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Every second
as I'’m talking now,

cinema is falling to dust.

Most people don'’t realize
or think somebody else should

think about it.

Not just celluloid,
but also videotape, and now

digital, have all
the same problems.

All of us have had
our experiences of loss,

and that becomes
the foundation of archiving.

Film does have a limited life,
but that'’s the value

of preservation, isn'’t it?
It'’s to make certain that

that life is a long life.

How much less we would know
about the world that

we might never travel to
without being able to watch

films, from different eras
and different countries,

that only exist because
archivists saved them.

People working in this field
consider themselves

to be backstage people.

So not many people know
what we are doing.

When I personally become
interested in an artist

or a thinker in any way, one
part that'’s very interesting

to me is the path that
they took to get to that point.

And archiving;
it shows that path.

A film archive, as a space,
is interesting, there are work

areas and there are vaults
where things are stored.

But anytime I give a tour
to somebody of the archive,

they'’re still kind of blown
away by the scale of it,

because we just have a ton
of stuff: on pallets

and in boxes, on shelves
and in cans, and barcodes

and numbers written on boxes...

As these things get stored,
and labelled and numbered,

and put into an archive,
these become, quite literally,

our memories.

So we think that about 80%
of all the silent films

in the world are
completely gone.

They didn'’t really think
they were of any value,

and they melted them
down for the silver.

Not only were you saving
yourself in storage costs,

you were also making money
by reclaiming the silver

that was included
in the film stock.

They were like, maybe the way
people treated comic books

when I was a kid: they were
cheap, they fell apart.

Who cared? You used them,
then you got rid of them.

They were deliberately
destroyed.

Film was not treated as art,
and film was not treated

as a historical source.

So dump them. That'’s the way
the attitude was.

And they believed that, once
safety film came along,

there was no need any
longer to keep nitrate film.

Nitrate, or nitrocellulose
film, is the film stock

that was used from the very
beginning up to about 1950.

All of those Hollywood
features that you see

on TCM or in festivals were
created on nitrate film.

It says: Eastman
Kodak Nitrate Film.

It'’s a really good film stock.
It'’s very, very strong,

but it'’s very, very flammable.

It can withstand time,
if treated with respect.

If it gets too close
to an open flame or a match,

it'’ll go up like that.

It literally explodes.

There'’s this dark joke
or comment that the largest

archive is the bottom
of the Pacific Ocean,

because so many of those
nitrate prints were dumped.

And there were a handful
of catastrophic nitrate fires.

The Fox Film Corporation had
a devastating fire in 1937

at their vaults in New Jersey
that they lost most

of their silent films.

"Autumn,which was previously
booked for Saturday, was

destroyed in a fire." Back
in the day, nitrate fires were

very common, and they had
to change the program because

they lost their print.

They would make movies
constantly, but they weren'’t

very good about saving
the movies made five years

before or ten years before,
because their attitude was:

"If you like a Fred Astaire
movie, just wait, there'’ll

be another one in six months."

This was even the approach
of the filmmakers. Very few

of them, some did, of course,
but very few of them

in the early days wanted
to keep any films.

After the initial run
of the film, they couldn'’t

imagine that there'’d be
another use for it.

There wasn'’t a lot
of awareness of film as an art

maybe at the Studios, but
it was happening in museums

and archives around the world.

They had legal restrictions.
They were surrounded in large

by the indifference
of the cultural environment

of the time.

Four major national archives
that would become FIAF:

the International Federation of
Film Archives,came together.

They had to explain what
they were doing. They had

to explain to the Studios that
they were not a threat.

They had to explain
to their government funders

and to the public
that cinema was an art.

They had to explain
to the Fire Department

that they had to be able
to build nitrate vaults.

There was the first generation
of archivists: Henri Langlois,

Iris Barry, Jacques Ledoux,
Ernest Lindgren. Most of them,

not Ernest Lindgren, were film
collectors, and it was their

enthusiasm that put together
collections of films,

and they were run
on a semi-official basis.

For him to avoid the Germans,
who would take the films

and burn them, because they were
forbidden films, he was

switching films. So that'’s why
even today we find a film

that was not corresponding
to its cans.

Gosfilmofondis the Russian
State Film Archive, which was

founded in 1948. The film
depository was there

from 1937. There was a legal
deposit of everything.

So there is a very low
probability of a Soviet film,

from 1948 to 1991, to be lost.
On the other hand,

Gosfilmofondholds one
of the most important

collections of foreign films.
And this is where a huge

amount of lost or partially
lost films were found,

especially German films,
because when the war was won,

the Soviet troops took
the material to Moscow

and the Germans, before that,
captured lots of films

from the territories
they occupied.

So Gosfilmofondis still
an invaluable source for many

international collaborations.

Our vaults were at a little
village outside London called

Aston Clinton. Once a week,
a van came to pick up any waste

film we had. We were
the furthest out of London.

So when it arrived,
the van was full of film.

I and a colleague used
to unload all the film off

the van, replace it with other
nitrate films, and put them

into the collection. Now,
this was strictly wrong.

But 10 or 15 years later, they'’d
come back to us and say:

"Have you got a print of this?"
And we'’d say: "Yes."

But we never told
them this was a print

we'’d actually taken off
the back of the van on its way

to the silver recovery plant.

David Shepard, starting
as a film buff, he worked

at the American Film Institute
in charge of collecting films

from the Studios, because,
at the time, the Studios wanted

to destroy their own films.

For example, the Universal
silent films have been

destroyed by Universal.
So it took people like

David Shepard or Sam Kula
to tell RKOin 1966:

"Don'’t destroy the negatives
of Citizen Kane, Fred Astaire,

King Kong,and so on.
Why don'’t you bring them

to the Library of Congress?"

On this side, we have
Universalpictures.

So we have, like, the original
negatives of Frankenstein

and Dracula.

That'’s been the challenge
as to step in and decide

who'’s responsible for saving
these important films

for future generations.
Is that the responsibility

of the companies
that produced them? Many

of those companies are out
of business or they belong

to big international
corporations.

Or is it the responsibility
of the government? So that'’s

always been the tension
in the United States?

In a way, I look at this
as an archaeology center.

We'’re trying to rescue films
that are lost or unknown

before they ultimately
disappear forever.

I fought for things which one
day perhaps will be lost.

Heaven knows if in hundreds
of years people will still see

films of Murnau
and Lang and Renoir.

It'’s too hot. Thank you.

I hope I wasn'’t too pessimistic.

But film is really
a fragile art.

That'’s the first thing you do:
you collect and you conserve.

And then there'’s the technical
challenge, because when

the films were collected,
finally, it took quite some time

to realize that you need
to preserve them: nitrate film

stock and the safety film stock.
There was decomposition,

and there'’s the vinegar
syndrome and the color fades.

Film decomposes,
if not stored properly.

The great majority
of audiovisual film heritage is

still very much at risk
of being lost forever.

Without the right temperatures
and humidity controls,

this would happen to film
archives all over the world.

But you can see the image is
almost completely gone.

Just like the rest of us,
it'’s organic material

and it'’s going to decay.

Film is susceptible
to the vagaries of time,

of weather and temperature,
and whether it had this type

of chemical composition
or that. Each one will age

or rot in a different way,
and that will eventually

affect the images. So it wasn'’t
a large leap to look at all

this rotting film and think
of it as our own rotting

memories. And I was always
looking for images where

people were trying to be
heroic in some way.

It was either tragic
or comic, or something.

That they were valiantly
punching the boxing bag,

you know, with the boxing bag
with now just some chaotic blob,

you know and you don'’t know
if it'’s going to win or lose,

but they'’re still in there
fighting. And that is

the experience of being alive.
We'’re fighting every day

for another one.

Anything that we have in our
archive now is a survivor.

The archives had no money
at that time at all.

We did virtually
no film duplication.

In fact, the chief technical
officer at the archive,

Harold Brown, made his own
printer. We couldn'’t afford

to buy a printer, he built
his own printer, using parts

of an old showman'’s projection
outfit, bits of elastic,

and things like this.

Only careful
copying of the restored

original enables
us to see the great

Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson
as Hamlet. And look at

that ghostly cinema trick
that they contrived!

This unique film was saved
for posterity when it had

almost perished. Sir Johnston'’s
daughter found it rotting

in an attic, when it had
already started to shrink.

