tell about it. So, actually in the upcoming years. Probably not this year, I still have a lot to do with it. So, we changed it a lot. It’s of course a transitional thing from a new building. In the old building there were no problems and everything was nearby. We only had two screening rooms. So, we gave a double bill program which was all very easy. Everyone was walking in and out. It was quite good. There were a lot of people. Actually the first years we put announcements out. Now we get twenty films, but at that time we would get five hundred. So, there was really a need when we started and the need changed. This is why we also thought we should rethink how to get in new material or how to get it under everybody’s attention. You[NC] also wanted the community, this is part of the community thing. So, there’s Home Movie Day. Of course there’s the Amateurfilmplatform. Then you want to know about contextualizing things and do we sit with the family. Yes, we do. If they come with their collection. There are two possibilities. If you want to have your collection in the EYE collection you can give us a mail or can email. You can give a short note by mail. Or you can give us a call. Or from the reception desk I get a telephone number and I can call you back or mail you back. And then there is the possibility to give the material to a free post address so you don’t have to pay for it. I only ask you to wrap it in and put your address and your name in it. Of course I ask to put a list of titles in it if you have it and to send it to me personally to Vijfhuizen or now Asterweg. And the other option is that you bring it personally to me or give it to the reception desk or you come and I’ll invite you. We’ll make an appointment and I’ll give you one hour. I’ll put something on the viewing table and I’ll ask you what it is and give you a coffee or something 96 like that. So, a lot of people do this and if it’s really interesting material and good quality then I’ll take more than one hour. And if I think this is not good quality…Of course you see it in two to three films if somebody doesn’t have a good camera or somebody is doing something the whole time [makes jerking movement]. Then I’ll give them less than an hour, honestly. From time to time, people want more to talk about the collection than to view it because they already have it digitized. This is also a possibility. They give it after they’ve digitized it. We also have our contact with Picturae or SuperSens. Or with the super8 in Rotterdam. They know that we want it after being digitized. Because people want to get rid of it so it works out. NC: Do you contact some other organizations with the amateur films? Like in the Dutch East Indies. DS: Yeah, of course we have contact with Nielt which is in Amsterdam as well. It’s historical, they own the war documentation and we have contact with the museum. They own a large collection of the Indies and they gave a large part to us, reduction copies or amateur material. And do we have more contact in the Indies? I think yeah. Frank [Roumen], on the level of our collections with people in Indonesia and Batavia. There is the link and they know what we have. And they can have a look in our database and have an idea. And we can send them links and so on. Actually they come here. From time to time we have people from Indonesia or people doing their PhD, coming to do research here. And we stay in contact. NC: So, there might not be a clear level of contact. But obviously they can… DS: Yeah, that’s true. There’s not contact the whole time. NC: ….you contacting them for representation… DS: The only thing is maybe the film apparatus that we haven’t talked about. Of course we collect them. We make a selection of it, but it’s not my specialty. Of course if I get boxes which I think I haven’t seen this yet. Then I’ll pile them up and send them to the people that collect them. [Reading from my list of questions] Are there ways you are trying to engage with people? Yes, researchers and we’re working actually with some festivals and I’m doing research for them. I’m sitting in there for their meetings and so on. Or we keep in contact by mail. It’s for instance the Beeld voor Beeld festival or…So, it’s ethnological or ethnographical…and so on. The Koningin Instituut voor the Tropics and so on. And we don’t do video… NC: You don’t do video or digital… DS: …or digital. No. And this is more or less…This is more or less a policy thing, but also because if you’re going to do that then you have to say that you have to have the opportunity to really store them well and open it up which is not the point at the moment. I am the only one and I am working seventy percent of the time. And I’m also having this loket, this window where you can ask for the collection, giving it to us, so…It’s a bit difficult. NC: Is there a selection between which films you digitize or not? Or do you usually try to digitize as much as you can? DS: We normally digitize as much as we can. The thing is also that we have a scanner for digitizing in the house and this is the thing where there’s a budget for it. So, it’s more pragmatic than a choice. 97
NC: Are there any other complaints that you received about the access of some of the amateur film? DS: No, never. They are happy that they get some of the material digitized and I’ll tell them when it’s coming in that it takes about one year or from time to time three years. Then at a certain moment they’ll get our selection on DVD and if they want to have the rest digitized I’ll give them the opportunity to do it once and I’ll organize it for them. NC: Is there any ethics you have in regards to how you provide access to things, particularly in regards to Indonesia, like the Dutch East Indies material? Is there any ethics there? DS: I think on that part of the collection we did everything. We digitized, we did either analogue or digital copies and everything, the ethics are…. NC: For contextualization? DS: It’s a bit difficult to understand. NC: Like when you present it or show them online. DS: No, we don’t. The amateur film material of the Dutch East Indies are not yet contextualized. We are thinking of doing it as well, but then we wanted to start with the material from families that give their benefit and there are also a lot of amateur films which are given back by the Japanese government in ’49 which are orphans. Of course this material we really want to give it back to… NC: Indonesia? DS: Yes, Indonesia or the people who made them, relatives or families. We’re not yet there. We don’t have so many digitized yet. So, this is one of the things we want to do in the near future. It’s always with the logo and it’s on a low resolution. It’s more to get the information than to copy because that’s not what you want. NC: So, most of the material still needs to be contextualized? DS: Yeah, that’s right. July 18, 2018, in person interview
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Skype Interview with Brook Ewing Minner, Executive Director of Northeast Historic Film: 99
