[EN] 2017 | Selection of written essays on audio-visual archival practices

Assignment 1 Collection and Collection Management Ana Sofia Pires

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Similar to the history of Cinema, the history of moving image archiving is that of a discipline casted on the practices of another. The novelty of the material – so contrary to the stationary nature of paper – brought about a certain wavering as to how this moving and time-based material should be best preserved.

Moving images were being preserved, from the outset of their history.

However, in the early days of cinema, films were being preserved as scientific documents for utilitarian purposes, since no artistic value was attributed to the new medium. Only in the 1930s, partially instigated by the changeover to sound and to some extent by the cinephile movement gaining momentum since the first decades of the 20th century, cognizant film archives were formed. The institutionalization and codification of film archiving practice was an iterative, trial and error process as the people first involved in film collecting and preserving were for the most part pioneers.

Hence, several mistakes were made due to the lack of consistent best practice procedures. That is why the establishment of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), in 1938, with the accord of the Museum of Modern Art, the British Film Institute, the Cinémathèque française and the Reichsfilmarchiv, was of crucial significance to the codification of the field. The importance of film heritage archiving was further acknowledged during the course of the second half of the 20th century, mainly through the input of scholarly research on the topic, professional training and political recognition.

Regrettably, the history of television archiving replicates most of the same setbacks of the history of film archiving. The technical impossibilities of recording television broadcast combined with the lack of legitimacy granted to the medium delayed the codification of the field until the late 1970s, with the International Federation of Television Archives being established only as late as 1977. The following decades witnessed a growing interest in television as numerous scholars and theorists from distinct areas of expertise engaged in analyzing the sociological, cultural and economical implications of television and mass media communication. Nevertheless, only in 1980 did UNESCO decreed the “Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Conservation of Moving Images” which at last defined moving images as national heritage, therefore investing governments with the obligation to safeguard these collections.

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Nonetheless, the history of moving image archiving is not minimally the history of, as Henri Langlois used to lyrically depict his battle against ephemerality, hunting films down and rescuing them from the streets. The very concept of archiving is in fact much more complex, multifaceted and elaborate, as it has been from the beginning related with power. The word archive evolved from the Greek arkheion1 which defined the “repository of official records”2. The archon3 was one of the select group of nine magistrates authorized to write the laws. Thus, if archives have been from the beginning power structures, by selecting not only the information they keep and the criteria by which it is safeguarded but, more importantly, the people who can access it, select it and activate it, I share Eric Ketelaar’s view that “a critical approach is at the heart of archival endeavor”4. James T. Hong, in his article “The Suspicious Archive: A Prejudiced Interpretation of the Interpretation of Archives, Part I”, lucidly systematizes in three clear-cut stages this critical approach to archival endeavor. For Hong, “three very basic questions are asked of any archive: 1. Why does this archive exist?

2. What is missing from the archive?

3. Why does this archive contain this item rather than another?”5 I argue that these three points are instrumental to consider the manifold issues that to some extent circumscribe what many authors consider to be the central question of archival theory and practice: the question of appraisal. According to John Ridener, “appraisal is the initial interface between archivist and a collection”6, similarly Luciana Duranti defines appraisal as “the process of establishing the value of documents made or received in the course of the conduct of affairs, qualifying that value, and determining its duration.”7 Interestingly, Boleslaw Matuszewski, who prophetically described the selection procedure in 1898 long before audiovisual archives

1“Archive. Word Origin. C17: from Late Latin archīvum, from Greek arkheion repository of official records, from arkhē government.” (HarperCollins Publishers, 2016) 2 “Archive. Word Origin. C17: from Late Latin archīvum, from Greek arkheion repository of official records, from arkhē government.” (HarperCollins Publishers, 2016) 3“Archon. (in ancient Athens) one of the nine chief magistrates. Word Origin. C17: from Greek arkhōn ruler, from arkhein to rule.”

(HarperCollins Publishers, 2016) 4 (Ketelaar, 2001) 5 (Hong, 2016) 6 (Ridener, 2009) 7 (Duranti, 1994) 3

were established, uses specifically the verb “to appraise”8 when discussing the activities of a selection committee. To that extent, I consider that appraisal is indeed the critical concept to examine when interrogating the idea of the archive as a depository of the past as it directly questions the entire system of, as Ketelaar defines it9, tacit narratives implied in the production of the archive itself. However, in my opinion, it would be more discerning to question the archive as repository of the past, rather than as a depository of the past, as this notion encompasses not only the idea of the archive but also, among others, that of the museum and, more to the point, that of the tomb10.

Understanding the archive as a disinterested repository of the past betrays a conformity with a set of notions – for the greater part related to the existence of a historical and epistemic univocality – which exclude all together the multiple activations of meaning produced throughout the archival life of materials. In this static and inhumed formulation of the archive – and thus, significantly, the archive as a repository – one is limited to the contingent nature of the contents of the archive which have been selected and produced through various processes of appraisal inevitably informed by the biased perspectives tacitly inherent to the process of archivalization11.

Hence, if, as Derrida argues, “the archivization produces as much as it records the event”12 I am of the opinion that archives cannot be understood as impartial repositories of the past.

Since archives are not only “shaped by a certain power, a selective power”13 but likewise “by the future, by the future anterior”14 it is the nature of the archive to operate in contingency. To go back to Hong’s three questions it is evident that they aim at exposing the contingencies intrinsic to archival practice and, in a Derridean way, at deconstructing, by making them manifest, the very strategies which belie, in their deceptive appearance of document(s), the ambiguity, equivocality and indeterminacy 8 “A competent committee will accept or discard the proposed documents after having appraised their historic value. The rolls of negatives that are accepted will be sealed in cases, labeled and catalogued; these will be the standards that will remain untouched.