The film base can just dry out
and the film is very,

very brittle. I mean, it'’s a
negative. Luckily, this film

exists elsewhere. It'’s an
original George Méliès negative

called: From Paris
to Monte Carlo.

As the film starts to decay,
it will eat through everything

around it. It'’ll spread.
It'’s almost like a cancer.

It'’ll go everywhere.

We have open boxes where all
that was left was dust,

brown dust.

When you get to this point,
you really don'’t have

anything left. This is a
soundtrack from 1929.

But we'’ve also opened boxes
where the film is just

a solid block of plastic.

It begins with accumulating
the material and inspecting it,

and documenting it,
and understanding

what shape it'’s in. And
from that, you can construct

priorities for preservation.

It'’s heartbreaking when
you have to make decisions,

what can be preserved, when
100 films are falling

to pieces and you can
preserve only ten.

The practice of personal
record keeping is very,

very old. You could argue
it goes back to the cave

paintings, or to clay tablets,
or to quilting, you know,

writing letters. And that
somewhere in the middle

of this spectrum of personal
record keeping is home

movies and home video. And
then video with our telephones,

and who knows what comes next.

People forget that up until
the video era of the early 80s,

everybody captured everything
on film, especially

these home movie formats.

Home movies really goes back
to this guy right here.

It'’s basically a smaller version
of the Lumière Cinematograph,

if you would. It'’s
a hand crank camera.

In 1925 they came out
with this guy right here.

And by the way,
these all still work.

There are a lot of clichés,
birthday parties, holidays

and so on. But there'’s also just
things you would never expect

were documented on film,
sometimes quite creatively.

It'’s quite a creative
culture in amateur film.

I think about the film
that we found of one

of the American concentration
camps for Japanese Americans

during World War II.

Footage that my spouse found
in a house that was abandoned,

when she brought it home, it was
film shot during the Depression

in the United States. And it'’s
the real people that were

in the book and the film
of The Grapes of Wrath,

migrant agricultural workers
who were living under terrible

conditions, working
in the fields in a very

complicated moment in 1938.
And here'’s color footage showing

the real lives of these people.

We found footage of Vienna
showing Jewish stores that have

been vandalized and destroyed
by Nazi gangs, material that is

now used in almost every
documentary and every book

about the Holocaust in Austria.
Home movies really begin

to change the way we look about
history, because ordinary

people who shot home movies
have been witnesses

to historical events.

Different people can look
at them in different ways:

for anthropological reasons,
cultural, historical,

sociological reasons.

Every year we organize Home
Movie Day,and we invite

people who donate their film.
It'’s always in tears,

when you listen to their story,
it'’s like so much memory

of the people who shot it.
I think that'’s kind of like...

what makes me feel good about
what we are doing here.

But there it is. And it'’s
on that little teeny weenie

frames, on this tiny
little film.

Last year, one of the NYU
students, Becca Bender, was

doing an internship at Lincoln
Center, and one collection

turned out to be a large
home movie collection

by Leopold Godowsky, Jr.
He and his father were known

in the classical music world.
But, by happenstance,

he also was the co-inventor
of Kodachrome film process.

Kodachrome, the most beautiful
color format ever invented,

perhaps. In the midst
of this home movie collection,

there was one anomaly,
a reel of 35mm nitrate film.

And it'’s the most charming
thing you'’ve ever seen,

Mr. and Mrs. Einstein pretending
to drive. Meanwhile,

Warner Bros. is rear projecting
footage of Niagara Falls,

a jazz club and whatever.

It'’s also funny because
Albert Einstein famously

never learned to drive a car.
And when it was posted online,

it literally has now been seen
by millions of people.

That'’s me, 4 or 5,
looking very sceptically:

"What is this world all about?"
That'’s my father, that's

my mother, and that'’s Adolfas.

Cinema is like a big tree
with many different branches,

the same with literature,
the same with dance, the same

with music. Diaristic cinema,
in which I'’m involved,

there are many, many
little stories, because

what is a story? Every day,
we go through many different

mini-stories. There are big
stories, and there are tiny

little stories. So there is
a very wide range of what

a story is.

We received a letter
from a lady in California.

Well, she happened to have
a film, and she said:

"Would you take it? It'’s been
in our family for years."

It was made in Italy
by Roberto Leone Roberti.

He sent it to his brother
in New York, and he wanted

to save it from censorship.

Our curator looked at it
and realized that it was

a lost film. And
Roberto Leone Roberti was

the father of Sergio Leone.
No one had seen it,

but it was the family saying:
"We have to save this piece

of our family history. We
believe this is important."

And it was, it was important!

Sometimes what we consider
a lost film is something

that has not been
identified yet.

The Lon Chaney film from 1927,
The Unknown,was missing.

But because the film was marked
"Unknown," it ended up in a room

with thousands of other cans
of films that were unknown.

It was like: "What'’s in these
cans?" And they realized:

"This isn'’t an unknown film.
It'’s The Unknown,

with Lon Chaney
and Joan Crawford!"

And that had been missing
for years and years.

It takes a very long time
to list and catalog films.

We do it very, very slowly.

It'’s hard not to talk about
Pan Si Dongbecause it was

such a surprise.

It is an adaptation of one
of the legends in the Chinese

classic The Journey to the West
which is a legend that every

Chinese person knows.
They know it by heart.

And it'’s a legend that has
been used in books

and as illustrations,
and in very many ways.

This was the very first film
adaptation, and it has

all the superstars.
It had a large budget,

and it was also very
modern in its technique.

It disappeared and
it was considered lost.

So when we discovered
this seven reels of Pan Si Dong

in our archive, the Chinese film
archivists, they had a hard time

believing that it was really,
but they confirmed that this was

really an original print
of that adaptation.

So we brought it back to China,
and it'’s been screened

from Singapore to Seattle,
all over. But of course,

to Chinese speaking people,
it has a special place.

We'’re not going to keep
finding silent films.

And then, like, several times
a year, it seems somewhere

in the world, not just single
movies appear that were presumed

lost, but sometimes
whole collections.

Of course, there was
some smuggling. There were

people like going to a screening
room, taking a film, making

what we call a '’dupe
negative'’ in a printer,

during the night,
and then returning the print.

Basically, illegally,
one print would bring babies.

Many times, this original print
is gone. No one kept it.

But the dupe negative is
still there.

There was this big discovery
of a complete but very low

photographic quality print
in Buenos Aires, and missing

sequences were included from
that print in the beautiful

previous restoration.
But I finally liked the film,

which I never enjoyed before.
When we have all of those

extra plot lines in Metropolis,
that'’s when this whole thing

starts to click and work.
So I think the film is

different now. This was
an eye-opener for me.

One of the more fun things
that we do around here is

we host a workshop
called Mostly Lost.

We have an audience to help us
identify films that we don'’t

really know what the titles are.

And we ask people to watch
them and yell at everything

they recognize.
Misfortune!

And people come in from
literally all over the world.

Some are archivists,
film specialists...

Locations specialists,
license plate specialists,

fashion specialists...

It'’s a lot of fun. It's a lot
of people shouting at the screen

when they recognize an actor,
or a place, or something.

That bridge is
in Philadelphia!

That car is a such and such,
and they only built those

for two years...

This is what would have been
called a heavyweight car.

And it'’s been amazing to watch
these people figure out

what these movies are.

The actual celluloid itself
can tell you a lot of different

things. Is the film
negative or positive?

Is it a talking film,
is it a silent film?

The manufacturer:
Kodak, Fuji...

You can often find on Kodak
stock an edge code that will

help you locate the earliest
year that that film could have

been made.

A triangle and a square,
which is 1924.

And then you can start looking
for clues inside the image.

Is it an actor'’s face? Is it
the type face of the intertitle

that'’s indicative of the Studio
that may have produced it?

Where it gets very tricky,
if it'’s a Western, those are

the worst to try to identify.
All horses kind of look alike.

All rugged terrain looks alike.
There'’s so little clues

to go on with a Western,
and there were so many made!

It'’s very close to detective
work because it triggers

your curiosity.

Many of these films we dragged
from the dumpsters

in the streets of New York,
when the labs went bankrupt.

Everybody switched to video
and the labs had to close.

I would get called up by lab
owners and they'’d say:

"Just go over and take it.
Take what you want."