Nicholas Carbone: Do you abide by a certain type of ethics in regards to how you provide for access for amateur film material? Brook Ewing Minner: The way that we provide access to different collections is determined by the deed and agreement that we make with the donor. In most cases when collections of film are given to us they are usually family films, home movies. Usually the donors sign over all the rights and give us permission to use the film in any way we want. The way that it gets used is twofold. In some cases, if researchers or scholars are using our film for their work or study, non- commercial uses basically, then we provide access in that way. And other times we do sell stock footage. So, there also this commercial aspect of things. So, in some cases like I said, the donors say you can use this film in any way you want. And then in that case and 99 percent of the time we use it in both ways: commercial and non-commercial. Sometimes the donors do not want the film being used commercially and they note that in the deed and we are okay with that. In other cases though there are more restrictions such as donors saying we have to actually contact them or some designated member of the family if the film is going to be used outside of this place [NHF]. So, sometimes it’s okay for in-house viewing or research. And then it can get more restricted from there. But it’s very few cases, honestly, that have those restrictions. Now, I mean it is a little fuzzy once in a while. Particularly when it comes to stock footage. We don’t really know once we sell the clips how they are necessarily going to be used or the context they are going to be put into. I cannot think of any cases that I know of from our history here where we have decided against selling stock footage or not allowing the use of home movies because we had real concerns about the way that it would be used. But I could certainly imagine situations. For instance, lots of home movies have images of young children. They could be in various states of undress. I have a young child. She is always running around without her clothes on. I guess I can imagine if that came up and we felt uncomfortable, I think it would be a case- by-case decision. And we would really talk about that as a staff and judge our own comfort levels. We don’t have an ethical statement or anything that has been adopted as policy. For the most part it seems fine and it has been fine. We haven’t had any problems. That’s how we look at it. NC: So, usually with those films you’re getting from a family, do you usually think about those other organizations that might have been involved with that film? For example, with travel films or ethnographic films, do you try to contact other organizations in other countries about showing those works? BEM: You mean like if we had a collection that had footage from another place would we contact another film archive in that place to let them know we had it? NC: Yeah. BEM: That’s an interesting question. I don’t think we have done that actively, although various collections that we’ve done work on, grant-funded projects or things we’ve done more work with, we’ve certainly in the course of our research have made those connections. Here’s a good example: We have an amateur film that was shot here in Maine in 1920 when Maine was celebrating its first one hundred years of statehood and the film has recently been getting a lot of 100 attention. And because in 2020 Maine would be celebrating 200 years and historians, scholars and others are beginning to talk about what we’re going to do. But the film that we have from 1920 depicts Maine Native Americans that were part of the celebration, but they did this long weekend in a park campout in Portland. They weren’t portrayed in their homes or even in their towns. It’s confusing footage to watch and I’ve been growing increasingly concerned about the fact that so many people now know that we have this footage. It’s pretty rare. It is being used and shown in small private groups now, like with scholars. But I can envision it getting bigger. So, we have in just the past couple of weeks we have contacted some Native American scholars in Maine and showed them the film. We sent them a copy and asked them to watch it and to help us have a better understanding of what we are seeing and what is really happening there. We make those connections more intentionally by project. We don’t go through our collections generally and try to reach out to a local institution or person to add context unless we’re faced with something that seems like we need it. That’s a current example. This sort of gets to your third question “Have you included the community?” Yeah, so that’s a time that we have. But we have done it in other ways too. In fact, one of the things that we do regularly, in fact, I did it just last week, is to show various communities around Maine and even further around New England footage from their hometown. And to encourage them to help us identify people and places that are in the films. We just did that here in this town [Bucksport, Maine] last week. It was fantastic. About 100 people showed up. One of our staff members was in the audience and was making notes so that when someone in the audience would say ‘Oh, that’s so and so,’ or whatever, just throwing out information, we do make notes and we do add those to the collection file. And Northeast Historic Film has been doing that kind of thing formally and informally for a long time. And it’s so valuable and with the really old film and with even at this point work from the 40s and 50s, if you don’t get that firsthand information and knowledge relatively soon it’s gonna be lost. So, that has been a practice of ours and it’s really fun to do and I think it has been very successful. NC: I know you don’t have a lot of material online, but have you thought of doing some type of project where people are looking at things online like a social tagging project? BEM: Yeah, we have thought about that. And I think that’s been an idea that has been kicked around here for several years. We have struggled to really get a body of our collection either on our website or on our Youtube channel. Although in the past year we have added more than 350 videos to our website. So, they are increasing. So, we’re not setup at this point to do that. The only thing that we do that’s similar is that sometimes if there’s an interesting clip that we come across or something that we’re all kind of curious about what’s going on or where it was, we do post on social media, basically on our Facebook page, and we ask people to comment. And that has also been very successful. There are also, I don’t know if this is a thing there in the Netherlands, but there’s a lot of Facebook pages that are kind of closed groups that are for people that grew up in a certain town. So, when we can we will post, if we know that the footage is from a particular town we will ask if we can be in that group and we will post there too. And we always get a ton of information that way. Very rarely do we not get our questions answered. So, it’s happening in a bit of an offhand, casual way. 101