The same committee will determine the conditions under which the positives will be presented and will place in reserve those which, for certain reasons of propriety cannot be released until after a certain number of years have elapsed.” (Matuszewski, 1898) [emphasis added] 9 (Ketelaar, 2001) 10 1.a. A place or receptacle in which things are or may be deposited, esp. for storage or safe keeping.b. A room or building in which interesting artefacts, works of art, etc., are gathered for display, a museum (now rare and hist.); (in later use also) an (official) institution in which documents, books, or manuscripts are deposited; an archive, a library. 2. A place in which a person is put to rest: a. A place in which souls reside or are held (before or after life). b. A place in which a dead body is deposited; a vault, a sepulchre; a tomb. (Oxford University Press) 11 “(…) archivalization (…) the conscious or unconscious choice (determined by social and cultural factors) to consider something worth archiving. Archivalization precedes archiving.” (Ketelaar, 2001) 12 (Derrida, 1996) 13 (Derrida, Archive Fever (transcribed seminar), 2002) 14 (Derrida, Archive Fever (transcribed seminar), 2002) 4

interior to archival material(s). In that sense, a deconstructive approach to the archive, following Derrida, is less a theory than a method of reading that, as Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy encapsulates, “does not assert or impose meaning, but marks out places where the function of the text works against its apparent meaning, or against the history of its interpretation.”15 When Hong asks “Why does this archive exist?”16 he is clearly seeking to expose, in the first place, the contingency related to the foundational mission of the archive in question. By analyzing, for instance, the statement of the Department of Film of the Museum of Modern Art – since 1996, The Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center – one clearly understands that since its foundation its mission has been to collect film exclusively as an art form17. This statement obviously defines the collection and, for that matter, what I describe as the contingencies of appraisal addressed in Hong’s subsequent questions where he peels another layer of the rationale that presides to the selection criteria of the archive. By questioning both “What is missing from this archive?”18 and “Why does this archive contain this item rather than another?”19 Hong aims at exposing, through the significant omissions of what is not in the collection, the underlying appraisal criterion that determines the actual content of the collection. Thus, in the case of the Department of Film of the Museum of Modern Art, one can assume that, for instance, examples of film as historic or scientific documents have not been included in the collection. Furthermore, when approaching this particular collection, one knows a priori that one will be presented to the collection of “one of the world's finest museum archives of international film art”20 where amid its collection one will find, among others, “works by the inventors of film language”21, works by “every major artist of the silent era”22, works by “the innovators and masters of the sound era”23, “films by artists”24 and “works of animators and contemporary experimental filmmakers”25.

15 (Aylesworth, 2015) 16 (Hong, 2016) 17 “In 1932 Alfred Barr, the Museum's founding director, stressed the importance of introducing "the only great art form peculiar to the twentieth century" to "the American public which should appreciate good films and support them."” (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) [emphasis added] 18 (Hong, 2016) 19 (Hong, 2016) 20 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) 21 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) 22 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) 23 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) 24 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) 25 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) 5

What I have tried to demonstrate with this very brief and definitely not exhaustive analysis of the collecting mission of the Department of Film of the Museum of Modern Art, using James Hong’s questions as a frame of reference, is how one should always indeed interrogate the archive as a repository of the past by informing our interaction with it with a critical attitude key to read and interpret its tacit narratives.

What is more, this critical stance should not only inform our interaction with the archive but spur us into questioning all archive material by welcoming “concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning”26, not solely for the theoretical exercise of relativization but, more importantly, for the proliferation of the fertile relations endlessly generated in the process of opening up new perspectives. In short, what I am proposing is that we are able to imagine our critical attitude towards archival endeavor as a hypothetic double exposed film with, on the one hand, the openly skeptical attitude of Orson Welles’ towards his subject in F for Fake (1973) and, on the other, Jean-Luc Godard’s transformative engine of “infinite metaphorization”27 as practiced in his kaleidoscopic magnum opus shattering of film history: Histoire(s) du Cinema (1988-98).

Orson Welles in F for Fake (1973) As later (re)contextualized in Histoire(s) du Cinema (1988-98) by Jean-Luc Godard

26 (Aylesworth, 2015) 27 (Rancière, 2011) 6

Works Cited Aylesworth, G. (Spring of 2015). Postmodernism. Accessed on 23 of September of 2016, by The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/postmodernism/ Derrida, J. (2002). Archive Fever (transcribed seminar). In C. Hamilton, V. Harris, J. Taylor, J. Pickover, G. Reid, & R. Saleh, Refiguring the Archive (pp. 38-78). Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Derrida, J. (1996). Archive Fever. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Duranti, L. (Spring de 1994). The Concept of Appraisal in Archival Science. The American Archivist 57 , pp. 328-344.

HarperCollins Publishers. (2016). archive. Accessed on 22 of September of 2016, by Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/archive HarperCollins Publishers. (2016). archon. Accessed on 22 of September of 2016, by Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/archon Hong, J. T. (September of 2016). The Suspicious Archive: A Prejudiced Interpretation of the Interpretation of Archives, Part I. e-flux journal#75 .

Ketelaar, E. (2001). Tacit Narratives: The Meaning of Archives. Archival Science 2:1 International Journal on Recorded Information , pp. 131-141.

Matuszewski, B. (1898). Une nouvelle source de l'histoire: création d'un dépot de cinématographe historique. Paris.

Oxford University Press. (s.d.). repository, n. Accessed on 22 of September of 2016, by Oxford English Dictionary Online: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/162955?rskey=wImewJ&result=1 Rancière, J. (2011). O Destino das Imagens. Lisboa: Orfeu Negro.

Ridener, J. (2009). From Polders to Postmodernism: A Concise History of Archival Theory. Litwin Books, LLC .

The Museum of Modern Art. (2016). The Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center.

Accessed on 23 of September of 2016, by The Museum of Modern Art: http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/filmpreservation#historypreservcenter

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ASSIGNMENT III Access and Reuse | 27/10/2016 Examiner: Floris Paalman University of Amsterdam Ana Sofia Pires

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I will start my paper by analyzing an exhibition or piece that made use of audiovisual material, on view in Amsterdam during the months of September and October of 2016, to be used later on as a model for my project proposal. Afterwards a discussion of a selection of arguments from the course’s literature eventually relevant to the analysis of the exhibition as a model for the project proposal will follow. Finally, I will develop my project proposal drawing on the debate and research possibilities originated in the previous paragraphs.

I decided to center my analysis on one piece developed deliberately for Gabriel Lester’s current exhibition, entitled “Unresolved Extravaganza”1. On view at De Appel Arts Center from the 25th of June to the 6th of November of 2016, “Unresolved Extravaganza” is “a collection of [Gabriel Lester’s] collective productions between 1996 and 2016.”2 Bermuda (2016), the piece I will soon discuss, is a mixed media object developed by Gabriel Lester in collaboration with Robertas Narkus, Lisa Rosenblatt and Freek Wambacq. It is introduced in the exhibition’s visitor booklet as follows: “Bermuda specially developed for this show, with the intention to further develop on the coming years, forms the decor of an immersive story about coming and going, about the transformations and encounters of shipwrecked people after they have washed ashore on an island. The spectator stands in front of a wall of illuminated panels that point to, and illustrate, an ambiguous non-linear story about this mysterious place, where people and planes, objects and ships disappear. While the soundtrack of the story plays, the boxes light up, after which they once again dissolve in the reflection of the spectator, who appears and disappears and thus becomes one of the personages within the fragmentary narrative. Where the storylines lead to seems unknown, but for the time being Bermuda offers a refuge, a castle of mist and sand.”3 I was especially drawn to Bermuda especially because of its cinematic soundscape. It was, thus, primarily its sonic element that led me to draw on Bermuda as the source material to form a model for thinking in cinematic (and sonic) terms when proposing a project for accessing, presenting or reusing audiovisual and, more specifically, sound heritage collections, later on in my project proposal. It is worth then delving more at length into Bermuda’s use of sound as a preamble to what I mean by cinematic use of sound and to better pinpoint what might indeed be these specifically cinematic qualities of sound and how can these be applied to sound heritage collections.