I'’m trying to locate anyone
that was related to the film,

then seeing if they have any
elements left, in their closets,

in their basement, and then
trying to get them to bring

them into our vaults.

So, basically, what you can
see all around here are new

deposits. And it'’s coming
and coming.

Whenever I meet someone,
I say: "Do you have films?"

To my banker: "Do you have
films?" I'’m dating a girl:

"Do you have films?" I'’m asking
the question to everyone.

And I always end up
in places with dead mice.

I don'’t know why but I always
end up in a place that has mice.

And I'’m like Indiana Jones'
father: "I don'’t like mice!"

And I always get to that.

When they closed a lot
of these big labs,

they discarded the stuff
off to the scrap man.

Millions of dollars worth
of perfect equipment,

they had signs on them: "Scrap."

A lot of people thought
I was absolutely crazy,

I got trailer loads of stuff.

I edited on this all my films.

We used to cut on film.
The Steenbeck, the actual

machine you cut on,
is still fine.

The joiner is still fine,
but the technological

infrastructure collapsed
to prevent us from cutting

on film, even though
we still shoot on film.

Someone at Pixar posted
an article from Screen Daily

that said that Ken Loach,
the British filmmaker, was

looking for coating tape
that you use for film editing.

We couldn'’t get a particular
numbering tape.

It has a colored emulsion
on it, and a machine stamps

consecutive numbers.
If you line up the numbers,

then the sound is lined up with
the picture. And nobody makes

that anymore. My office was
right around the corner

from what we call
the Pixar Film Museum,

which is sort of a repository of
all the unused film equipment.

And we had a bunch of it.

We asked all around the film
world, and it came from Pixar

in the States.

The ultimate digital film
studio comes to the rescue

of a man who is insisting
on working in film.

We were very grateful
for that, and we'’ve exchanged

some happy messages with them.

As technology is changing
all the time, artefacts

from the past get forgotten.
So part of an archive,

as far as I'’m concerned, also
includes a cinema museum.

This camera was actually used
on the movie Star Wars.

A lot of Waldenwas shot
through this camera.

There'’s not so many inventions
that stayed efficient

for so long. And the projector
the Lumière we'’re using is

pretty much the same as the
projector that is behind me.

And for one century it was like
the best tool we could use

to show moving images.

We found recently a group
of films by the Lumière

brothers. The physical condition
of these prints is amazing.

In theory, and maybe even
in practice, these films can

still be projected.

So, those DCP projectors we have
now, they'’re going to be

transformed very soon, and
it'’s going to be different,

and it'’s never going
to be the same tool.

One day, Henri Langlois
brings to New York, and

at the Metropolitan Museum,
he projects a nitrate film

by Raoul Walsh. I became aware
of what we lost in the richness

of the nitrate film.
I could not believe it.

Hey there, everybody. Welcome
to TCM, I'’m Ben Mankiewicz.

In May, the George Eastman
Museum will be opening its doors

for its third annual Nitrate
Picture Show Film Festival,

focusing solely on the
conservation and preservation

of films made from nitrate.

The first film
we actually showed

in the inaugural
Nitrate Picture Show

was a print
from the Museum of Modern Art

of Casablanca.

That'’s the oldest existing
material for that film.

Everybody has seen Casablanca
dozens of times, probably.

This print made everybody
rethink that they never saw

Casablancabefore.

So, personally, I feel
that'’s my Starry Night.

I do believe that film is
comparable, as an art form,

to the paintings and sculptures
that are in this building.

It'’s having those archives,
now that they'’ve taken care

of the film for so long,

looking at those films
as projectable material.

When we'’re running nitrate
and this is open, we'’ve got

our hand on the douser
the entire time.

We'’re looking at the screen,
and we'’re watching the film run,

and we'’re listening to it run.

If the film ever stops,
then we just immediately

close the douser, and we cut off
the heat, which is what would

cause the fire.

My father had his collection,
which he was building of all

this nitrate film, because
he foresaw that television was

coming in and they were going
to be making documentary

productions, that they were
going to need actuality footage.

When they started to sell
their films to TV in the 50s,

they realized: "Well, we better
start having preservation

programs of our own."

Because as long as you can
keep selling the movies,

then there'’s a desire on the
studio part to preserve them.

Ted Turner paid a huge amount
of money for the same

collection that we have here,
which is the MGM pre-1948

collection. And he bought that
to start TCM, to run on TNT,

TBS at the time. And he pays
a huge amount of money for it.

And suddenly the studio
executives were like: "Whoa,

we can get money for this."
Now, the only one that really

thought that before, in my
opinion too, is Walt Disney.

Disney was always saving
his films, always was very

conscious about how his heritage
would be saved and remembered.

And then, way down at the end,
all by itself, is

the Walt Disney Collection. So,
we have the original negatives

to Snow Whiteand Fantasia.
They never threw anything away,

we have all sorts
of stuff from Disney.

The Snow Whitethat Disney saw
as a child, later made him do

Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs.

And we were able to find
this film, which had not been

seen, and we restored it.

You look at something like
Snow White,that'’s still

around, and it'’s been
transferred from film to VHS

to DVD to Blu-ray to 4K.
But the original element is

still on film.

So, there are Hollywood
Studios that have nitrate

film stored. Every time that
they'’re doing a new scan,

they go back
to that original material.

From the top to the bottom,
is Gone with the Wind.

They have to go back
to the original because

that'’s where all
the information is.

This was in the film
camera, on the film set,

with Clark Gable, with Vivien
Leigh, with the director.

We have films in our collection
that are very controversial.

We have films in our collection
that are very popular,

but they'’re all kept in the same
vault right next to each other.

Technological transformation
has been inherently part of film

history from the first day.

All the major developments
in cinema occurred before 1906.

That was the great
period of experiment.

You found 68mm film, 70mm film,
17.5mm. So there were

no standards.

And it'’s always so bizarre,
when you discover films

in an old recorded gauge or
format that is totally

forgotten.

Buster Keaton made a film called
Hard Luck,and when it was

restored by Kevin Brownlow,
the beginning and end of each

two reels was missing.

We found the film complete
in 24mm on Ozaphan base.

But think of it, that'’s the only
surviving print with the missing

scenes of Buster Keaton! So,
we had to set up a machine

and, eventually, we could read
the images and Hard Luckis

back complete.

And then, of course, there was
a little bit of stabilization

with 35mm as a standard.

Film historians were not
interested in what happened

before the cinema. They said
cinema was invented in 1895

and nothing relevant
had happened before.

And that was a general view in
the late 50s, when I first

became an archivist. I said:
"No, this is not true."

There had been projection
forms before. The most famous

of which, of course,
is the Magic Lantern.

A lot of the stories that were
used in the early cinema were

also Magic Lantern
slide stories. And, of course,

a lot of the techniques used
in the Magic Lantern:

the dissolve from one
image to the other,

the animated slides, slides with
moving parts so you could

create movement. There was a lot
of the techniques that were used

in early cinema that were
there already.

Today, when we film with the
cell phone, we instantly have

color and sound. Because it'’s so
easy, it is not so valuable.

But in the early days of cinema,
to get color on a screen,

what you had to do is to take
a black and white film,

take a brush, take dyes
or paint, and paint every single

frame of the film to get the
impression of a color film.

It was hand colored
or stencil colored films.

Alongside with hand coloring
and stencil, there are very

popular techniques such
as tinting and toning.

You would dip the films
in dyes, or you would bleach

out the silver halides
and added new color to it.

This is toning. It'’s
no longer black and white.

It'’s actually blue and white.

And then we have tinting. And
the different colors would

represent different scenes.
The blue shows the ocean

or the lake, the amber is more
what'’s happening on earth,

on the ground. Every time
the tint changes, you have

what'’s called a splice here.

Black and pink, blue and pink,
and a splice in-between where

they'’ve been
connected and joined.

These films are kept
in the vaults and are usually

only inspected by a few film
archivists, and maybe some

lucky film historians.
And we felt with this book

we could give a sense
of what it is to inspect

an original colored film frame
and you can see all the details.

As part of working
with Martin Scorsese, I have

had the pleasure and the honor
of being able to help make

documentaries, produce
documentaries. And one

of the things that Marty does is
cultural preservation.

