Should we keep everything?
By Frédéric Rolland
The idea of preserving films isn't obvious, even if this is an age-old preoccupation going back to the start of cinema if we refer to Polish photographer Boleslaw Matuszewski who, from France in 1898 called for cinematographic films to be kept for future generations.
Collectors like the Brit Will Day, besides of course Frenchman Henri Langlois in the context of the French film archive, were among the first to persist in the face of the film industry's lack of understanding or even the hostility of the eligible parties to stockpile works of art which has, bit by bit, according to the expression put forward in 1921 by Ricciotto Canudo, become the "Seventh Art". Film only became a recognised heritage through a long chain of events, since the creation of the first educational film archives in the 1920's and the first major film archives in the 1930's, until recent plans to digitalise films.
The pitfalls of keeping films in the context of the film industry ended with a considerable number of films disappearing. These were in fact as much "works of art" as "objects of consumption" that quickly became obsolete.
Writers themselves like Georges Méliès destroyed their own films that were no longer a success out of pique. Not all films are judged equally and organising the assumed value of a film into a hierarchy has always been the case in the history of cinema until today. All genres and types of film could have been victims, disappearing in their thousands because they were considered to be useless by the film industry. In the beginning of the industrial exploitation of cinema, films for example were often destroyed by their own producers to be recycled or to boost the production of new films. Corporate films for example today can still be the victim of a lack of interest by those who are potentially in a position to save them. A number of films, notably those on the "fringes of cinema" (like B-movies etc.) are also worth keeping because they may be missing in film archives of the future.
Any film has documentary value at least and is a witness of its time. As Henri Langlois, the founder of the French Film Archive said: "We must keep them all!" One of the reasons for adopting this radical position is that the new economic and cultural model for distributing digitalised works of art by Internet allows us to consider a request for any film known as "stock". However to make them available in a digitalised form photochemical films must be kept.
Collectors like the Brit Will Day, besides of course Frenchman Henri Langlois in the context of the French film archive, were among the first to persist in the face of the film industry's lack of understanding or even the hostility of the eligible parties to stockpile works of art which has, bit by bit, according to the expression put forward in 1921 by Ricciotto Canudo, become the "Seventh Art". Film only became a recognised heritage through a long chain of events, since the creation of the first educational film archives in the 1920's and the first major film archives in the 1930's, until recent plans to digitalise films.
The pitfalls of keeping films in the context of the film industry ended with a considerable number of films disappearing. These were in fact as much "works of art" as "objects of consumption" that quickly became obsolete.
Writers themselves like Georges Méliès destroyed their own films that were no longer a success out of pique. Not all films are judged equally and organising the assumed value of a film into a hierarchy has always been the case in the history of cinema until today. All genres and types of film could have been victims, disappearing in their thousands because they were considered to be useless by the film industry. In the beginning of the industrial exploitation of cinema, films for example were often destroyed by their own producers to be recycled or to boost the production of new films. Corporate films for example today can still be the victim of a lack of interest by those who are potentially in a position to save them. A number of films, notably those on the "fringes of cinema" (like B-movies etc.) are also worth keeping because they may be missing in film archives of the future.
Any film has documentary value at least and is a witness of its time. As Henri Langlois, the founder of the French Film Archive said: "We must keep them all!" One of the reasons for adopting this radical position is that the new economic and cultural model for distributing digitalised works of art by Internet allows us to consider a request for any film known as "stock". However to make them available in a digitalised form photochemical films must be kept.
Considerable but incomplete volumes of archives
Faced with problems of room in archive centres, laboratories or others, the question of whether we should keep all copies or elements of a film or even more generally all films is often asked. Volumes of film stocks kept in some archive centres or film archives are so huge that stocktaking becomes very difficult to carry out and sometimes in certain establishments it is done years after they have been left.
Destroying copies after they have been used to recycle the materials is a system that has been in place in cinema for a long time to control the circulation and exploitation of films; yet after all has been said and done, it may be that copies kept in small quantities are useless due to various different incidents or problems with preservation or others, and original impression elements are needed that no longer necessarily exist or are damaged. So we must be careful and in a number of cases doubles of films could have been saved, even though rare or old copies sometimes continue to show up in unexpected places.
Concerning multiple copies in substandard formats in educational film archives, which were intended for loan (up to the 1990's), destroying them is not too much of a problem (although these copies sometimes make it easier to access films) but the same cannot be said for most of the other cases.
In film collections whether public or private, a number of types of film formats coexist. This media heterogeneity (that sometimes makes evaluating the works of art more complicated) can on the contrary sometimes allow a film to be found on another type of medium. We must be very careful before destroying a film, even a substandard copy and it is desirable to ensure that a good quality workable element exists elsewhere beforehand.