Sound is essentially different from an image in the sense that it is not as strictly defined by idea of point-of-view. As such, sound is a much broader, unconfinable and boundless element with the ability to operate, simultaneously, within multiple layers of meaning and 1 De Appel Arts Center, Prins Hendrikkade 142, 1011 AT Amsterdam | https://deappel.nl/visit/programme/activity/?id=1057 2 https://deappel.nl/visit/programme/activity/?id=1057 3 “Unresolved” – Visitor booklet at https://deappel.nl/dox/exhibition_docs/413/de_appel_gabriellester_zaalbrochure-en.pdf 2

rhythm, within the distinct timbers of varied sound sources and, finally, within diverse relations of proximity and distance to the listener. When sound is used to convey elliptic, fragmentary or open storylines through the combined voices of multiple characters who employ contrasting storytelling registers – ranging from the aphoristic to the prosaic, from the fragmentary to the lyric, from the secular to the philosophic – while being simultaneously interspersed by distinct sounds issued from the most distinct sound sources – ranging from music, to daily-life sounds, to urban soundscapes and, finally, to isolated sounds of sites and other objects – like it happens in Bermuda, sound has a transformative ability to engine the fictive relations proper of the cinematic (storytelling device). Sound operates thus, in its open and porous logic of reminiscent contiguities, in mysterious ways by activating, freed from the spatial constraints of the shot, through serendipitous and untraceable associations, a complex system of (fictive and evocative) relations which relies on the visitor and his or hers own (past) experiences as the missing character of the fragmentary narrative.

Therefore, if using Bermuda as a frame of reference to propose a model for thinking in cinematic terms when accessing, presenting or reusing sound heritage collections one would have to think of a model that would encourage open association. Furthermore, it would have to be a model which allowed for an associative and lyric relation with the material in order for it to originate fictive associations in the visitor’s mind and as such operate as a plot device in the order of the cinematic, with sequentiality not being established a priori by the director or the artist but left open to be produced in the visitor’s mind by associating the soundscape with his own memories of past sounds, experiences and other fictions. In light of this, the model derived from Bermuda would have to take into consideration (a) the open narrative form which heavily relies on the visitor as an the missing link to construct the narrative; (b) the multi character/multi point-of-view approach which complexifies the several layers and points of view of the narrative; (c) the assemblage of multiple and diverse registers of storytelling ranging from the secular to the poetic and also the assemblage of different sound sources; (d) the diverse layers and simultaneities of sounds; (e) the counterpointing play between synchronism and asynchronism between sound and image/light.

However, if sound is the main focus of my project proposal then the major shortcoming to be found in my research topic is that the majority of the course’s literature does not pertain at all to sound archives. Thus, out of this theoretical gap, I will engage in a process of reuse by adapting a selection of arguments from the course’s literature to fit my specific research focus in (the) forms of accessing, presenting or reusing sound heritage collections. Yet I suppose it might be insightful to start by clarifying what is indeed access [and what is, for that matter, reuse]. Rick Prelinger offers what seems to be the most wide-reaching definition of access because it is unmistakably the only definition which encompasses the idea of reuse. According

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to Prelinger, access is “a spectrum of possible use.”4 In addition, when discussing the reinvention of the 21st century archive, Prelinger ends up forming a sort of derivative manifesto on (archival) access which is, in my opinion, germane to bear in mind, later on for the project proposal: “The twenty-first century archive faces the necessity of reinventing itself without pandering to the fashions of the moment. It must accept the existence of diverse archival models and practices that may extend or rebuke legacy practices. It must critically and tactically embrace emerging technologies that can be both friend and enemy and will likely continue to be disruptive. It must assert its right to offer a broad spectrum of access to its holdings and fight for that right where inhibiting laws and conditions prevail. It must seek validation by creating abundance rather than maintaining scarcity. It must accept that archival ethics generally favor use over the fear of abuse. Above all, it needs to recognize that it is a cultural producer playing a primary role in the dissemination and exchange of images and sounds, not simply a wholesale repository relying on presenters, producers, and scholars to expose its treasures. Absent an aggressive and enthusiastic populism, the archives risk irrelevancy and increased marginalization.”5 Bearing this in my mind, I will now proceed to Jamie Baron’s paper on the archive effect. According to Baron, archival footage and by extension archival sound(s) might be understood as “evidence of past events”6 since “they offer us an experience of pastness.”7 Particularly relevant to my proposal is Baron’s discussion of the simultaneous iconicity and indexicality of audiovisual documents8 where she argues that “the simultaneous iconic and indexical relationship to the historical world is exclusive to photographic, filmic and other audiovisual media.”9 As a result, “indexical images and sound recordings are even less easy to contain than written documents”10 because “their tangibility and ambiguity is often even more unruly”11 and for that reason “indexical audiovisual recordings are especially resistant to full comprehension or interpretation.”12 Furthermore, “given their unruly indexical excess, audiovisual media often demonstrate the excess, ambiguity, and disruption characteristic of “the real””13 and hence, as indexical documents, they possess “the potential to serve multiple interpretative frameworks.”14 What is more, Baron’s call “for a reformulation of “the archival

4 (Prelinger, 2007) 5 (ibid.)

6 (Baron, 2014) 7 (ibid.)

8 (Baron, 2014) Endnote 9 “The term indexical derives from the theorizations of Charles Sanders Pierce, who distinguishes between three kinds of signs: symbols, icons, and indexes. Most photographic, filmic and video images as well as sound recordings of a live sound can be considered iconic because they resemble the object or sound represented (known as the referent). They can also be considered indexical because they were produced in the presence of the referent.”

9 (ibid.)

10 (ibid.)

11 (ibid.)