I remember on No Direction
Home,Marty'’s first film

about Bob Dylan, we were looking
for the screen test that Warhol

shot of Dylan. We went to MoMA,
we went to the Warhol

Foundation, and it existed. It'’s
a wonderful moment in the film

because Dylan is revealing
his restlessness, but he'’s

also quite aware of himself. And
then later, I just was reading

about this extraordinary
filmmaker, Barbara Rubin, who

worked with Jonas Mekas.
And she was this really kind

of legendary figure who'’s
not that well known. And

she introduced Dylan to Warhol,
she introduced Lou Reed

to Andy Warhol. She was very
close with Allen Ginsberg.

And she actually shot
that Dylan screen test,

she was running the camera.
Preservation has that added

benefit of learning more
about the history of film.

In 1982, I was one
of the founders of a very small

film festival in the city
of Pordenone. We showed silent

films we could find.
Eight people came

to the first festival.
Those eight people talked

to other people. So, the number
grew over the years.

And so the festival became
what it is today.

In the meantime, I was learning
where the films are, what can be

done or should be done in order
to preserve them. And I started

visiting film archives
and museums. It was a little

bit like being in the Far West,
but it was a great ride.

Last year, I nearly didn'’t go
to Pordenone, because I looked

at the list of films, and
I didn'’t recognize very many

of them. And I'’ve been
in this business 60 years,

and I thought if I didn'’t
recognize them, they can'’t be

any good. Well, fortunately,
I went. And the Pordenone team

had done the usual miraculous
thing they do, producing films

you'’ve never heard of, which
turn out to be very often

masterpieces.

As a historian, I feel rather
ashamed not to have discovered

them for myself and made
them better known. But this is

one way of doing it.

Film is this amazingly
collaborative art form,

every step of the way,
whether you'’re just dealing

with the production,
the creation of the script,

trying to get it
funded, and then you get it

funded and you'’ve got to come
to the laboratory, you'’ve got

to rely on the alchemy
of processing, the mechanics

of the machines, the scanning...

Just like filmmaking is
collaborative, the archival

process is deeply collaborative.

No single entity can
solve this question

of preservation alone.

The restored version
of Abel Gance'’s Napoleonmade

a sensation.

And in the 80s, they restored
A Star is Born,the 1954

version with Judy Garland.
And that set off what

they called '’The Decade
of Preservation.'’

You have three things: you'’ve
got access, you'’ve got

preservation, you'’ve
got restoration. A lot

of people are throwing a huge
amount of money at restoration,

while we have all this stuff
that should be preserved.

Especially in countries like
Asia, Africa, where we don'’t

have that kind of money to be
able to restore films in that

manner. For us, we need
to first save it. Restoration is

a First World concept.

So where do we begin? We begin
with first finding the lost

films, looking
at what has survived.

Cineteca di Bologna is doing:
reprint, restore, refine.

And, after, it'’s
supposed to be preserved.

So it becomes: immagine
ritrovataand restaurata

and preservata.Not only
restored, but also preserved,

that'’s the most important thing.

We produce new elements, new
conservation Elements, and store

them in a way that that film is
safe and its life is extended

for another 100 years.

Everybody who'’s interested
in film preservation is

interested in answering
the question: "How do I transmit

to the next generation the work
done by the prior generation?"

Film preservation is an
expensive proposition and not

many people are helping. Thanks
to Scorsese and to a few

others that understand
the need for it.

Scorsese created
The Film Foundation

for that very purpose.

He saw these wonderful films
that were not really being

properly preserved. He said:
"Well, I'’ll do it."

Most people knew him.
They knew he was a filmmaker.

But he explained
film preservation

to the general public.

Originally, he was joined
by passionate advocates like

Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas,
Steven Spielberg.

This started as him being
personally upset that the films

he loved all his life were
turning magenta,

the colors were going...

One of the reasons that Marty
made Raging Bullfamously

in black and white was
because he just didn'’t want

to have to worry about the film
fading within ten years

and becoming magenta.

It was a problem, a big
problem. And Scorsese was

the person that put a lot of
pressure on Kodak to make

it better.
Yeah.

So, Marty wrote this
impassioned letter,

and this campaign gathered
letters from filmmakers around

the world who immediately signed
on and became part of this

movement to help encourage
Kodak, who, by the way,

were in the process of trying
to develop this low fade stock,

but the urgency was
kind of amplified.

When Martin Scorsese and
The Film Foundationstarted

to advocate on behalf
of film directors for film

preservation, that was
a huge step forward.

I was very intrigued that
a filmmaker of his stature was

preserving films.

Marty and Bob Rosen would go
to the Studios and deliver

these lists, typewritten...
It was the 80s, so it was

typewritten, these typewritten
lists, and talk to them about:

"These are the films you own.
And here is a guide to preserve

them." It was just something
that he did while he was making

movies, in his spare time.

But this is not his job.
It'’s not his job. You have

a country called US. You have
a government that has a budget,

that could portion part
of this budget to devote

it to film preservation.
And let Scorsese make his films.

When The Film Foundationwas
first started, 30 years ago,

that brought a keen awareness
to everyone in the industry

in terms of the importance
of film preservation.

As this foundation progressed,
they now have restored close

to 900 films, from all around
the world, through funders

that they find. After saving
a good amount of American films,

they wanted to reach out
to a lot of other countries

and a lot of other cultures.

Martin Scorsese was able to be
here. And for that, I think

it'’s really the meeting
of the two great kind

of inspirations in film
preservation internationally,

Marty and the Cineteca di
Bolognaand this festival.

It'’s very exciting for me
to join all of you in a really

spectacular celebration
of films, past, present

and the future and to introduce
this restoration of Enamorada

by the great director
Emilio Fernández.

Around the world, there'’s not
an even distribution of archival

infrastructure. You know,
you have enormous resources

in France, for example.

The experience in Brazil,
you fight against bureaucracy

and you fight against
ridiculous politics, and against

ministers who come in and don'’t
know what they'’re doing,

and they start to destroy
what you built up.

And so you say: "Okay, we'’ll
try to build it up again."

That'’s what we do all the time.

There'’s a lot of rich
heritage. And one of the things

that you notice in film is
the liberation struggle,

because African countries were
under colonial rule.

Looking even at
the Nelson Mandela archives,

their own collections will show
you the struggle against

the apartheid era. And
Nelson Mandela is an icon,

but it also shows his struggle
and the struggle of the South

African people. Many countries
came to help South Africa,

so the footage that you see
at these archives is very

important. It shows struggle,
but it shows unity. It shows

the oneness of the people
of Africa.

I tried to show some
of the films in the archive

to senior personnel
in the nation, so that they see

the importance of the archives
by projecting to them important

films, like announcing
the independence of the Sudan.

As a Zimbabwean, I love
watching films, working

for the National Archives,
the songs, the speeches made

by great men and women of
the struggle, the construction

of Lake Kariba, which is one
of the biggest constructions

that was done not
only in Zimbabwe

but in Southern Africa,
and the way they would preserve

the animals during
the building of that dam.

All this footage is very
important for us.

There'’s also Africa in its
relationship to its former

colonial powers. You also have
the Cold War, some of these

countries had to develop their
prints in the former

Soviet bloc. Some were processed
in China, Romania,

Czech Republic, Poland. So,
you have to go to Yugoslavia,

to Russia, to look
for some of these films.

So, we find ourselves with
what you may call a kind

of dismembered memory, because
it'’s all over the place.

The vaults are the perfect
example of store it in a cool,

dry place. But this is what
happens when you store it

in a warm, damp place.

I distinctly remember till
this day, that very afternoon

that I opened the door
to the archives and I saw piles

and piles of rotting films.
And that'’s when I really

discovered the amazing
men and women who throughout

the decades have been fighting
this uphill battle of trying

to preserve my country'’s
cinematic heritage and trying

to build the film
archives from scratch.

I was then further exposed
to almost a similar narrative

across the region: from Thailand
to Indonesia, to Malaysia,

to Singapore, of this ragtag
group of archivists that are

just trying to make do,
with very limited resources,

but with an unimaginable
level of passion.

The weather in Taiwan is warm
and humid, so the humidity

and the temperature control is
very important for us.

And we spend a lot of money
to make the environment

in a good condition.

The Myanmar film industry was
started in 1920. We lost

the first feature film
of Myanmar and also the 90%

of the black and white films.