NC: What type of research do cataloguers at NHF undergo for home movies? I know that you have done cataloguing projects. BEM: We have done cataloguing projects. Cataloguing moving images is very complicated. And slow-going. It really does require near first-hand knowledge of the community or the place. And so, in some cases, we have used local people and asked them to come in and help us identify what we’re seeing. In other cases, the collections come to us very well-documented. It’s really kind of amazing how well people have documented their own home movie collection. I was just working with a collection last week and we had some filmmakers here that were doing research and in the collection file when the films came to us it was nearly shot-by-shot commentary of what you were looking at which is just amazing. But then there are then times when we don’t have that information and we don’t have a local connection to get it and so the cataloguing is pretty bare bones. And the result, of course there are a lot of things that are not ideal, but one result is that if we don’t know what’s in there then we can’t tell anyone else and they’ll never find it. And that’s true with a lot of what we have. And at this point we do not have a full time cataloger on staff. The cataloguing that’s being done is very high-level collection-level, very basic. There is nobody here, except when we’re doing particular research requests, that is, watching the films and making particular viewing notes. I am actually talking with a guy who is a librarian who works for the state of Maine and he’s very interested in our work, but can’t be here on site. He is interested in having me send him DVDs that he would watch and make viewing notes for us. Just as a volunteer. And I think that kind of thing has been done with various people over the years. It’s very slow-going and it’s really hard sometimes to know what you’re looking at even if you are familiar with the place. You because they’re home movies. They are not always perfect. It’s a challenge for us, for sure. NC: Have you considered including more technical aspects of filmmaking online? I know that in your in-house exhibition space you have devices for amateur filmmaking. BEM: You mean like highlighting this equipment collection by putting it on our website? NC: Yes. BEM: It’s a great idea. We actually have some beautiful photos that were taken a few years ago that I just learned about. I’ve just been here over a year. I’m still relatively new. We do have a fantastic collection of equipment. Cameras, projectors, editing equipment…you name it. And we get more all the time. I don’t think a week goes by where we don’t get a phone call. Or an email from someone who has a piece of equipment that they want to donate. We do maintain an internal database of equipment itself. It’s not publicly available, but we can search it. It is a very cool collection and I think it would be nice to draw more public attention to it. We are staging some events. We’ve got two on the books right now. One is next week in this local area where we’re doing informal cocktail party things in different communities. We’re bringing projectors. We’ll project actual film. So, that’s kind of a low key way to let people know that we’ve got these things. We have some of them on display in the lobby of the theater, but it is really an extraordinary kind of collection. And I think it has been too under the radar. We do have an annual fellowship that we award to a student or a scholar who’s working with amateur film. And this year’s fellow who will be here in the fall to do his work is actually looking at our cameras and some of the more technical capabilities of the area he is studying, which is the 1920s. We’re really happy that that is going to be a part of what he is doing. 102
NC: That’s interesting…I guess I want to talk about the collecting aspect as well. Do you accept all of the amateur films that you receive? All the local material? BEM: Our collecting policy is that if it was made in northern New England which we define as Massachusetts up, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine… So, if the film was shot there or if the filmmaker was from there. Usually it’s a mix. People shot their home movies, but also their vacations…And if the conditions that are put on the gift aren’t so crazy restrictive to the point where we will never be able to use it then we take it. And we are actively collecting and we add new collections all the time. At least one or two a month, I would say. A lot of time what would happen, because we transfer people’s old movies and it’s a revenue source for us, a lot of time what would happen is that once they are transferred and they’re on DVD or they have a digital file people then donate the collection to us at that point. Because they don’t have a projector and they can’t watch it anyway. So, now it’s been made accessible to them. That’s one way, but also people also just find us or hear about us in one way or another. And we have a pretty comprehensive intake questionnaire that we use, going back to the cataloging question, to try to be proactive about getting as much information as we can at the time. And then at this point collections are brought in and given an accession number and a very basic cataloguing record is created for them at the collection level. And they are given a location in the vault which is noted with their collection. And then in they go. We also oftentimes when we are taking in collections, they will have the camera or the cameras that were used. And so that’s fantastic and we take them and keep those together as a collection whenever we can. NC: Do you also have connections with amateur film groups and try to reach out with other organizations to find more amateur film material? BEM: Yeah, we have lots of great institutional connections to other archives like us, in this country and around the world. It’s a pretty small professional world actually. NHF has been around for thirty years so we’ve got good friends and connections all over the place. And that’s helpful in that we do sometimes get contact advice from someone who has their family movies, but they grew up in Texas and there’s not a lot of it that has anything to do with northern New England. So, we can try to help them find a place if they are looking to donate. In terms of reaching out to those partners in order to add to our own collection, not really. I think some of that is just a function of staffing. We can easily employ another 1-2 full time people except we could not afford to do that. But the work is there and if we had someone who was actively dealing with the collection on a day-to-day basis I think I would be comfortable being a little more aggressive about what we were seeking out. But it’s not something that we have the capacity to do unfortunately. Every once in a while we have alerts and things set up so we do things… We bought a collection off of Ebay recently that we saw and it just seemed like a good fit. But you know it’s pretty random that kind of thing. It’s not happening in any systematic way. NC: What are the types of projects that researchers have done with your collection? BEM: There’s been so many over the years that the collection has really amazed me with the diversity of projects around amateur film and home movies. There’s a book that is coming out later this year that is co-edited by one of our founders and it’s a very exciting project. It’s really looking at home movies through an aesthetic lens. Focusing on the aesthetic value of home movies. It’s