12 (ibid.)

13 (ibid.)

14 (ibid.)

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document” as an experience of reception”15 which she defines as the “the archive effect” is, in my opinion, altogether applicable to archival sound which should also increasingly be understood, especially in view of my proposal, as a “relationship produced between particular elements of a film and the film’s viewer.”16 For Julia Noordegraaf however “the online presentation of the archival material to some extent also obscures our view on the object”17 since “once out of the context of the archive, with its systematically compiled catalogue information, contextual materials and tacit knowledge on the origins and meaning of the object, the meaning of archival holdings becomes open to various interpretations depending on the specific use made of it and the type of information that accompanies it.”18 However, it is interesting to relate Noordegraaf’s view on contextualization with Mark-Paul Meyer’s paper on the reasons that lead the Nederlands Filmmuseum to want to explore its collection in ingenious and unforeseen ways as Noordegraafs’s argument seems to expose a certain agreement with the idea that archival contextualization is per se unbiased. Mark-Paul Meyer’s discussion of the number of found footage strategies that enabled the Nederlands Filmmuseum to explore its collection in ingenious and unforeseen ways is pertinent to engage with when imagining forms of accessing, presenting or reusing sound heritage collections. Meyer groups these strategies in three broad groups: images without an author, strategies of appropriation and materiality, I find especially momentous for my project proposal the second group. Meyer’s thorough discussion of the strategies of appropriation used in the Nederlands Filmmuseum in collaboration with diverse artists illustrate the distinct approaches artists, filmmakers and archivists have had towards the archive and, conversely, the questions their works have posed to the archive and its exhibition practices, culminating in what Meyer describes as the ability to “provide archival film images with a meaning and/or a context that revive these images for a contemporary audience and create unexpected perspectives.”19 What is more, Meyer lays special emphasis on recontextualization as a form not only of “engagement with the original material”20 that “bring[s] it to life by creating new presentation formats”21 but also of exposing meanings that might be veiled since “by providing a new perspective or context, and by looking at these original images in a respectful way, hidden meanings are given a “voice.””22 In light of this, my project proposal will be one which recognizes access as “a spectrum of possible use”23, which highly privileges “tangibility and ambiguity”24, which sees in the

15 (ibid.)

16 (ibid.)

17 (Noordegraaf, 2010) 18 (ibid.)

19 (Meyer, 2012) 20 (ibid.)

21 (ibid.)

22 (ibid.)

23 Rick Prelinger, op.cit.

24 Jamie Baron, op.cit.

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(archival) material “the potential to serve multiple interpretative frameworks”25, which understands “’the archival document’ as an experience of reception”26 and finally which recognizes new forms of “engagement with the original material”27 as means of “bring[ing] it to life by creating new presentation formats”28 which “create unexpected perspectives”29 and give a ‘voice’ to “hidden meanings.”30 I propose the use of Sound and Vision’s public domain radio broadcasts, namely Radio Oranje31, Philips Omroep Holland Indie32, Radio de Brandaris33 and Radio Herrijzend34, as the source material for a bi-weekly programme of sampling and remixing at Red Light Radio, “an online radio station and international music platform based in Amsterdam’s Red Light District”35, loosely based on the concepts of radio drama and fictive archiving, thus bringing the radio home. I am especially interested in bringing into the radio domain the current practice of fictive archiving prevalent in the fine arts of which works by The Atlas Group, Christian Boltanski, Susan Hiller or Zoe Leonard are just a few suggestive 25 (ibid.)

26 (ibid.)

27 Mark-Paul Meyer, op.cit.

28 (ibid.)

29 (ibid.)

30 (ibid.)

31 “The collection of Broadcasts from Radio Oranje (Radio Orange) contains a selection of the radio broadcasts that were transmitted between 1940 and 1945. They were broadcasts created by the Dutch Government in exile in London, transmitted to encourage and inform the people of the Netherlands whilst under occupation. According to Dutch law these recordings are in the Public Domain, and hence free for reuse by anyone. Unfortunately Soundcloud does not support that label, so it was decided to use an open license that provides as much of the same freedom as possible, but prohibits anyone from claiming copyrights on any of these works or its derivatives, the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-SA) license. As soon as a Public Domain Mark is available as a copyright label on Soundcloud, we will change the rights statement accordingly. Furthermore, the digitized material is a so called semi-finished product. During digitization an attempt was made to get as much detail from the original source as possible. This can sometimes mean that there is a need for post-production to get the best possible end-product for human consumption.” At https://soundcloud.com/beeldengeluid/sets/radio-oranje 32 “The collection radio broadcasts PHOHI (Philips Omroep Holland Indie) contains a selection of Holland’s first commercial radio station PHOHI. The broadcastst were made from 1927 until 1930, and from 1934 until the beginning of WW2. There were no broadcasts from 1930 to 1934 because of the redeviding of airtime by the Dutch government. PHOHI transmitted to the Dutch East Indies, Suriname and the Cariben. The broadcasts mostly handle about the daily life in Holland and eyewitness stories from typical Dutch things, which was popular news for the foreign listeners. According to Dutch law these recordings are in the Public Domain, and hence free for reuse by anyone. Unfortunately Soundcloud does not support that label, so it was decided to use an open license that provides as much of the same freedom as possible, but prohibits anyone from claiming copyrights on any of these works or its derivatives, the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-SA) license. As soon as a Public Domain Mark is available as a copyright label on Soundcloud, we will change the rights statement accordingly. Furthermore, the digitized material is a so called semi-finished product. During digitization an attempt was made to get as much detail from the original source as possible. This can sometimes mean that there is a need for post-production to get the best possible end-product for human consumption.” At https://soundcloud.com/beeldengeluid/sets/radio-phohi-philips-omroep 33 “On july 10th 1941 Radio De Brandaris began transmitting alongside Radio Orange. The broadcasts of Radio De Brandaris were meant for Dutch allied seafarers and other ships from Holland. In the beginning of november 1942 Radio de Brandaris became part of Radio Orange. According to Dutch law these recordings are in the Public Domain, and hence free for reuse by anyone. Unfortunately Soundcloud does not support that label, so it was decided to use an open license that provides as much of the same freedom as possible, but prohibits anyone from claiming copyrights on any of these works or its derivatives, the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-SA) license. As soon as a Public Domain Mark is available as a copyright label on Soundcloud, we will change the rights statement accordingly. Furthermore, the digitized material is a so called semi-finished product. During digitization an attempt was made to get as much detail from the original source as possible. This can sometimes mean that there is a need for post-production to get the best possible end-product for human consumption.”At https://soundcloud.com/beeldengeluid/sets/radio-de-brandaris 34 “The collection of Broadcasts from Radio Herrijzend Nederland (Radio 'The Netherlands Revived') contains a selection of the radio broadcasts that were transmitted between 1944 and 1946. They were broadcasted by the military authorities from Eindhoven after its liberation in September 1944, to encourage and inform the people of the still occupied north of the Netherlands. After the liberation it continued to broadcast untill January 1946. According to Dutch law these recordings are in the Public Domain, and hence free for reuse by anyone. Unfortunately Soundcloud does not support that label, so it was decided to use an open license that provides as much of the same freedom as possible, but prohibits anyone from claiming copyrights on any of these works or its derivatives, the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-SA) license. As soon as a Public Domain Mark is available as a copyright label on Soundcloud, we will change the rights statement accordingly. Furthermore, the digitized material is a so called semi-finished product. During digitization an attempt was made to get as much detail from the original source as possible. This can sometimes mean that there is a need for post-production to get the best possible end-product for human consumption.” At https://soundcloud.com/beeldengeluid/sets/radio-herrijzend-nederland 35 http://redlightradio.net/about 6