My grandfather is a filmmaker
and also my grandfather'’s first

feature film was lost.
So, this is a sad story

of Myanmar cinema.

I think I have the
responsibility to keep not only

my family films, but also
the Myanmar cinema.

If I had a chance to visit
the Canadian archive,

Library and Archives Canada.
They'’ve been complaining about

cuts. And it'’s true, there were
cuts under the conservative

government, that has really
slashed the staff. But when

you go inside the vaults, you
have to really say: "Respect."

The way they can move from a
set of temperature levels...

You'’re like: "Wow." In our
context, energy is

a big problem. No African
country has reliable electricity

100%, not a single one.

Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai
were the three places where

the film industry started and
they were all port cities,

the wrong places in terms
of film preservation,

because you were close
to the sea. The humidity levels

were too high. And by the time
we came to the starting

of the National Film Archive,
in 1964, we had already lost

70% to 80% of our heritage.

You had a very imposing figure,
P. K. Nair. He was sort

of something like Henri Langlois
to all of us. And P. K. Nair was

not only the director
of the archive, but he was

the founder of
the National Film Archive.

And I found him just outside
the Archive. He had retired,

he was old. I never knew
I was making a film called

Celluloid Man.I was just
recording P. K. Nair.

And I walked in with him
to the National Film Archive,

and we saw the state
of the Archive. It was the most

emotional moment for me, because
here were films lying completely

as if they are lost souls.
You know, for me films are

like souls. It'’s like
reincarnation. They can be born

anytime. You just have to show
the film and it starts

living again.

It was in 2014 that I started
the Film Heritage Foundation.

I didn'’t know at that point
the mammoth size of the film

industry we'’ve got to deal with.
It'’s too huge, nine or ten

film industries. We are making
films in about 36 languages.

When you start a foundation
of that kind, it'’s more

of an emotional plea
to do something.

Action!

Nollywoodcinema is seen
everywhere today, on line,

in the stores, both in Africa
and beyond, there'’s a very huge

presence in the Diaspora.
I'’m just coming back

from Burkina Faso,
and there were two channels

devoted exclusively, 24 hours
a day, to Nollywoodcinema.

So by that standard, of course,
you cannot say that it'’s

difficult to see African cinema,
if you think of African cinema

as Nollywoodcinema.

But if you think of African
cinema as, also, what you can

call a kind of auteurist cinema,
then you have complications.

If you think about
Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop,

some of the major figures
of African cinema, when

they were making films,
it was not profitable

for the exhibitors to show
African films because they could

get Hollywood films for cheaper.

What we were realizing is
that there really needs to be

a very focused program
to address the issue

of restoring and preserving
films made on the African

continent.

So, the African Film Heritage
Projectwas created

in partnership with FEPACI,
the leading organization

of African filmmakers, scholars,
historians, and then also

reached out to UNESCO.

What we'’re trying to do is
really bring these films

back to the awareness of new
generations, new audiences,

simply, across the world.

As a film student, you only
know American films and French

films, and some German films and
Japanese films, and that'’s it.

We run the risk of sort
of falsely educating future

generations that
there was only this.

We not only follow the canon
of the established film history,

we try to rediscover
those hidden histories.

They are buried
in the film material.

I would say that I was
surprised that Fragment

of an Empire,its restoration,
is so successful. I think

it is one of the absolute
masterpieces of silent

cinema in general. But there is
a canon which is extremely

difficult to change. In Soviet
cinema, I'’m used to everyone

talking about Eisenstein,
Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Vertov,

and nobody else. Ermler was
somebody who really had

this wonderful ability
to combine Soviet montage

with very sophisticated acting.
We contacted many film archives

and we ended up finding nine
different versions of the film.

I wanted to find a print
with the original Russian

intertitles, and I did find it,
in Switzerland. The font

of the letters changes all
the time and it becomes

an important element of editing.

Why isn'’t this film better
known? I don'’t know why.

I cannot go and tour the world
with it. Maybe I should.

That'’s kind of why I got into
this field, to try and find

unique films from the past
that, for whatever reason,

have been forgotten about, and
reintroducing them to sort

of broaden our film knowledge.

Sometimes a miracle happens,
and this miracle usually has

somebody behind that
miracle, somebody who is

active enough to advocate for
a specific film or filmmaker.

This canon could be expanded.

Man, the cowboys always win.

The cowboys don'’t always win.

Yeah, they do.
The cowboys always win.

Look at Tom Mix.
What about John Wayne?

Man, he was about the toughest
cowboy of them all, ain'’t it?

You know, in all those movies,
you never saw John Wayne'’s

teeth. Not once. I think

there'’s something wrong when
you don'’t see a guy's teeth.

We have a mandate to really
look for films that have been

overlooked by the canon.

The L.A. Rebellion,
independent African American

cinema in Los Angeles. Those
were mostly students from UCLA.

And many of those filmmakers,
like Charles Burnett,

and Julie Dash, and Billy
Woodbury, Haile Gerima,

Larry Clark, became quite
well known and had careers

as independent filmmakers.

One of the little masterpieces
that we discovered was a film

called As Above, so Below,
made by Larry Clark.

And this film visualizes
a revolution of African

Americans against the white
power structure.

When we asked Larry
about the film, he said: "Oh,

last time I heard it was in a
lab, but that was about 1975."

Well, we searched through
every lab we could find,

and we actually found
the original negative and were

able to preserve that film.
For the first time, since

the early 70s, that film was
actually shown.

In 2007, we finally released
Charles Burnett'’s Killer

of Sheep,it had taken us six
years to clear the music rights.

The response was so
overwhelming. When it was shown

in the communities, African
Americans recognized themselves.

They saw themselves on
a screen, not as drug dealers,

not as murdering thieves.
They were real people

with integrity and striving
to just get a job

and feed their family.

We want the canon to include
all kinds of artists,

not just white men.

People seeing themselves
or seeing other people,

and understanding them.

Lunar Orbiter was
an impressive advance in lunar

photography. One Orbiter got
an exceptional shot.

What we think of as film
history is largely determined

by what we have access to. And
until the 2000s, we didn'’t have

access to most industrial
and educational film.

The Congress recognized that not
all films are made by Studios

in Hollywood and created the
National Film Preservation

Foundationso that orphan
films can be preserved,

they are so-called '’orphan
films,'’ they're not owned

by commercial rights-holders.

I work specifically on short
films, with student films,

documentary films. I feel like
a lot of times shorts are

kind of underrepresented.

We have quite a large
collection of student films,

including in that are films
made by Ray Manzarek

and Jim Morrison, who were
the founders of The Doors.

One of the first times The Doors
ever played publicly was

at a student film festival.

We are working on a project
with UCLA on the Hearst

Newsreels, and that was a
collection that originally was

over 100 million feet of film,
and only 27 million feet

survives. I'’d like to find
these missing newsreels.

I'’d like to see something
that was shot 80 or 100 years

ago of some historical person,
place, or thing, and have

that come back so that they'’re
not just a dry name on a piece

of paper. It brings
that person closer

to the reality of the present.

When we think about film
production in the United States,

we usually think about
Hollywood, New York,

possibly Chicago.
But in reality, on one

of the most active centers
of film production was Detroit.

The myth is that more film was
shot in Detroit than in New York

and Hollywood combined. And
in Detroit there were a number

of very large production
companies who specialized

in making corporate
and industrial film.

Huge Studios, companies like
the Jam Handy Organization,

an incredibly active studio,
with two orchestras.

Many people who were exiled
from Europe during World War II

ended up coming to Detroit,
to make films, to do animation,

to be composers,
to be cinematographers.

This was a dull day, a flat
day. The weather was a bit

of misty, and so I finished
by around 4:00, started to put

things back into the trucks,
and the sun came out.

And I raced back saying: "Put it
all back down, get it all out,

I'’m going to reshoot it." It was
perfect, because the hill was

like that, and the sun was kind
of setting back, it was

like marvellous...

Last stop on round would be
Old Ma Peggoty'’s place.

It was like taking bread
to the top of the world.

It was a grand
ride back, though.

I knew baker would have
a kettle on and doorsteps

of Hovis ready.

Often the medium itself might
play some role in the work

itself. Gloves can actually be
an impediment to feeling

in a more sensitive and nuanced
way what'’s going on

with the film. If there'’s a
broken perforation or a tear,

and it snags on the glove,
it could make the damage worse.