pretty groundbreaking. I think we all realized there can be some beautiful home movies, but this is a scholarly book that is being published by Indiana University Press and the 103 various authors that wrote chapters are mostly art historians. So, we are pretty excited about that. It’s also gonna have an advanced e-book component so that users and scholars that are using the book can go online and watch the films which have been retransferred and are all works from the NHF collection and are some of our most important collections. So that is sort of one take. We get contacted very regularly by people who are history scholars who are researching particular communities or a certain point in time like the Maine centennial film that I mentioned which is getting a lot of play these days. We do work off and on with musicians and other kinds of visual artists who want home movies and amateur film just as part of their artistic project. So, then it is less thematic. They just want that feel. Which is kind of cool, but goes back to the earlier question around when these films leave us we don’t have a lot of control over how their being contextualized and I would be very sad to think that somebody’s family film could be portrayed in a less than positive light. We’ve never heard of that happening, but you know it could and I know that. The list goes on and on…I’m working right now with a filmmaker who is making a documentary about a town here in Maine that has recently become the home to a fair number of Somali immigrants. There’s been a lot of tension and Maine is a very very white place, so that is happening. Previously, the same town was home to a large number of French Canadian immigrants who worked in textile mills. So, the whole town has been shaped by its many years with waves of outsiders. So, that’s his project. So, he is looking for footage from this town. As much as we’ve got. Enough to inform his research, but maybe to be used. So, it is really quite diverse actually. Just last week I also was working with the Maine state historian who is putting together a new exhibit at the Maine state museum which is about Maine people during WWI, which is pretty early for film. He was hoping to find a clip he could use and exhibit it. And I actually was able to find an interview with a Maine woman who served as a nurse in France in WWI. This was in the 50s and she was quite elderly at the time. I don’t know if he’ll use it or not. We get calls and emails several times a week from filmmakers, researchers, students. I would say their interests kind of span the spectrum. NC: Do you have a list of people that have worked with the NHF collection? BEM: We do, we have a list of research requests. The person, what they were researching. Kind of what the outcome was. I have to admit that sometimes we are a little lax about keeping it up. So, it is not comprehensive, but it does exist. NC: I would be interested to see that. BEM: Sure yeah, I could send it to you. I could take a look. I don’t think there’s anything in there that is confidential. Let me just take a look and I could send it to you. NC: Okay, thanks…Are there certain types of amateur films that you feel NHF shouldn’t collect? For instance, Dwight Swanson has written an article on how pornography was not really collected by NHF. BEM: I haven’t read that article that he wrote. I would like to. I do work with the Center for Home Movies. In fact, I’ve just send in a very substantial grant that they are a partner in. They’re great... We don’t have a certain policy that speaks to that. My instinct would be not to discriminate honestly. If people want to give us the stuff, it is really not our job to judge its value and of course who knows what its value will be in another thirty years or one hundred years. 104
When it comes to charged issues like pornography it is hard to say what pornography even really is. I don’t think it has ever come up that we have offered a collection that otherwise fit, it had the New England, amateur movie or home movies that we said no to because we were uncomfortable with the content. The truth of it is that we have a lot of collections here that we’ve never watched. So, we don’t really know what the content is in some cases. And lots of home movie makers have different shots and there’s different things going on even on one reel of film or even on video because increasingly things are coming to us in video and not on film. So, it’s an interesting question. I don’t think it’s really ever come up. NC: Are you digitizing a lot of the material, especially something like video which is becoming rapidly obsolete? BEM: Right. So, this is our big challenge. Because we digitize films for other people, paid customers, we are somewhat reliant on that income and we have two full-time staffers/archivists who just do that all day, every day-film and video. And we need them to keep doing that because that’s how we pay our bills. But of course what that means is that we don’t have a lot of time or space or funding to support the digitization of our own films. So, when that happens here it is almost always grant funded and we’ve been very successful getting grants large and small. But the grant that I just submitted with the Center for Home Movies as a partner is a digitization grant. Who knows if we’ll get it. It’s really competitive. Chicago Film Archives is also a partner in that project with us. And that grant is to digitize and to put online 54 collections of women- made home movies. The other partner in the grant is a national project, but it happens to be based here in Maine and they happen to store here in our vaults. It’s called the Lesbian Home Movie Project. And they collect - not surprisingly - lesbian home movies. They have some very cool stuff. It’s a very cool project actually because some of it’s quite old, 20s, 30s. And it shows women living their day-to-day home lives at a time when there were not able to be safely out in their community. So, [these things] happen in a project-based way. And it is not happening at the rate we wish. The other side of that is that we are really running up against digital storage issues. In fact the meeting I was in prior to calling you was all about that. The files are enormous and we really don’t have adequate capacity to really ramp up our digitization because we ‘re really running out of places to keep it. So, I’m actually working with a funder who got us the money to buy our new film scanner two years ago, it’s not really new anymore. And she’s interested in funding a very large storage system for us which would be fantastic. At this point, even if we had the staffing and the time, we wouldn’t have the space. And it’s expensive. We’re looking at thirty, forty thousand dollars in digital storage in addition to what we have here and we already have a lot. But it’s really not enough going forward. NC: Do you usually rely on grants and these other commercial activities for all of the funding for Northeast Historic Film? BEM: Well, no. We have kind of a complex system of income. So, we also own and operate a move theater and the Alamo is our home base and we show first-run movies on the weekends right now. And the movies are doing very well. In fact, we’ve added late shows just in