examples of the multiple expressions and forms that the contemporary questioning of the archive and, importantly, of the (archival) document as an unbiased repository of the past might assume. However, it is perhaps worth recalling how the radio drama, perhaps because of its intrusion in the media space of actuality news, has, from its beginnings, caused considerable debate on the fictive or actuality status of the radio broadcast. Orson Welles’ pioneering radio dramatization of H. G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” is paradigmatic of this debate. This might be another reason to consider if this sort of questioning has not always been intrinsic to radio broadcasting.

If I began this paper by using Bermuda as a frame of reference to propose a model for thinking in cinematic terms when accessing, presenting or reusing sound heritage collections, I suppose it is relevant to recall it now while further detailing the contours of this proposal. The model I derived from Bermuda asked for an open and fragmentary narrative form that would rely on the listener both as a character, a storyteller and an editor. For the programme at Red Light Radio, this would have to be a key direction, meaning that the broadcast archives from Sound and Vision would have to be sampled in such a way as to originate fictive and (more or less) fragmentary narratives in each emission. Each programme would necessarily be different depending on its particular overarching narrative line, but broadly it would encompass, from varied proveniences and not exclusively Sound and Vision’s archive, a diversity of storytelling registers, voices and characters, a variety of sound sources and soundscapes and a complex assemblage of narrative layers and simultaneities of sounds (human voice, music, concrete sounds, etc).

The program would be casted more a less in the same molds as Red Light Radio’s current bi-weekly program designated “Liner Notes36” which complements its streaming with a detailed and comprehensive webpage where the details and provenience of the samples are explained. Likewise, this would be, in my opinion, the most intelligible way of establishing a valuable link to the history and provenience of the materials and would be a way of increasing the visibility of not only Sound and Vision’s public domain radio broadcasts collection but also of Sound and Vision as an institution. Furthermore, Red Light Radio, as an online radio, is a niche radio and as such, whith these sort of initiatives, it can only attract attention to the partner institutions among its regular niche-listeners. However, a significant population, because of its privileged relation to music, would access these archives and probably reuse them in other ingenious and unforeseen ways. What is more, this niche group could not only with their artworks help increase the visibility of the institution and its collection but are also very likely, from their practice-based interaction with archival contents, to develop apps and other specialist tools in view of future productions.

36 “Liner Notes is a bi-weekly podcast series with mixes by our favorite selectors, DJs and music enthousiasts from around the world. We believe musical knowledge should be shared, so all mixes come with a full playlist and background info for all the tracks.

Enjoy the music, and the liner notes.”At http://redlightradio.net/liner-notes 7

As a final note, I would like to conclude by echoing Prelinger’s argument that the archive “needs to recognize that it is a cultural producer playing a primary role in the dissemination and exchange of images and sounds, [and] not simply a wholesale repository relying on presenters, producers, and scholars to expose its treasures.�37

37 Rick Prelinger, op.cit.

8

WORKS CITED

Baron, J. (2014). Introduction: History, the Archive, and the Appropriation of the Indexical Document. In J. Baron, The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History (pp. 1-15). London: Routledge.

Meyer, M.-P. (2012). From the Archive and Other Contexts. In G. F. Eds. Marente Bloemheuvel, Found Footage: Cinema Exposed (pp. 145-152). Amsterdam University Press.

Noordegraaf, J. (2010). Who Knows Television? Online Access and the Gatekeepers of Knowledge. Critical Studies in Television 5.2 , pp. 1-19.

Prelinger, R. (2007, Spring). Archives and Access in the 21st Century. Cinema Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3 , pp. 114-118.

9

ASSIGNMENT II Collection and Collection Management University of Amsterdam

Ana Sofia Pires

|

2016/2017

11315636

1

I will focus my paper on the study of the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library because since I became acquainted with the film archival world it has puzzled me, much as Haidee Wasson lucidly poses it right at the beginning of her essay “The Cinematic Subtext of the Modern Museum: Alfred H. Barr and MoMA’s Film Archive” (2001), “why was it that the first successful archival project dedicated to film's specificities and to film education found such a ready home in a museum of modern art?”1 Evidently, the fact that MoMA’s Film Library was one of the founders of the International Federation of Film Archives and that it was established from its inception within the framework of film as art definitely further settled my choice. I will support my study mostly on internal documents produced by the Museum of Modern Art or the Film Library itself, noting however before anything else that the documents produced by the institution, and the Film Department in particular, grow scarcer and lest accessible gradually in the same proportion as we approach current times. If the establishment of the Film Library is abundantly documented and those documents are easily accessible, the current developments, activities and mission statements of the Film Department are harder and harder to trace and substantiate2. Besides, the majority of scholarly research pertaining to the Film Library is altogether centered on the study of its first foundational years.

Considering this, I will base my research primarily on the document written on the 17th of April of 1935 by Iris Barry and John E. Abbott “An Outline of a Project for Founding the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art” and both on the current mission statement available online3 and on the general “Collections Management Policy” written on the 5th of October of 2010 as means to compare and analyze the origins of the Film Library, its development over time and the management of its audiovisual collection.

The Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art was founded on the 25th of June of 1935 with its stated purpose being “to trace, catalogue, assemble, preserve, exhibit and circulate to museums and colleges single films or programmes of all types of films in exactly the same manner in which the museum traces, catalogues, exhibits and circulates paintings, sculpture, models and photographs of architectural buildings, so that the film may be studied and enjoyed as any other of the arts is studied and

1 (Wasson, 2001) 2 It is also worth mentioning that after requesting the Film Study Center for an up-to-date mission statement or collection management policy relating specifically to the Film Department, in view of this assignment, I was informed that “the Department of Film does not have a publicly available collections management policy separate from the overall Museum policy.”

3 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2016) 2

enjoyed.”4 It is clear already in its first mission statement the twofold concern of the Film Library with education and the acknowledgement of film as an art form, through its legitimating comparison with other more established forms of art. In the general statement of “An Outline of a Project for Founding the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art”, the founders of the Film Library, again, stress this dual goal by defining their report as the embodiment of “a project for making possible for the first time a comprehensive study of the film as a living art.”5 What is more, Iris Barry offers a thoroughly detailed account of the first years of the Film Library in her paper “The Film Library and How It Grew”. In this document, one can understand how the Film Library stemmed out of the combined strenuous efforts of several individuals with quite distinct backgrounds, their shared firm belief in motion picture as “the only great peculiar art to the twentieth century”6 and a considerable amount of tactful and shrewd networking and judicious savoir-faire.

The first director of the Museum of Modern Art, and its lasting inspiration, Alfred H. Barr Jr., had rather progressive views on art history, influenced in part by his contact with and admiration for art movements in Europe such as the Bauhaus and the Soviet Constructivists. Barr had wanted to establish a department of film since the first projects for the Museum of Modern Art; however, his desires had to be more often than not postponed. Hiring Iris Barry was for this reason instrumental in reifying Barr’s long-kept ambitions. Iris Barry, initially employed as a librarian and later the first film curator of MoMA, had had an instrumental role as a key film critic and founding member of the London Film Society in shaping the consciousness of film as an art form back in England, during the 1920s. Regarding film preservation, it was, according to Barry, “the advent of the talkies and their prevalence which had slowly made us realize what we lacked or had lost”7. When “one of the trustees, John Hay Whitney, contributed funds to underwrite a preliminary study of whatever practical function the Museum might undertake in the field of cinema”8, John E. Abbott was brought from Wall Street to the MoMA as the secretary of the motion picture department to, in co-operation with Iris Barry and their secretary Helen Grey, write the report that “would be submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation with a request for a grant to cover the establishment of a

4 (John E. Abbott, 1995) 5 (ibid.) [emphasis added] 6 John E. Abbott, op. cit.

7 Iris Barry, op. cit.

8 (ibid.)

3

film division in the Museum.”9 The report – “An Outline of a Project for Founding the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art” – fortunately accomplished its mission and “the substantial grant made by the Rockefeller Foundation to cover three years of activity enabled the work to begin”10 and, thus, finally “the Film Library was set up under separate charter.”11 The actual work however had then just begun. Following the official establishment of the Film Library, Barry and Abbot joined forces to actually gather the films that would constitute the film collection itself. The first stop on their journey was, evidently, Hollywood as they sharply figured that “in order to gain access to such material, it was immediately necessary to enlist the sympathetic support of the industry as a whole.”12 After the specially organized reception at the celebrated Pickfair where they succeed in publicizing their project, the couple realized that negotiations had to be carried out not in Hollywood but rather in New York “where real control of the industry resided in the hands of the big corporations, the lawyers, the banks.”13 Hence, after signing the contract with MGM, which defined “the Film Library’s acquisition and use of films”14, later, signed by all the major production companies, the couple headed to Europe where they were to grant similar exchange and acquisition contracts with film collections in Europe’s main capitals. London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Helsinki, more or less willingly and with discrete levels of bureaucratic endeavor, were on the whole receptive to the infant Film Library’s appeal and, thus, Barry and Abbott returned home with successful results and key films to ad to MoMA’s collection. From then on, the Film Library focused its efforts on the expansion of its collection, on the development of its film programmes and exhibitions as well as on its important circulating collection.

The development of the Film Library over time ran evidently along the lines of its charismatic creators. If the “study of film as a living art”15 was one of the foundational principles of the Film Library, then it is definitely worth analyzing how the original scope and mission of the collection has remained roughly inalterable. In 1935, Barry and Abbot point out the names of Pabst, Sennett, Clair, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, 9 (ibid.)

10 (ibid.)

11 (ibid.)

12 (Barry, 1941) 13 Iris Barry, op. cit.

14 (ibid.)

15 John E. Abbott, op. cit.

4

Griffith, Chaplin and Seastrom as exemplary of great directors who “have had an immeasurably great influence on the life and thought of the present generation”16 but also, in my opinion, as suggestive examples of directors “who have contributed to the development of the medium”17 as an art form. Conversely, by taking a look at the Film Department’s current webpage one understands how the idea of film as a living art still unmistakably informs the collection. Not only is the archive defined as “one of the world's finest museum archives of international film art”18 as the collection is likewise presented according to key moments of the motion picture development. “Works by the inventors of film language—the creators of its form, genres, and technology—form the cornerstones of the collection”19 and as a result the list of names is extensive, concordantly the collection is then composed of “works by the inventors of film language”20, works by “every major artist of the silent era”21, works by “the innovators and masters of the sound era”22, “films by artists”23 and “works of animators and contemporary experimental filmmakers”24.

The Film Library was later renamed and was from then on designated the Film Department. Moreover, there were significant developments in particular areas of the Film Department’s activities in order to keep up not only with the demands of its growing collection but also with artistic and technological evolution. Important developments of the Film Department over time include, not exclusively, the creation of a video collection in the 1970s, the preservation and restoration program announced in 1983 were the “major long-term goal of the department was to complete the transfer of eight million feet of unstable nitrate film to modern acetate stock”25 and the celebration of the department’s 50 years where a summary of the Film Department’s accomplishments is shortly encapsulated, as always under the aegis of Iris Barry: “Thanks to her [Iris Barry] vision, the department has grown to include a collection of 10,000 films, a daily exhibition program in the two Roy and Niuta

16 (ibid.)

17 (ibid.)

18 The Museum of Modern art, op. cit.

19 (ibid.)

20 (ibid.)

21 (ibid.)

22 (ibid.)

23 (ibid.)

24 (ibid.)