So, when we talk about
preserving a Brakhage painted

film, it'’s almost always
preserving the film

from the negative, because
the negative is really

the finished master. The painted
film is production material.

It'’s amazing, one of a kind
production material, but it'’s

not something we could
remake the film from.

And you can see this was
actually painted over a faded

70mm print of Irma la Douce,
the Billy Wilder movie.

You can see a little bit of the
faded color print underneath.

I don'’t really see how
the world could be if nobody

could see Stan Brakhage films,
Germaine Dulac'’s films.

Those are masterpieces.
They exist and they have

to circulate, and they have
to be seen. Without them,

the world would
be very different.

Especially things that are
underrepresented, because

if it'’s not preserved,
then it will disappear

from people'’s memories.

And these are films
that I think are the most

at risk, because in many
instances, the filmmakers had

one copy of the film.

Even Maya Deren'’s original
coffee cans, Medaglia D'’Oro,

in which she kept her unfinished
films and outtakes, are here.

And so are Bruce Baillie'’s and
Kenneth Anger'’s and Brakhage

and many, many countless others.

If we had treated cinema
seriously from the very

beginning, we would have a very
different history of cinema.

And there are really
remarkable films which are not

really properly known.

We don'’t necessarily know
about them because they'’ve

never been written about or
shown since the time

they were made.

And there are some films that
we'’re always looking for.

Hitchcock'’s, The Mountain Eagle,
we wait to see if that will

one day resurface. We hope not,
in a way, because it sounds

like it wasn'’t his best film,
but it'’s Hitchcock.

So we look for it.

We tend to think of African
cinema as beginning with people

like Sembène until the present.
But of course, if you study

the colonial period, you see
that there were actually

filmmakers in the colonial
period from Africa as well.

One of the good examples
was somebody called

Albert Samama Chikli. He was
of equal stature to somebody

like the Lumière,
Thomas Edison... He adopted

cinema in its very first days,
started projecting some

of the Lumière films
in early 1897. I think by 1903,

he was already trying to film
from within a submarine.

So, took his camera inside
a wooden submarine, in Tunisia,

and tried to film
water, underwater. These are

the early, early years
of cinema, or he was filming

from a hot-air balloon,
for example. He was interested

in astronomy, he was
a photographer as well.

He was part of the French army
film unit with people

like Abel Gance. And if you look
at his footage of World War I,

it'’s absolutely fantastic.
Now here'’s somebody who played

an important role in the
history of cinema in general,

but whose name does not exist
in the history books. Or when

it does, it'’s really
as a mention, there'’s not

a genuine recognition of him
as one of the major pioneers.

Film preservation is a main,
I would say, tool for filling

in these gaps.

It'’s just one of the things
that every film archivist wants

to do, to be able to write,
rewrite history and celebrate

people who have
long been forgotten.

The Visual History Archiveis
the online system for accessing

the USC Shoah Foundation'’s
collection of 55,000 testimonies

from nine different genocides.

My background is in computer
engineering, and as an engineer,

you are told and taught
you should build things

that matter. So, being able
to build technical equipment

that preserves these stories
and teaches others to be better

is one of the best things that
I could be doing as an engineer

in this world.

It seems to be something
ingrained in us.

If we dehumanize another human
being, we make them seem

like an object. All of a sudden,
their life is not as important.

Our job is to humanize one set
of people to others so that

they will have empathy and not
hurt someone who'’s different

than them.

This area is where
the International Criminal

Tribunal for Rwanda was, that'’s
where we are now going.

This is where they were located.

The archives of all
this information has been kept

and saved, so that people can
learn more of the issues

of genocide.

And the lessons that we'’re
learning from all of these

various genocides now will
hopefully be around for people

to learn about in the future, so
that the reminder will be here

of what the effect is
of intolerance of others.

One of my favorite artists is
Bob Marley, and he has

this song, which I think you'’ll
know, No Woman, No Cry.

He says: in this world, if
you do not know your history,

you don'’t know where
you are coming from.

So, you have to know
your history. And I feel

film captures history.
It captures the true

emotions of people.

One of my favorite sayings
or mottos has always been

a quote by George Santayana:
"Those who do not remember

history are doomed to repeat
it." So, for my part, I'’m

making sure that that history is
there, so people can see it

and people can understand
what is going on.

And that also can be seen
with film preservation.

When people feel that nothing
ever changes, and nothing is

ever getting better
for everybody. If you just watch

some of these old movies,
you can say, okay, things have

improved, things have
gotten better.

That was the thing about
celluloid. It'’s about light,

and the enlightenment,
and the use of light,

both literally, the use
of light, and metaphorically,

shedding light on a situation,
on characters, on relationships.

Actually, Cinema Enlightensis
from Dome, the director,

because he said: "Cinema is
not only entertainment."

Enlighten is the aim of
Buddhism, to be enlightened.

That'’s why he put it that way.

If you watch a film, you should
learn or you should see

something else, not only
entertain.

There'’s a metaphor
at the heart of cinema,

which is about light: light that
comes through the window

and the light in our minds.

When I was a teenager,
I read a series of articles

by Milan Kundera and in one
of those, he talks about

his father, how when he was
passing away, at the end

of his life, he would only say
two words: "It'’s strange."

And the way he talks about it,
he says: "That was the essence

of his life. His life came to
those two words: It'’s strange."

So, we talked about these two
words, what the essence of each

person'’s life would be. I think
24 Frameis the essence

of what Abbas did. He loved
simple things. He always said

it'’s much more difficult
to be simple because there'’s

nothing to hide behind it.

Up until 1912, there was no
statute in the American

Copyright Law to cover motion
pictures, but there was

for photographs.

So, producers would hit upon
this brilliant strategy

of making a long, continuous
photographic print that then

they could file as a photograph.
And they just kept getting

shoved back further and
further into the collections,

until they ended up in a closet
where they were rediscovered

in the 40s. And this is like
at the time that many

of these films no longer existed
in any form, except these

paper rolls.

It'’s one reason why we know
so much about the work

of D. W. Griffith, it'’s because
so many of his films were

registered for Copyright.

It looks just like
a 35mm film print. But, see,

it is a roll of paper with
sprocket holes in it.

And this last frame says:
"Copyright 1903 by American

Mutoscope and Biograph Company."

We are scanning them now and
stabilizing those digital

images and outputting
them back to film, which is

using our very latest technology
on our very oldest material.

I think it'’s amazing they have
lasted as long as they have.

When they made a film, they
never realized that there could

be an afterlife of film in terms
of video or television. And so

a lot of the rights of the films
are very messed up and it gets

very difficult to trace.

And sometimes we cannot show
a film because of that,

because the rights are not
cleared and we don'’t have

the authorization to show some
films, which is very sad.

All those tracks I put
in innocently at the time

in 1971, thinking I'’d clear
the music rights later.

I used a lot of my favorite
music, from Elvis

to Roy Orbison, to Van Morrison.
What do you do? Either you say:

"Okay, the film can'’t be shown
anymore because I don'’t have

the music rights."
Or you have to replace it.

I'’ll never let you fall

Now we are...

So now we can remix
The Goalie'’s Anxiety,own all

the music rights. And, actually,
after 30 years of being dead

in the ground, the movie can
be shown again.

The Film Foundationwas really
fortunate to be able to work

with George Romero to finally
restore Night of the Living

Dead,which was a film that had
fallen into the public domain,

immediately upon its release,
because the title card was

changed at the last minute and
the Copyright was overlooked.

So, what it resulted in were all
of these bastardized versions,

the wrong aspect ratio,
terrible copies of the film.

So, working with George Romero
and his team at Image Ten

in Pittsburgh and, of course,
with MoMA and Cineric labs

in New York, the film was
meticulously restored,

and George even went to L.A. to
supervise the sound restoration.

So, he wanted to address some
of the sync that had been off.

Some of those gunshots were
happening before the smoke

appeared on the rifle.

When we finally were able
to do that, he was like:

"That'’s why I wanted to restore
this movie!" That has bugged

him for years that, every time
he had seen it, there were

a couple of scenes where you
didn'’t hear a gunshot, but

you saw a gun being shot. So...

He also wanted
to address the crickets.

Some of the internal shots had
cricket sounds and some didn'’t.

So he wanted to make
that more consistent.

