The Unesco Eternal cinema Atimetolive... 26 India Living dangerously Danger is a way of life for film stunt men, the unsung heroes of the cinema. Jumping off roof¬ tops, falling off horses, crashing cars at high speed, day after day, film after film, they risk their lives to add vicarious excitement to the humdrum existence of the average cinema-goer. Above, a tense moment for two Indian stunt men during filming of the Second World War adven¬ ture film Lalkar. The Unesco Courier A window open on the world Editorial August 1984 37th year IT is a cruel paradox that the cinema, the most popular art of the twentieth century, should also be the most threatened. No art form has been (and continues to be) a prey to such destruction which, whether wilful or accidental, has caused losses on a massive scale. The disastrous implications of these losses for the memory of mankind are now fully appreciated. In this issue of the Unesco Courier, which is entirely devoted to the safeguard and preserva¬ tion of the world's film heritage, the two major causes of destruc¬ tion are analysed in detail. One stems from attitudes of mind to films and the cinema; the other has to do with the chemistry of motion picture film. The cultural value of the cinema was ignored and even denied for far too long, and the film was considered exclusively as a commer¬ cial commodity. In many countries huge quantities of film were thrown onto the scrap-heap, wantonly despoiled in ruthless and 4 The fragile art of film reckless waves of destruction unleashed whenever they seemed to be by Raymond Borde required by changing tastes and fashions in film and new technical developments. 7 Africa: the images that must not fade Films are at the mercy of the support on which they are recorded: by Paulin Soumanou Vieyra this support is always fragile and has a life-span that may be limited 9 Egypt's national film archive unless certain precautions are taken. "Chemical death" may strike by Khaled Osman very quickly and has played havoc with the films which were pro¬ duced before the. 1950s and recorded on nitrate material; in the case 10 The nitrate ultimatum of these films losses have assumed the proportions of a cultural by Ray Edmondson and Henning Schou catastrophe. 12 The electronic alternative A handful of.pioneer film enthusiasts responded to the situation by Kerns H. Powers early on, bidding to win acceptance of the cultural value of the cinema and, often working in a climate of hostility, to preserve 14 Napoleon makes a come-back films they considered outstanding in collections which were the im¬ A rediscovered epic of the silent screen perfect but useful prototypes of modern film archives. The Interna¬ by Roy Malkin tional Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) was founded before the 17 Wanted! Second World War. The creation of the Federation, with its cen¬ The search is on for the world's missing films tralizing role, was the first step towards a world film archive. by Sam Kula As the years have passed it has become increasingly clear that this form of defence of the cinema, if it is to be effective and com¬ 20 The video grapevine prehensive, can only be achieved as a result of international co¬ by Halo Manzi operation. In the last decade or so there has been a ground-swell in 22 India: it's never too late. this direction which led in 1980 to the adoption by Unesco of by Paramesh Krishnan Nair a "Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images" which fully recognized the status of an art which 24 Thailand: when the camera was king had siiffered unjust treatment, and proposed to the international by Dome Sukvong community measures for protecting both the heritage and the future of this great medium of communication. 25 Cuba: a people in its pictures by Manuel Pereira In April of this year, a consultation hosted by the Austrian Film Archive and the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna was organized 26 Cine qua non by Unesco in collaboration with FIAF, the International Federa¬ An ABC of film preservation tion of Television Archives (FIAT), the International Association by Frantz Schmitt of Sound Archives (IASA), and the International Film and Televi¬ sion council (IFTC). The meeting brought together some twenty 27 Birth of a notion by Boleslaw Matuszewski representatives of archives from all over the world to draw up a ten- year programme of action and to prepare a questionnaire enabling 29 Switzerland: a living film archive the effects of the Unesco Recommendation to be evaluated in 1986. by Freddy Buache Safeguard and rescue these are two strands in the pattern of ap¬ Lifting the veil of secrecy proach and action evoked, as usual from a broad international perspective, in this issue of the Unesco Courier in the hope that the 30 The Gosfilmofond of Moscow fragile art of film may survive and flourish. by Vladimir Yurevich Dmitriev Cover: An old photo before and after restoration by neutron activation. 