25 (The Museum of Modern Art, 1983) 5

Titus Theaters, the Film Study Center, a video program, a circulating film library, and a film stills archive containing four million photographs.”26 Other key developments for the Film Department were the launching in 1981 of a $6 million campaign for its Film Preservation Fund27 and the construction of the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center during the 1990s. The raison d’être of this state-of-the-art premise entirely dedicated to preservation and storage was partly related to a revision of one of the previously accepted strategies of film preservation, namely, the acknowledgement that, due to acetate’s vinegar syndrome, the transference of whole nitrate collections to acetate stock was only a partial solution. Mary Lea Brandy, Chief Curator of MoMA’s Department of Film and Video at the time, concludes: “«We now recognize that the most important contribution we can make is to store the films correctly.» This recognition has led to the development of a major new preservation and storage center for MoMA’s 12,000-film archive, a $12 million facility in northeastern Pennsylvania that is slated for completion in summer I996.”28 The summary of the collection’s continuous expansion and encompassing of other formats and objects, such as video and ephemera related to film advertising, is comprehensively detailed in a document from 2002: “The Department of Film and Media collection now includes over nineteen thousand films, twelve hundred videos, four million film stills, and countless pieces of motion picture ephemera and equipment; the oldest and strongest international film collection in the United States, it incorporates all periods and genres. The department's video collection, begun in I970, includes works dating from the I960s to the present by artists from North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and is considered the finest international collection of video in the world. The combined collections are stored in Hamlin, Pennsylvania, at the Museum's Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center, a state-of-the-art facility that opened in I996. (…) In recognition of the increasing scholarly interest in motion picture ephemera, our Film Study Center has been building its collection

26 (Klawans, 1985) 27 The Museum of Modern Art, op. cit.: “the Department of Film launched a $6 million campaign for its Film Preservation Fund in 1981."It's our estimation that we will need this amount for the preservation of the collection in our care” 28 (Klawans, 1995) 6

of vintage and contemporary items covering the history of motion picture advertising.”29 Two thousand and two was also an important year for the Film Department because of the first edition of “To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation” defined as “MoMA’s annual festival of newly preserved films.”30 In conclusion, Joshua Siegel, MoMA’s present Curator of Film, defines, in a recent interview, his view of the Department of Film’s lasting mission: “I think that the mission of our department is both to champion films and filmmakers and provide audiences with ever-changing opportunities to see the classics and rediscover them, or see them for the first time on the big screen. But it’s also essential to bring to light films that have been forgotten, films that have been rediscovered, films that have been saved. I think that that’s a core mission of this department; it drives our preservation program, it drives our To Save and Project Preservation Festival, which is one of the most important things we do.”31 If the Film Department was established in order “to trace, catalogue, assemble, preserve, exhibit and circulate to museums and colleges single films or programmes of all types of films' in exactly the same manner in which the museum traces, catalogues, exhibits and circulates paintings, sculpture, models and photographs of architectural buildings, or reproductions of works of art, so that the film may be studied and enjoyed as any other one of the arts is studied and enjoyed.”32 it is clearly by analyzing these activities that one can better understand its collection and collection management strategies and their development over time. What is more, these activities were thoroughly detailed by Barry and Abbott in 1935 right at the beginning of their report: “1. To compile and annotate a card index of all films of interest or merit of all kinds produced since 1889, both American and foreign.

2. To trace, secure and preserve the important films, both American and foreign, of each period since 1889.

29 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2002) 30 (The Museum of Modern Art, 2014) 31 (Dixon, 2015) 32 John E. Abbott, op. cit.

7

3. To edit and assemble these films into programmes for exhibitions in New York and throughout the country by colleges, museums and local organizations.

4. To circulate projection machines to colleges and museums lacking this facility until such time as they secure their own equipment.

5. To compose programme notes on each exhibition, which would include a critical appraisal of the films and aid the student in appreciation of the medium.

6. To assemble a library of books and periodicals on the film, and of other historical and critical material including the vast amount of unrecorded data which is still in the minds of men who developed the film. If the history of the formative period is to be preserved, it is necessary to secure this information at once for otherwise it will be irrecoverably lost at the death of these men.

7. To assemble and catalogue a collection of film 'Stills'. (Photographs made during production.)

8. To preserve and circulate the musical scores which were originally issued with the silent films and to arrange musical scores (sheet music or phonograph records) to be circulated with the silent programmes when needed.

9. To act as a clearing house for information on all aspects of the film, and to maintain contacts with all interested groups, both in America and abroad.

10. To make available the sources of technical information to amateur makers of film.

11. To publish a Bulletin with articles and illustrations to make known the Film Library's activities and to further the appreciation and study of the motion picture.�33 However, since the scope of these activities is so extensive and far-reaching, and as such impossible to tackle in its entirety for the sake of one brief assignment, I will rather define the key focus shared by some specific collection management activities and substantiate it with more precise examples, emphasizing once again the scarcity of, especially up to date, internal materials pertaining to this.

33 (ibid.)

8

MoMA’s twofold concern with the acknowledgement of film as an art form and hence its comprehensive study as such I have already mentioned earlier. However, to understand the extent to which these two overriding principles do indeed define the Film Department’s collection management practices, one needs only to consider how the argument of the report that originated the Film Library in the first place is summarized later that same year in MoMA’s own bulletin, according to these two very axioms: “In substance, the report based its argument for the need for a film library on the following points: -

The art of the motion picture is the only great art peculiar to the twentieth century. (…)

-

There exists a widespread demand for the means and material for studying the motion picture as art (…)”34

There is then definitely enough insight to argue that the Film Department has made every effort in its activities not only to “become a center of information about all matters pertaining to films”35 but also, more importantly, “to create a consciousness of tradition and of history within the new art of the film”36 with The Museum of Modern Art “already identified with education and cultural undertakings in other contemporary fields of art, being [of course] the appropriate institution to meet this demand.”37 Thus, in my opinion, MoMA’s collection management practices can be understood according to this overarching, structural binomial, on the one hand, of considering film an art form and, on the other, of providing the means and historical consciousness to study it as such. In light of this, the international scope of the collection and the goal “to trace, secure and preserve the important films, both American and foreign, of each period since 1889”38 can be seen as endeavors in the direction of the establishment of film as an art form; the mission “to compile and annotate a card index of all films of interest or merit of all kinds produced since 1889, both American and foreign”39 and “to act as a clearing house for information on all aspects of the film, and to maintain contacts with

34 (The Museum of Modern Art, 1935) 35 Iris Barry, op. cit.

36 (The Museum of Modern Art, 1937) 37 John E. Abbott, op. cit.

38 (ibid.)

39 (ibid.)