But, in general, I think
it sounds really good.

You wouldn'’t just say that
because George Romero is

in the room?
No!

But, George, you use the
crickets as a device as well,

not only for...
I always loved old movies

where the crickets
were important!

It looks beautiful.
And now it sounds great.

So, I mean,
we'’re cooking with gas!

It'’s a great feeling to know
that you'’ve preserved something

that is going to last for a long
time. This was his first film,

and sadly, he passed away less
than a year after we completed

it. So one of my pivotal times
here was working with him

and restoring that movie.

And what a fun experience
that was, you know.

Every restoration project has
a different path, although

usually it begins
with the research.

You look for the best
element in existence.

Original camera negative,
that'’s often the point

of departure.
If that doesn'’t exist anymore,

then you go on to the next
generation of elements.

Duplicates, duplicates,
and duplicates.

You'’ve got to compare each
of these elements frame by frame

by frame by frame.

And you take the best
you can find.

Here we have a 1913 version of
Macbethfrom a 1916 28mm print.

This is the only known
copy of the film.

Now we'’re cleaning it up
digitally. These scans will go

back to the Haghefilm laboratory
in Amsterdam, where they will

then put it back out to 35mm
black and white negative.

And from that they will make
color prints that will

replicate the tinting that'’s
in the original 28mm copy.

Well, how come this still
looks so bad? It'’s like...

you don'’t know what
it looked like before.

And you'’re looking at a brand
new copy of a film that

you couldn'’t have seen before
they did all this work.

This is the Edison
Frankenstein,the thing has

been around for a long time, but
it'’s never looked this good.

You can actually see
people'’s faces now.

And now there is a very big
risk of over restoring the film.

Because we don'’t want
to restore to perfection.

We want to restore as close
as possible the look that

the film had when it came out.

The great thing about my job
at the moment is using

these two different sets of
techniques, so you can use

the photochemical technique
and the digital scanning.

When we were restoring The Great
White Silence,which was

the feature film made out
of the footage of a famous

Antarctic exploration with
Captain Scott and his team,

we had to use some film
techniques and some digital

techniques in order to restore
the color to the black

and white footage.
And it is a silent film.

So we were able to do
new live music. And this is

another thing that brings
people in.

And, of course, silent is
really silent. There'’s nothing

there. There'’s nothing to help
you. There'’s no reference

to sound at all. And it became
obvious pretty quickly, once

I'’d seen the film, that it was
a fairly terrifying task to take

on, to tell you the truth.

We'’d never seen penguins in the
beginning of the 20th century.

We didn'’t know really
what a penguin looked like.

So Herbert Ponting spent a lot
of time filming penguins.

Hence, there'’s quite a lot
of penguins in the film.

How do you score a penguin?

For instance, the bell from the
ship. Somebody said one day:

"Oh, we'’ve got the bell."
I mean: "The bell, the bell?"

But she said: "The bell from
the ship that took Captain Scott

to the Antarctic."

We went to get the authentic
bell, and we sat there

with a little recording
device and recorded it.

And it just introduces this
rather melancholic note

into the film. But if you know
that it'’s the real bell,

it somehow adds something extra.
I think restoring films is

a complicated job. It requires
a team of people, actually.

I'’ve never restored a film
in my life by myself.

On Lawrence of Arabia,because
of the nature of that film,

large format film, every frame
was split into quadrants.

There were individuals who
worked on one quarter

of the frame of every frame
of that film, and there are

well over 200,000 frames
in that film. And then all

of that had to be
stitched back together.

At the Academy, our connection
to Satyajit Ray started

in the early 1990s. Ray was
going to get an honorary Oscar.

People started to say: "Why are
we giving him recognition

for his work and not
preserving the work?"

The prints they found were
beat up, scratched, mangled.

So, a coalition of the Academy
and non-profit foundations

started an effort
to preserve Ray'’s films.

Now, at the same time,
there was a tragic fire in a lab

in London. And just before the
preservation work was started,

those negatives were destroyed
at the Henderson Lab.

Luckily, the director
of the Academy Film Archive

asked for all of the film
to be shipped from London

to Los Angeles.

But when Criterion approached
us a few years ago, we thought:

"Should we go back to
the material from the fire?"

We were able to scan
at L'’Immagine Ritrovata,

in Bologna, much of the film
and use the original negative

when possible.

I would say 40%
of the surviving original

negative from Pather Panchali,
and about 60% of the surviving

original negative
for Aparajitowere usable.

There were color grading
issues, stabilization issues.

There were dirt and scratches,
stealing information

from different parts
of adjacent frames.

By far, the biggest job
we'’ve ever done.

No one perceived that there
could be this digital technology

that would save film that was
badly warped and shrunken

and damaged from the fire. So,
that'’s a perfect lesson about

keeping things.

Cuba was a particularly
significant experience.

How do you transfer 120 kilos
of elements from Cuba

to Italy?

It took 23 signatures to get
the negative of Memorias

del Subdesarrolloout of Cuba.

It became a sort
of international

relationship operation.

We discovered that, when we
got the negatives, that those

negatives probably had six
or seven months of life,

they were deteriorating so much
that had we started

the restoration six or seven
months later, there wouldn'’t be

any negative anymore.

So the films in Havana have
suffered mold damage, they'’ve

suffered humidity damage, and
the acetate deterioration has

accelerated.

After we restored the films,
we went to Cuba, and there were

huge lines of people,
unbelievable! There were

like 200 people out of the
cinema, and the cinema was

packed, and people were so
emotional to watch it again.

It was incredible.

Their work is back and living
again. That'’s the most exciting

part, is when you see that I can
take this and it can finally

be available again.

We'’ve encountered just about
everything you can imagine

being wrong with motion picture
film, but we'’re always

surprised. You never know what
you'’re going to encounter until

you crack open the cans and have
a look at what you have.

There are so many physical
repairs that need to be

made to a film, and it'’s
really frame by frame.

And now with digital we scan
a film, and each frame

of that film is now a digital
file that we can pull up

on a screen, and then we can
make repairs to it.

For a short film, you end up
working a couple of years.

And this is before you even
start restoring the film.

If the director or the
cinematographer is still alive,

we try to get their comments.

They have a unique viewpoint
in terms of, not only what was

achieved, but what
they intended to achieve.

When we were restoring Sunset
Blvd.,Billy Wilder wasn'’t

alive, and nobody was alive
from the making of that film.

But the Library of Congress had
a vintage original print,

and that was incredibly helpful
because we could see how dark

the cinematographer
had really wanted to go.

Little Alice in the Citieswas
shot in 16mm. And with that film

I became a filmmaker. We were
inexperienced, so we made

from that negative more than 100
prints. And then it was

basically shredded to pieces.
Lots of really ruptures

in the negative, scratches,
funguses, and God knows what.

I mean, everything bad
in the book had happened

to that negative. I was really
heartbroken when we made a new

print of it to see what shows
up on it. And it looked

like disastrous.

Arrireally started to clean
those 50,000 little frames.

When I saw the restored Master,
I don'’t even know how

to describe it, I sat there
in awe. Yeah, that'’s the film

we wanted to make.

One quite large project
I'’ve been really honored

and excited about working on are
the films of Barbara Hammer,

the pioneering lesbian feminist
experimental filmmaker.

Everything about her was so
vital and so full of like

life-affirming energy
and positivity. And to put

her films in an archive kind
of seemed funny to her because

she was like: I still have so
much I gotta do." I emailed

her and said: "Hey, you don'’t
have to put your films

at the Archive, but let'’s start
actually restoring them."

And she said: "I'’d like to do it
now," because her cancer had

come back... Just in these last
two years of her life, we were

able to do a ton of work.
And it was just really

a fantastically, exciting
experience, and it still

continues to be. I'’m still
working on her films,

even though she'’s gone now.

When I'’m restoring a film
by Ermler, or by Lubitsch,

or by Chaplin. And when I'’m
trying to do what they intended

to do, I'’m part of their team.
This is quite a remarkable

feeling.

But it'’s really to represent
the men and women, the artists

who made these pieces. It'’s
their legacy that we'’re

representing.

The satisfaction you have is
you'’ve done something you know

is worthwhile, to enable
the memory to survive.

After we released I Am Cuba,
it had a real impact,

which was amazing to us.