this past year because we were selling out. The Alamo gives us a little less than a quarter of our income right now. The technical service department and transferring of other people’s films is also a little less than a quarter roughly, in most years. We also rent vault space to other institutions: universities, historical societies, filmmakers and that has become an increasingly important part of our bottom line. If that goes well then that will bring in about 85,000 dollars this year whereas 105 the Alamo will bring in about 125,000 dollars. And the vault is not full and it feels like a real opportunity for us because it costs us the same to run it. Maybe it costs us more to run it if it’s not being full. So, that’s been a push. Well, then grants range from around 50,000 dollars a year, but the one I just wrote is more like a half million. So, obviously it varies. And then we are a membership organization so we do have income that comes in that way. And then we do two annual appeals a year. And that has become an increasingly important part of our funding. Last year that was about 60,000 dollars. I’d really like to see it be closer to one hundred. That’s gonna take some time. And then stock footage in most years is not a huge income source for us, but then every once in a while we get these big jobs. And it’s been kind of illusive and unpredictable for us. And you just never know because you’ll work with a filmmaker for a long time. We’ll send them lots and lots and lots of screeners, paying us a little bit of money to cover our staff time, but then when the film is really finally complete they might use two seconds. You know, you just don’t know. So, it’s kind of a complex system of income that we have and it's very tight which is why we don’t have adequate staff. Because our expenses are just like most non-profits, our expense is staffing. And frankly, the staff should all be paid more and I don’t just say that because I’m one of them. This is a really great group of people here. Most of us have master’s degrees or more. But the cost of doing business is very expensive. And our building costs. We are in a 100 year old theater which is fantastic and beautiful, but it’s very big and it’s old. And then of course we have a three-story film vault which is very costly to run. Although we are experimenting with some measures to cut the electricity costs a little bit there and I think those have been pretty successful, which is an idea we stole from Harvard University. We were at a conference and they said they were just shutting off their vaults at night and we were kind of stunned, but in fact it totally works. So, as long as nobody opens the door it remains pretty consistent. We’ve been doing that since January and we’re definitely seeing a savings there. NC: That’s interesting. BEM: It still makes me nervous when I say it. But we monitor the environment very closely. And honestly it stays amazingly consistent. And now we’re going into summer and we’ll see if it holds. And we might not be able to keep it up during the really hot months. Although it actually snowed today so it’s not hot yet. NC: Maine, I guess, isn’t so… BEM: No NC: … warm there….So, how are you trying to engage a wider audience for amateur film material? I know you show some amateur films or other parts of your collection at the Alamo sometimes. BEM: Yeah, so a big part of the work that I’ve been doing the year that I’ve been here is to really get out of this building and show our stuff. I present very regularly at museums, historical societies, conferences sometimes, but a lot of times just things that are open to the public: libraries…I kind of come at that from a fundraising angel. We need more support for our work. And people are not going to support our work if they don’t know about it or they’re not gonna understand why anyone would care. So, I do a lot of that. But then I’m one person, I’ve only got so much time. So, the conversation that’s really happening is how do we engage more people online. Although I find that you can put a clip up there, you know we do post regularly on our Facebook page, I also send out about once a month a blast to everyone on our mailing list: that’s 106 kind of a digital clip on-the-go. I try to tie it to something that’s happening right now. And people like them, but it’s so interesting because I feel like the power of amateur film and home movies are so much greater when you’re in-person. People want to talk about it. And I can’t really respond in a way when you see something on your screen….And we do show a clip from our collection before all the weekend movies. It’s the same each weekend, but it’s different every weekend. I’m not saying that very clearly but you know what I mean. And usually we try to tie that clip into the movie itself if we can. And people like that locally and then we usually post it early the next week on our Facebook page…It’s an ongoing struggle for us and it’s one that this place has not done very well at. They’ve done a great job in collecting. We have an enormous collection. Packed the vaults. We have the infrastructure in place, but now we need to get out of this place and really spread the word. I think within the film archivist community, Northeast Historic Film is very well-known as it should be, and well-respected. But in New England, there are constituents…and even right here very locally in this town we are not so well-known. That to me is a real problem. I do tons and tons of that stuff and I’m going next week to a film festival in far southern Maine that happened to get on my radar and they’re kicking their festival off with a local film night. It’s an international film festival, but they’re starting very locally and we happen to have these wonderful films that were made in the 1920s by a man, I mean he hired someone, they were professionally made. They were made to promote his woolen mill in this town. The mill itself is no longer in business but the building has been repurposed and it is a pretty well- known project in Maine that’s like mixed use housing and artist space. It’s a big, beautiful old brick mill and I’m going to be showing those films at the film festival which I’m very excited about. We have a kind of meet and greet event also next week in Bangor, that’s the big city nearby here where we’ll be showing our films. I do it all the time. Several times a month. But basically it’s just me. There’s really nobody else on staff who really has the capacity to do that. So, you can only go so far. Part of the problem with our location, which is a great place, but it’s pretty rural. There’s just not a lot people up here. So, we’re trying to find more ways to be visible in southern Maine and Portland. That’s where all the people are. And we are going to be doing a film festival in the coming winter with the Maine historical society which is based in Portland. And my staff will work with their staff to tie things from our collections to exhibits that they have happening at the historical society. And I think that’ll be great. It just exposes us to a broader audience. I feel that if I can get in front of people and show them what we have, it’s really not a hard sell. They love it. They just don’t know. NC: Do you think it would help if