32 Unesco and the preservation of moving images This process for restoring faded details of photos to visibility can also be by Wolfgang Klaue used with moving images. The original photo was taken in the nineteenth century by the pioneer English photographer William Henry Fox Talbot. 34 The International Federation of Film Archives Photo © The National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institu¬ by Robert Daudelin tion, Washington, D.C. 2 A time to live... Editor-in-chief: Edouard Glissant INDIA: Living dangerously Published monthly in 27 languages English Italian Turkish Macedonian A selection in Braille is published by Unesco, French Hindi Urdu Serbo-Croat quarterly in English, French, Spanish The United Nations Educational, Spanish Tamil Catalan Slovene and Korean Scientific and Cultural Organization Russian Hebrew Malaysian Chinese 7, Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris. German Persian Korean Bulgarian Arabic Dutch Swahili Greek ISSN 0041-5278 Japanese Portuguese Croato-Serb N° 8 - 1984 - OPI - 84 - 1 - 413 A The fragile art of film by Raymond Borde THE cinema is a fragile art. Before the popularity or, for technical reasons, were the films made in the United States between . first film archives were established no longer marketable. The idea of moving 1895 and 1918 disappeared in this manner. it suffered grievous losses and it images as being part of the cultural heritage The figures are similar for France, Italy and remains vulnerable to the unconsidered developed only slowly, thanks to the efforts the Scandinavian countries. The works of destruction of negatives and prints. of historians and those who pioneered the Georges Meliès and Ferdinand Zecca suf¬ first film archives. fered particularly, but the early films of The scale of these losses is horrifying. Abel . Gance, Mauritz Stiller and Victor There are grounds for believing that almost The first wave of destruction on a Sjoestrom were not spared either. This was half of all the films made throughout the massive scale occurred in about 1920. The spring-cleaning with a vengeance. world in the period between the invention principal victim was the so-called "early" of the cinema in 1895 and 1950 have disap¬ cinema the cinema of the fairground and The second wave of destruction, just as peared. There were variations from one the popular entertainment houses. Pan¬ wholesale as the first, took place around country to another; but taking into account tomimes, spectaculars, one- or two-reel 1930 with the transition from silent to talk¬ the history of the cinema as a whole, varia¬ melodramas and comic chases full of ing pictures. The cinema underwent a tions in production methods, the evolution special effects which delighted popular au¬ radical change. As far as the film itself was of the market and technical progress in the diences were the first to be scrapped, but the concerned, the standard gauge remained 35 conservation of film, this is a reasonable early "art films" of the period immediately mm, but the image was reduced in size to estimate of average losses between the preceding the First World War, which make room for the sound track. Projectors period in which destruction was rife and the sought to earn the cinema a status com¬ were replaced or modified. Speech, song present era in which conservation is a prime parable to that of the theatre, also suffered and operetta invaded the screen. A new concern. It provides overwhelming the same fate. generation of actors drawn from the theatre justification for the call for a world policy Tastes had changed. After 1918 films replaced film stars who could mime but not for the safeguard of "moving images". became more ambitious, more realistic, and speak their parts. The underlying reason for these losses is ran on average for an hour and a half. Ac¬ Within two years, the cinema industry to be found in the very nature of films, tors of quality replaced the light-hearted throughout the world found itself with which are both a form of merchandise and entertainers of the pre-war years and film- enormous stocks of rejected film on its objects of cultural value. For half a cen¬ directing became an art in itself. There was hands which were bundled off to the scrap tury, commercial considerations were up¬ a complete break with the past, with the dealers. Global statistics concerning the permost. Producers simply destroyed old "old" cinema as it was termed disdainfully. losses of films of the 1920s, the golden age films that were out of date, had lost their Distributors hurried to get rid of their of the silent cinema, do not exist, or remain stocks of films which had lost their com¬ to be compiled, but approximate estimates RAYMOND BORDE, French film historian and mercial value, selling them off to dealers put these losses at eighty per cent for Italy, critic, is the founder-curator of the Toulouse who washed them to recover the silver salts seventy-five per cent for the United States Cinémathèque and Vice-President of the Inter¬ contained in the emulsion.