People in Hollywood would buy it
because every DP had to watch

it, because of the crazy
camera work.

There'’s an I am Cubashot
in Martin Scorsese'’s Casino,

and Paul Thomas Anderson has
a very clear homage to I Am Cuba

in a swimming pool
scene in Boogie Nights.

The fact that artists are being
inspired by the work that we'’re

doing just gives us the sense
that these films are getting

out there and changing the way
people see the world,

which is what films can do and
what films have done for us

over the years.

It does not help to just
preserve films without then

making them accessible
in one way or another.

There'’s a sort of myth,
I think, about archivists that

we like to hide everything away,
like hoarders or something.

And there probably are people
like that. But it really

couldn'’t be more
far from the truth.

No wonder there were several
waves of wonderful filmmakers

who came from film archives.

There would be no French New
Wavewithout film preservation.

It was through going to see
the films at the Cinémathèque

Françaisethat they were able
to see: "Oh, cinema is

different." Henri Langlois did
the work of preservation

for them.

And then there are the things
that always surprise us.

Like one of the projects I got
to work on were these films

called Edison Kinetophones.
They were shot with sync sound

in 1913, and they'’re
absolutely astonishing.

Hollywood would have you think
The Jazz Singerwas the first

talking picture, but no,
14 years earlier, they were

doing these little talking
films. It wasn'’t successful.

But now, again, with the digital
processes we have, we were

able to perfectly synchronize
them so people can see how

they intended them to look.

You bet it won'’t happen again

No, you bet
it won'’t happen again

No, you bet it
won'’t happen again

It'’s just like our eyes.
Our eyes are very keen

at detecting motion. Our ears
are very keen at detecting

change. I worked with the
International Olympic

Committeeto restore all
of their official sound films,

and that was like
a seven year project.

I knew nothing about the films
of the Olympic Games except

the films of Leni Riefenstahl,
the film of Kon Ichikawa

of the Tokyo Olympics. I didn'’t
know the Olympic Charter

since 1930 had obligated the
host cities of the Games

to make a film record. This film
collection didn'’t exist.

You have a four year snapshot...

From early sound all the way
up to modern sound, a wide

variety of source elements,
all on the same subject.

Seeing these Olympic sports
change over the years,

get more graceful, seeing
culture change, seeing

filmmaking change, that was
really a rewarding project.

And all kinds of challenges.

We built a collection that was
preserved, conserved,

and completely accessible.
The Olympic film history had

been recovered from 1912 all the
way through to the 1990s.

And we determined the best
course, as time continued

to progress, was digital
capture, digital restoration,

but analog preservation.

And I think that is the key,
is the going back to film

at the end of it.

Right now, a 35mm film copy

is still the best way
to preserve it.

That material will last much
longer than the digital files.

If you made something, say,
10 or 12 years ago,

and your highest form
of delivery was an HDCAM tape,

what are you going
to do with that now?

And that'’s why Studios still
require some form of film

element for their bigger films
that they can store. Because

you'’ve got a permanent record
of that image on that film.

I think it is interesting that
in this digital age, where

everything is generated
digitally, and edited digitally,

and rendered digitally, and now
even projected digitally,

that the archival
format is film.

Something crucial has changed.
We have all become filmmakers

and film archivists. We make
films with our Smartphones

and we store them
in our Smartphone.

The entire worldwide industry
is making a major mistake,

thinking that digital means
permanent. Completely wrong.

Digitization is not
preservation. You actually have

to do preservation on digital
materials for it to stay.

We have lost a lot already.
People started going digital

in filmmaking, they didn'’t
care for the files...

When people say that something
is on YouTube or maybe:

"Oh, there'’s a DVD of it. It's
safe. Don'’t worry about it."

I mean, that'’s terrifying.

YouTube is an amazing
phenomenon. It'’s not

an archive. It doesn'’t do
preservation. It doesn'’t

guarantee longevity. And, yet,
YouTube is kind of an example

of the archives that we should
have built.

Not a week goes by that
something doesn'’t appear

on YouTube or the Internet
Archive that I presumed was

a lost film.

And we'’ve seen so many
examples of interesting clips

that you might want to preserve
for future generations because

it meant something to society.
And it was only posted

on the Internet.

Everything rots. The
conservative numbers are

that you have about 50 years
before you start to see

age-based damage in
film, 20 years before you see

age-based damage in videotape,
five years on hard drive,

three years on data tape,
as low as two years on optical,

like DVD. The newer
the technology, the faster

it'’s rotting.

The analog film cans,
films that we see here, you can

store and you can ignore it.
It can just go on a shelf.

You put it in good cold storage,
and it will be fine in 500

years. The problems with digital
preservation is: you have

the format itself, if it becomes
obsolete. And then the file

itself, that'’s sitting
on something, and then

that something, that carrier,
must be migrated.

We call that preservation
through migration, and we'’ll

do that until someone invents
something that they can

prove we can store content on
and it won'’t degrade over time.

So we have to build systems
that gather new content,

gather old content, get it into
a digital form, but then make

sure that digital form doesn'’t
disappear over time.

And so you just have to be
able to schedule that very

carefully, so that you can
migrate that data from one

server to another. Or if it'’s
on LTO tape, LTO is a type

of data tape that files can
be stored on.

Magnetic tapes, which is
really quite ironic.

But then, every two
generations of that LTO,

which is roughly every five
years, you need to migrate

those files off that older
generation and put it on

the newer generation. So you
always have to migrate

the data.

Here'’s just one plain server
doing all the work.

And the robot.

Part of digital preservation
now is making sure that

there are backups and that we
are constantly monitoring.

We do a digital fingerprint
of every file. So if anything

changes in the file at all,
we know. And they'’ll look

at those fingerprints, when
the content is on tapes

in these robots. Let'’s say they
find an error, they will load

a new tape in, go to one
of the other robots somewhere

else in the world, and grab
the exact same content out

of there, copy it to a new tape,
and then take the data tape

that has the failing material
on it and throw it

in the garbage. And also,
we don'’t trust any media

more than three years.

And now it'’s a matter
of moving the data around

to make sure that these data
flow into platforms where

people can access it.
So I always say we'’re not

in archiving, we'’re in IT.
We are in technology.

I'’m a fan of IT, but it is
making things more complicated

in a way, because now we have
to use big systems, it costs

a lot of money. But still,
this is a good solution.

It'’s very reliable compared
to other media, like hard

drives or clouds, for instance.

Do you need to store
it all up in the cloud?

Do you need to store it all
in spinning disk? No, it'’s

horrible for the environment
because of all the energy

that'’s being used and all
of the horror stories about

what we'’re doing, the toxicity
to the environment and using up

all those rare-earth metals and
heavy metals that go into

servers and into hard drives.

In the future there'’s going
to be something better, which

is why I'’m looking at DNA,
because that just has

the potential to be able
to store so much.

Some people think that storing
data in DNA is science fiction.

But, no, it'’s just science.
And there'’s a lot of benefits.

It'’s permanent. It's a very
small size. It uses a lot less

energy, we lower the damage
to the planet.

And then, finally,
the format never changes.

There needs to be new ways
to store data.

Losing the information is not
acceptable. You want to have

it on something that you can
know you can trust, and put

it on a shelf and know that
it will still be there

when you'’re done.

So this building is
reminiscent of a monastery.

But, in a way, the people who do
this profession, and maybe it'’s

overreaching a bit to say that
it'’s kind of a monastic like

profession, because people are
dedicated and doing work

in many ways for generations
of people not born yet.

Before the printing was
invented, the monks used

to transcribe and make copies.
That'’s why we still have books,

manuscripts from centuries
before Gutenberg. But film,

if we just have digital...

They'’re sort of mirrors of
what'’s going on at the moment.

And we can hold that mirror
up to nature and say: "Look,

think about the world you live
in, and why it is the way it is,

and what you can
do to change it."

How one could view the world
differently, how one could

imagine the world differently.

We desperately need to find
a new explanation. Why

do we save this material?
How can it help us change

the world for the better?

To be able to do this, I think
is worth seven lifetimes,

ten lifetimes...

I can think of no country
in the world where there isn'’t

a perpetual queue of material
waiting to be preserved.

So I don'’t think that
the battle is completely won.

It is an ongoing battle.

It'’s as simple as that.
If you love something,

you have to do everything
to preserve it.