there was a canon of amateur films? So many times I hear about From Stump to Ship and some other works from your collection. Do you think that that’s a necessary way to make people aware of it more? BEM: Yeah, I do. I think that’s one approach. I think also too, I think it’s a problem that’s larger than Northeast Historic Film and one that we cannot solve all on our own, but it’s still a relatively new concept for most people that there’s real value in these films. It’s changing, you know. Certainly the Center for Home Movies is doing great work in that regard, but I think there’s a bit of a cultural shift, that is happening and will continue to happen slowly around why these things have value and why they should be saved. Then that should translate to why people should support the work financially because it’s expensive business. And once they’re gone, they’re gone. I have a lot of interesting conversations with people when I’m out doing my little talk around the home movies they’re making every day. Right, making on their phone. I take little videos of my daughter all the time. And even how those are being saved or not saved and 107 how people think about them and think about what they’re recording and what they’re not recording. Because some of the most interesting things we have are really at the time were considered mundane, but now…For instance, I just showed last week, when we did this sort of Bucksport film night and it was great. I really thought that maybe no one would come, I had no idea. And we filled the theater. And we have a film from 1930…we don’t know who made the film. If it wasn’t professionally shot then it was a good amateur. It’s hard to say, but it depicts the construction of the paper mill that was built in this town. So, a lot of it, on the face of it, is just kind of boring. Like there they are, they’re building a building. It’s slow work. However, of course it’s a long time ago, even the construction process itself is very different, but now that mill has closed a year and a half ago and is being disassembled and sold for scrap metal. So, the film of it being built has taken on this whole new significance in this community and in Maine because this is a trend that is happening everywhere in Maine now. We’re moving out of an industrial economy. It’s very poignant to watch it and to think about all the time and work and effort that the people put into building this enormous structure that is now literally being taken apart. It’s right on Main Street, we are watching it every day. The way people think about what they are recording is interesting and I’m somewhat making it my mission to make people be thoughtful and comprehensive and then save what they have. And back it up. You wouldn’t believe the number of people that I’ve talked to including you wouldn’t believe it, but one of my favorite staff members here who says his computer is not backed up. His photos aren’t, his videos aren’t. Like what are you doing? It’s so easy to do now. That’s my other little plug now that I always make to people…. NC: Do you have a lot of participation for something like Home Movie Day? BEM: For several years, Northeast Historic Film hosted Home Movie Day in Portland and it was a collaboration in some cases with the Maine Historical Society and I think maybe once or twice the Portland Museum of Art, which is a fine arts museum. People showed up for sure, but it was a lot of work to haul all of this equipment and Portland is almost three hours from here so it’s not close. And then I think everyone sort of got burnt out. And it stopped. And so when I got here last spring and learned about Home Movie Day, I had never heard of it and I thought like “that is the coolest thing ever and we are totally gonna do it and we are gonna do it right here in our space and we’re gonna bring people in.” And we did. We had a very small crowd, but some people did show up. And we actually have a staff meeting planned for later this week where we’re going to be talking about how we’re gonna do it again this year. Because I really want to do it. I think it’s really cool. I love that it happens all over the world. It’s just perfect in so many ways because it educates people about this organization and about the work we do. It educates them about their own film and how to take good care of it. It brings us work. Because people then find out that oh, you can put these on DVD, great. So, it’s good all the way around. But again, we are in a really really small town. There are two other main institutions that also kind of randomly started a Home Movie Day last year. So, it was all three of our first times. And one of things that I’m gonna push for this year is more collaborative advertising because they’re in other parts of the state. So, I feel like we can really go big on the advertising and say it’s Home Movie Day in Maine and these are the three locations: Go to the place you’re closest to. Whether or not we’ll do it right here in the theater or maybe like in Bangor we’ll see. I’m kind of interested to see what the staff has to say about it. But it was really fun. And it was very cool. Even the small handful of people that did show up and got to see their family’s films in the theater on the big screen…it was very touching, really powerful, so…I’m a believer, but we’re 108 gonna have to work to build it up and that’s the thing. The first time you do an event or if you’ve taken a long break then it’s just not in people’s minds. So, if I think you stick with it more consistently the crowd will grow. NC: And you project their 8mm film? Do you digitize it before? BEM: No, we project 8mm and 16mm. We had several projectors set up which is also cool and a very important educational tool for many young people who had never seen a projector. I’m sort of on the border. As a child in elementary school, I remember having film projectors where we would watch bad educational films, which we have a lot of here actually. I’m almost forty and that’s the top end of that. First we inspected the film in the lobby and made sure it was safe to project and talked with the folks about how they were keeping it. Then we would move into the theater and it would be projected on the screen. NC: Are you…you probably don’t have enough room for this, but are you collecting digital material? BEM: Yeah, so I get this question a lot. And we have, I believe, two born-digital collections that came to us randomly. We didn’t seek them out. We absolutely do not have the room. So, again, digital storage is something that is really a top priority for us right now. I have also had exploratory conversations with a couple of film archives: Chicago Film Archives and the Appalshop. I don’t know if you know about those guys. NC: Yes. BEM: Yeah, so cool. I went there last year to visit and it’s a really neat place. I talked with them about like…because they are facing all the same problems we are. We’re all kind of in the same boat. And not only do we not have the storage or the money to buy the storage, none of us even have IT people on staff. We’re librarians and archivists. That’s what we are. Increasingly we need like systems knowledge and so I keep thinking we should be working together on this. On either something really concrete like sharing staff or go big on some kind of cloud storage rental where we all…you know I don’t know how that would really work, but my gut tells me that we’re probably going to have more success if we work together rather than alone because none of us really have the money that we need to do what we know we need to do. It’s gonna be interesting to see. Even in the past year since I have been here we see far more video for transfer jobs than film. That trend I think will continue for many years here, but at some point it’s gonna tip into digital stuff and I don’t know when that’s gonna happen. But at this point we would not be ready. NC: I know Appalshop has stuff on the Internet Archive… BEM: Yes, I don’t know how much of their collection is represented there. NC: Not much. BEM: yeah… NC: Two TV stations I think. BEM: Yeah…Appalshop is also much more proactive in production work. They are making films and doing a lot of cool stuff and that is not something that this place has done for a long time. 109