Destroying copies after they have been used to recycle the materials is a system that has been in place in cinema for a long time to control the circulation and exploitation of films; yet after all has been said and done, it may be that copies kept in small quantities are useless due to various different incidents or problems with preservation or others, and original impression elements are needed that no longer necessarily exist or are damaged. So we must be careful and in a number of cases doubles of films could have been saved, even though rare or old copies sometimes continue to show up in unexpected places.
Concerning multiple copies in substandard formats in educational film archives, which were intended for loan (up to the 1990's), destroying them is not too much of a problem (although these copies sometimes make it easier to access films) but the same cannot be said for most of the other cases.
In film collections whether public or private, a number of types of film formats coexist. This media heterogeneity (that sometimes makes evaluating the works of art more complicated) can on the contrary sometimes allow a film to be found on another type of medium. We must be very careful before destroying a film, even a substandard copy and it is desirable to ensure that a good quality workable element exists elsewhere beforehand.
What value does a copy have?
The cost of making film copies, transporting them and even destroying them represents costs that going over to digital will remove. This "digital revolution" will also modify accessing the film that is thus presented in an immaterial form. However some films will take decades to digitalise because they won't be considered important from a moral or financial point of view. There remains the risk that some films will never experience this medium transfer because a race against time has started for a lot of films threatened with destruction due to their fragility.
There could have been a certain controversy (particularly at the time of the nitrate plan launch in the beginning of the 1990's - Read the article Film Conservation) regarding the need to keep original elements like nitrate films or not, while a contact copy on a Safety copy (acetate or polyester) is a lot more stable over time. Any medium transfer or contact copy (whatever the method used – analogical or digital) lead to more or less significant losses except, in theory, when it involves a copy non-compressed in exactly the same way as a digital file.
A film's original negative, if it still exists, even for an old film contains an amount of significant information that we have the right to think may be better enhanced in the future with more high-performance technologies or certainly may be more affordable financially. For each film dramatic questions are asked in relation to choices to save them in the face of budgetary considerations and the presumed importance of the film aesthetically or historically speaking etc.
Preserving original media is a position that we would like all film archives and archive centres to guarantee, especially at a time when digitalisation is often carried out in accordance with evolving standards that aren't always approved of. In the future "original" elements that have stood the test of time will in a number of cases allow the image to be better exploited by digital scans, which are more respectful of the original frames or even the information contained on the film.
A copy must only be destroyed if its contact copy (or digitisation) has been correctly carried out on the one hand and if its preservation state is too poor. Furthermore, since a medium that guarantees with certainty long-term preservation for the archive centre community doesn't yet exist, for the moment a "return" to 35 mm polyester film is still essential for all films even those that are 100% digital.
The cost of making film copies, transporting them and even destroying them represents costs that going over to digital will remove. This "digital revolution" will also modify accessing the film that is thus presented in an immaterial form. However some films will take decades to digitalise because they won't be considered important from a moral or financial point of view. There remains the risk that some films will never experience this medium transfer because a race against time has started for a lot of films threatened with destruction due to their fragility.
There could have been a certain controversy (particularly at the time of the nitrate plan launch in the beginning of the 1990's - Read the article Film Conservation) regarding the need to keep original elements like nitrate films or not, while a contact copy on a Safety copy (acetate or polyester) is a lot more stable over time. Any medium transfer or contact copy (whatever the method used – analogical or digital) lead to more or less significant losses except, in theory, when it involves a copy non-compressed in exactly the same way as a digital file.
A film's original negative, if it still exists, even for an old film contains an amount of significant information that we have the right to think may be better enhanced in the future with more high-performance technologies or certainly may be more affordable financially. For each film dramatic questions are asked in relation to choices to save them in the face of budgetary considerations and the presumed importance of the film aesthetically or historically speaking etc.
Preserving original media is a position that we would like all film archives and archive centres to guarantee, especially at a time when digitalisation is often carried out in accordance with evolving standards that aren't always approved of. In the future "original" elements that have stood the test of time will in a number of cases allow the image to be better exploited by digital scans, which are more respectful of the original frames or even the information contained on the film.
A copy must only be destroyed if its contact copy (or digitisation) has been correctly carried out on the one hand and if its preservation state is too poor. Furthermore, since a medium that guarantees with certainty long-term preservation for the archive centre community doesn't yet exist, for the moment a "return" to 35 mm polyester film is still essential for all films even those that are 100% digital.
Frédéric ROLLAND
Lecturer at the University Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (France), his lectures are mainly based on the technique of audiovisual media, film archives and media sociology. Himself a film collector and member of the French Film Archives, he works towards bringing together archive centres and simple individuals who own film titles that are sometimes rare or unique. Frédéric Rolland has just finished a PhD thesis at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin, the subject of which is Private collections of motion pictures in silver medium in France.
(June 2009)
(June 2009)
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