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A Short History of Film Archiving

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A Short History of Film Archiving ......... BUFVC ................................................. A Short History of Film Archiving This article was first given as a paper on the study day, ‘Film Archives and Collections: Exploring the Sector’ held at Birkbeck College for the AHRB Centre for British Film & Television Studies. Luke McKernan is Head of Information at the British Universities Film & Video Council. Last Friday evening, at the Scala first instance, it expresses a sentiment they became of no financial value. Theatre, was an occasion in many central to any film archiving operation, But there is a further, respects as significant and memorable viewing film as a time machine that archival twist to the tale, because no as it was wonderful. It may be left for will make the past or present visible longer is the Kinemacolor Delhi future generations to realise the full to grateful future generations. Calls Durbar film a lost film. A portion of extent of its importance – men and for film archives were common in the it has been discovered, in the women yet unborn who, by the magic early years of filmmaking in this Krasnagorsk film archive in Russia. of a little box and a roll of film, will country, and it was notable news or Lost films are just occasionally be enabled to witness the marvels of actuality films such as that of the rediscovered, and this film had been a hundred years before their age, in Delhi Durbar which were cited as lurking in an unsuspected corner of all the colour and movement of life. suitable examples for inclusion, not the film archiving world, hidden under Perverse old grandfathers will no fiction films, unless they perhaps a different name for all those 88 years. longer be able to indulge disdainfully recorded the performance of some But the twists of fate continue, because in reminiscences of the superiority of notable stage performer. The review it is not the whole of the film that has the times ‘when they were boys’; the presupposes that future generations survived. The original film lasted past will be an open book for all to will share the same interests as those almost three hours – what has survived read in, and, if the grandfathers in 1912, in this case in a pageant of is around twenty minutes, and that of exaggerate, they may be convicted by Empire, or that they will still view mostly uninteresting military reviews the camera’s living record. Man has such a film in the same spirit as when that took place after the main Durbar conquered most things; now he has it was made. And, despite its romantic ceremonies, and it does not feature vanquished Time. With the fervour, the passage does the spectacular main ceremonies, cinematograph and the gramophone acknowledge some limitation of the parades of elephants, and so forth. A he can ‘pot’ the centuries as they roll film record, which can only confer fragment from the edges of a greater past him, letting them loose at will, immortality on what is visible to the thing is all that now exists, its story as he would a tame animal, to exhibit eye. perhaps more interesting that the film themselves for his edification and The next point is that the that survives itself. delight. The cinematograph, in short, Kinemacolor film of the Delhi Durbar Why the film survives in this is the modern Elixir of Life – at any is considered to be a lost film. No form gives us a further lesson in the rate, that part of life which is visible print is said to survive in any of the nature of film archives and their to the eye. It will preserve our bodies world’s film archives, and only 88 holdings. This particular section was against the ravages of age, and the years later those future generations extracted from the main film when beauty, which was once for but a day, are denied the chance to see what the First World War broke out, and will now be for all time. would certainly be a film of any film of troop movements was The above is a review of a considerable interest to us still, from considered good box office. Film has notable film from 1912, The a number of perspectives. The Delhi this particular quality as a medium, Coronation Durbar at Delhi, filmed Durbar film was made over twenty whereby you can cut pieces out of it in the early colour process years before any national film archive and create a whole new work, like Kinemacolor, and produced by had been established, and the some biological process. Film can not Charles Urban. It raises a number of company that made it and most of its only be re-edited, it can give birth to points relevant to a consideration of Kinemacolor productions were lost new works out of itself. The Durbar the history of film archiving. In the to history, neglected or destroyed once film had been catalogued in the 1 British Universities Film & Video Council 1 www.bufvc.ac.uk ......... BUFVC ................................................. Russian archive as a First World War silent films by a callous film industry should be, and it follows rules laid production, which in terms of this which had now discovered sound. A down to a large extent by the first particular edit’s production history statement made at the founding of film archives, following from the was quite correct. The film was only the Museum of Modern Art’s Film particular nature of the medium itself. found because a film researcher was Library in New York in 1935 makes An archive, according to the looking for footage to go into a the aims clear: dictionary, is ‘a repository of public television production on the history The art of the motion picture records or of records and monuments of the British Empire, and so the film is the only art peculiar to the twentieth generally’. A film archive, however, finds itself a new home and a new century. As an art it is practically means a particular process by which identity, and in the form of the edited unknown and unstudied. … This new a film repository is maintained. A television programme will eventually and living form of expression, a vital collection of videos on a shelf is not reside in a television archive. Such force in our time, is such a young art a film archive. It will not last; it are the complexities of the medium, that it can be studied from its preserves nothing. Inherent in any and how a film survives and where beginnings; the ‘primitives’ among film archive with a true ‘public good’ alters its history and its meaning for the movies are only forty years old. remit is that word ‘preservation’. Film those who care for it, or wish to learn Yet the bulk of all films that are is a fragile medium, and in going from it. Copyright TWI 2000 through a mechanical Film is not process each time it is the elixir of life, and viewed necessarily we now put in suffers from wear-and- qualifications tear, as well as being before even subject to inevitable considering it as a chemical decay that time machine. That affects both nitrate and we have come to acetate film stock. A question its principle was of messages has not acquiring, in simple lessened its terms, a master copy importance, which would then however – indeed remain inviolate and the film record unviewed, with becomes all the duplicate printing richer for the material and then a multiplicity of ways viewing print being in which it can be made from this interrogated. But original, subject to A reconstructed colour image from the rediscovered Delhi Durbar film there is some irony funds, which would in the fact that when film archives important historically or aesthetically, then become the copy to which the were eventually established in the whether foreign or domestic, old or public could have access for study. 1930s, it was largely not from an new, are invisible under existing This basic principle has been the impulse to preserve actuality records conditions. To preserve these films cause of no end of trouble for film of the past that would otherwise and make them available to the public archives, which have been too often vanish, but to preserve the best of for study and research is the aim of seen as preventing material from what was seen as the ‘art of film’. the new Film Library. being seen, sitting on it until those That is a simplification, certainly (it The focus was to be the film future generations should get the ignores the anomalous existence of that was deemed important, benefit, not realising that posterity the Imperial War Museum, which historically or aesthetically, a might just be now. undertook to preserve official film selectivity borne partly out of limited The history of the national records of the First World War from resources, but also out of a quite film archive in this country illustrates its inception in 1917), and there was particular view, from a particular something of the changing territories effort made to preserve what were point in time, of what sort of film and priorities for moving image seen as news and actuality records of should be preserved and made archives. In 1935 the British Film value, but the people who founded available for study. Institute established a National Film and manned the first film archives Those words ‘to preserve’ Library, with the aim of creating a were brought up on the burgeoning and ‘to make available’ are of course ‘repository of films of permanent art film movement (notably Soviet central to the purpose of a film value’.
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