NC: I was also wondering if there are certain types of films that require more attention than others, in terms of contextualizing material. BEM: I think sometimes what happens is that we start working with a collection and either through a grant funded project or because there was a call for stock footage or for whatever reason. And then kind of the more we dig in it feels like the more context we need. So, I think it happens all the time, but it is a matter of where our attention is focused. Generally home movies are pretty self-explanatory. But then there’s always kind of odd moments where you really don’t know what to make of it. We have a film, I think it is from the Archie Stewart collection, and it is showing a group of men in the 1920s I believe and they are in northern Maine at like a camp, a lodge. And they’re hunting, it’s up on our Youtube channel. And we sent it out as a digital clip email over the winter because it’s a winter scene. It’s really snowy and cold. They talk about needing to get their canoe back across the lake before it freezes up. It’s great and he made beautiful movies so it’s really well-done. What we never realized, but what somebody commented on our Youtube channel was that he makes a kind of off-hand, somewhat racist joke. It’s a little hard to hear actually. We had no idea that it was there. I don’t even remember what it was. I think one of them was a cook and he says something. The person who commented on Youtube wasn’t really like you have to take this down this is horrible, but he just said like ‘did he say this?’ And then we watched it and we were like oh, yeah he did. I kind of feel like that broader contextual work comes up regularly, but not in any systematic way. We just sort of deal with it. Another example recently, for our archival moment we showed a World War II film, it’s a new film and I can’t remember the name. It was several months ago. For the archival moment we did a news reel from a Maine-based TV station during the WWII era. And in the news reel they use a derogatory term for Japanese people. And we really liked the clip and we wanted it to be educational for the people coming to the weekend movies to say that one of the reasons people went to the movies in this period was to get their news. They didn’t have TVs. But we did have a pretty long discussion of whether it was appropriate and in the end we did use it. We put a little slide ahead of it that said it contained language that was commonly and publicly used at the time, but is not now. I felt fine. We got no complaints. I didn’t know if we would, but I was prepared if we did. The other thing that’s really powerful around looking at archival footage is to say well we don’t talk like that anymore. Things have changed, people have evolved. We definitely have home movies where people are dressed up in blackface and are sort of clowning around. Those things are out there and when we show them publicly we try to use it as an educational tool. And I think that can be really powerful for people. NC: So, do you also say it on your website as well when you’re contextualizing it if there’s a problem? BEM: I’m trying to think if you can watch anything on the website right now that has anything that’s questionable. I’m not sure if we do. But I would. If we put a clip up that has something that’s…you know questionable or possible to offend people I think we can talk about that right there on the website. We don’t want to catch anyone off guard. But again, we’re archivists, we’re not coming at it from any place of judgement. It’s just, that’s what it is. But we don’t want to traumatize anyone either. NC: Have you had any problems with copyrights with any of the work? BEM: No, we have not. Thank goodness. In the lead up to the publication of the book that I mentioned we’ve been having kind of increased discussion around this because the book’s going 110 to be a much higher profile and in a new world for us. And the clips will be available through the e-book and we plan to have a component of our website that ties in too. So, the good thing is that I think it will really help to get our stuff out there, but then yeah it does expose us to a risk. It is really very complicated. I had a pretty strong background from being a library director in copyright when it comes to print, but moving image copyright is kind of an unknown world out there. There’s actually a chapter in the upcoming book, committed to that. It’s sort of how do you determine fair use and what are the rights issues. So, it’s never come up for us. And I think if there was something out there floating around publicly and we got a complaint from somebody who’s depicted in the film or whatever, I think our initial reaction would be to apologize and take it down quickly of course. That only means so much, because once it’s online it’s just out there. It hasn’t ever come up though. But it is something we’re thinking about. And in fact, I have just been in touch in the last week with an intellectual property attorney here in Maine who I am hoping will be interested in working with us in a pro-bono way just on the off-chance if something were to come up. I would like him to be familiar with who we are and what we do and what some of those issues are. It is really very complex and I think the truth of is that people really don’t know yet. It’s kind of evolving. NC: I’m wondering about what type of preservation are undergoing with the work. The restoration of the material… BEM: Again the preservation projects that this place has participated in over the years has mostly all been grant funded. We don’t have any kind of work going on there. In fact that mill footage that I mentioned to you was preserved by a National Foundation Film Preservation grant. And we’ve received many of those over the years. It’s a fantastic organization. At this time, there really isn’t anything happening in that regard. But we jump on those grants when they come around. We do have an internal list of films or collections that we think are good candidates for preservation work so that when the grant opportunities come up we can take them. May 16, 2016 – Skype Interview 111
Email Interview with Rick Prelinger About the Archival Practices of the Internet Archive: 112
1. Does the Internet Archive archivists search for amateur film material?
Typically not. From time to time people offer to donate material to IA [The Internet Archive]. Most of the home movies on the site actually come from organizations or archives who have partnered with IA to display them: Prelinger Archives, Center for Home Movies, etc.
2. How is the Internet Archive involved with organizations that upload material on the site? For example, archives like Appalshop or the Center for Asian-American media.
In general there is little direct involvement. Sometimes IA assists orgs to upload material in bulk, for instance by arranging for uploading a structured file containing metadata. But since anyone can upload material to IA and, if a certain quantity of material is contributed, get a collection of their own, there is little direct involvement.
3. Do they reach out to other people about the material? Are there ways in which their trying to reach out to certain communities with certain material?
Typically there is little outreach on the part of the Archive. Contributing organizations often reach out to communities of interest they identify or wish to reach, but this doesn’t involve IA.
4. Do they clean/restore any of the film material?
Not typically; we do fairly straight scans.
5. Does the Internet Archive try to examine new material on the site to check for appropriateness?
Typically not. There are many thousands of uploads each day, and it is not practicable to vet new material. Generally IA relies on its volunteer moderators and users to flag inappropriate material for reconsideration.
6. Have people contacted you about the home movies on the site?
What do you mean by “contacted”? I am personally contacted all the time about home movies in our collection that appear online: by members of the public interested in locations or activities shown in home movies, by researchers and producers seeking to reuse material, etc.
7. Are there ways in which the internet archive tries to engage with outside audiences to view the material?
In general, no.
8. Have they considered measures like social tagging to include more viewpoints in searching for the work?
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This is often suggested, and in fact I believe was implemented in the Open Library collection. For moving images users are invited to “review” material, but we have as yet no system to specifically collect tags. This would be nice, but I don’t yet know that it is part of the anticipated workload of the engineers.
9. Does copyright infringement have effects on the Internet Archive or only the user/uploader?
Internet Archive relies on the notice and takedown system specified in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). “Infringement” is a legal term, and we are not lawyers, so it is difficult to be specific about your question. But DMCA specifies a process where copyright holders can ask for an item to be taken down without major consequences.
10. Is the Internet Archive aware of the actions taken with the material? Do you keep track of the films, articles, etc. made with it?
Personally, I wish IA could do this, but with literally millions of reuses every day, this is not possible. I estimate Prelinger material has been used in many hundreds of thousands of projects, but there is no way I could keep track, even for material that credits Prelinger in online metadata.
11. Are you aware of material that might be mirrored on other sites like Youtube or Vimeo?
A great deal of Internet Archive-hosted material is mirrored elsewhere. We think this is great. It would be nice if it was all attributed, but the Net is not about attribution.
12. What type of support are you getting? Government, donations, etc.?
Internet Archive receives grants from foundations and private contributions. It also receives revenue from offering Web archiving and other services to national libraries, universities and other organizations.
13. How often are you involved in the Internet Archive’s activities? Are there other specialists on amateur film there?
I think I am the only amateur film specialist. I work continually on IA activities for a few hours most weeks, more hours some weeks. There is no regular schedule. Nicholas Carbone: I just wanted to briefly follow up to ask if you know if people have contacted the Internet Archive about any complaints or issues of inappropriateness in regards to amateur film on the website? Also, I was wondering if you could give me more information on the volunteer moderators and what they are advised to do. Rick Prelinger: I know of no situations in which people have contacted IA with complaints about home movies on the website.
As for the volunteer moderators, I believe their role differs according to which collections they work with. The Grateful Dead collection moderators are very hands-on; the film people less so. I 114 don’t think there are formal or informal moderator arrangements with any of the film collections, but I could be wrong.
The best place to see them in action is the collections forums. May 25 and May 26 2016 – Email Correspondence