9

all interested groups, both in America and abroad”40 as efforts concordant with the Film Department’s aim to “become a center of information about all matters pertaining to films”41; and, finally, the purpose “to assemble a library of books and periodicals on the film, and of other historical and critical material”42 as well as a collection of film ‘Stills’, musical scores, a Film Study Center and, importantly, a circulating collection as enterprises altogether engaged in film education.

Finally, it is insightful to realize how this sits in seamlessly with the Museum of Modern Art’s general mission statement of encouraging “an ever-deeper understanding and enjoyment of modern and contemporary art by the diverse local, national, and international audiences that it serves.”43As a final point, I hope that this brief and definitely not exhaustive analysis of The Museum of Modern Art’s Film Department has been successful in pinpointing the reasons why the Film Department has, since its establishment, centered its mission statement, its collection scope and its activities around, on the one hand, the creation of a general acknowledgement of film as an art form as individual, ingenious and praiseworthy as any of the other arts and, on the other, the production of a consciousness of the history and tradition of motion picture development in order that it could be as comprehensively studied and critically analyzed as any of the other arts.

40 (ibid.)

41 Iris Barry, op. cit.

42 John E. Abbott, op. cit.

43 The Museum of Modern Art, op. cit.

10

WORKS CITED

Barry, I. (1941, Jun. -Jul.). Film Library, 1935-1941. The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Vol. 8, No. 5, Film Library , pp. 3-13.

Barry, I. (1969, Summer). The Film Library and How It Grew. Film Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4 , pp. 19-27.

Bowser, E. (1962-1963, Winter). Museum of Modern Art With a Special Survey: Our Resources for Film. Film Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 2 , pp. 35-37.

Dixon, W. W. (2015, July 29). “You Can Never Do Enough”—An Interview with Joshua Siegel, Curator of Film, Museum of Modern Art. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 33:2 , pp. 122-130.

John E. Abbott, I. B. (1995, Autumn). An Outline of a Project for Founding the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art. Film History, Vol. 7, No. 3, Film Preservation and Film Scholarship , pp. 325-335.

Klawans, S. (1985, Summer). Film Department Celebrates Fiftieth Anniversary. MoMA, No. 36 , p. 2.

Klawans, S. (1995, Autumn). Saving Our Cinematic Heritage the Film Preservation Center. MoMA, No. 20 , pp. 25-27.

Selznick, B. (2006, Fall). Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema (review). The Moving Image, Vol. 6, No. 2 , pp. 136-138.

The Museum of Modern Art. (2010, October 05). Collections Management Policy.

Retrieved 10/22, 2016, from The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/explore/CollectionsMgmtPolicyMo MA_Oct10.pdf The Museum of Modern Art. (1983, Winter). Museum's Drive to Preserve Film Continues. MoMA, No. 29 , pp. 3-4.

11

The Museum of Modern Art. (2002, January). New Acquisitions in Film and Media.

MoMA, Vol. 5, No. 1 , pp. 6-10.

The Museum of Modern Art. (2016). The Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center.

Retrieved 10/21, 2016, from The Museum of Modern Art: http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/filmpreservation#historypreservcenter The Museum of Modern Art. (1935, November). The Founding of the Film Library. The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Vol. 3, No. 2 , pp. 2-8.

The Museum of Modern Art. (2014). To Save and Project: The 12th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. Retrieved 10/21, 2016, from The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1471?locale=pt The Museum of Modern Art. (1937, January). Work and Progress of the Film Library.

The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Vol. 4, No. 4 , pp. 2-11.

Wasson, H. (2001, Spring). THE CINEMATIC SUBTEXT OF THE MODERN MUSEUM: Alfred H. Barr and MoMA's Film Archive. The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists,Vol. 1, No. 1 , pp. 1-28.

12

PLANNING TO LAST: Strategies to prepare for the longevity of collections in two audiovisual archival institutions Preservation and Restoration of the Moving Image | Eef Masson | University of Amsterdam | 2016-2017

Sofia Pires | 11315636

The research topic for my paper came about in part due to Joshua Ranger’s article ‘Three views of digital preservation’ where at a certain moment the author asserts the following: “One issue with audiovisual preservation is that our media of choice is a product of commerce. It was originally created to be marketed and sold, and the marketing and selling of media drives its continued or discontinued manufacture.

At some point, art adopted commerce, adopted the medium as a form of expression. This did not change the commercial nature of the product, but added a use for which the argument of preservation is at odds with the commercial venture. As noted above, the artistic argument is preferred, and it has historically been a part of the manufacturer’s marketing efforts, but in the end the artistic valuation cannot subsume the commercial concern within a medium that is so entirely dependent on industrial manufacturing.”1 It was precisely this ambivalent tension at the core of audiovisual archival practice that lead me to focus my research topic on the practices devised by audiovisual archival institutions in order to plan for the longevity of their archival holdings. In particular, I am interested in analyzing how do two distinct audiovisual archival institutions – with different historical backgrounds, diverse collections and divergent preservation requirements – plan for the longevity of their collections, aiming always, in view of long-term preservation, to counteract the marketable constitution of their very collections and of the technologies on which they so fundamentally depend. I will discuss this issue by surveying some of the preservation practices set up by the Austrian Film Museum and Tate’s Time-Based Media Art Conservation Department in view of planning for the prolonged existence of their collections. As an overview, I will start with a brief introduction to the two institutions and their collections and then proceed to specify some of the preservation practices developed by both institutions as a means of preparing for the longevity of their archival holdings. I will be especially focusing on the practices of prognostic nature, according to the 3 different levels of intervention, as systematized by Alessandro Bordina and Simone Venturini2. In the end, I aim at clearly summarizing the three distinct levels of prognostic intervention carried out by the Austrian Film Museum and Tate’s Time-Based Media Art Conservation Department as 1 2

(Ranger 2014) (Venturini and Bordina 2013) 2

a means of illustrating not only how these practices expose the different cultures of conservation to which these institutions belong but also how moving image preservation archival practices have been, and always will be, at odds with the profit-driven goals of the industry of moving image technology production.

The Austrian Filmmuseum (OeFM) was founded in 1964 by Peter Konlechner and Peter Kubelka as a non-profit organization aimed at preserving and exhibiting films.

It is financed with support from the Austrian Government, the City of Vienna, private sponsors, memberships and admission fees and it is a member of The International Federation of Film Archives since 1965. The scope of its collection is broad and encompasses several genres and types of films. Amongst its roughly 31.000 titles there are examples of feature films, trailers, scientific films, amateur films, small-gauge films, independent, experimental and classic feature films and a strong collection of early nitrate films, on the whole OeFM’s collection spans from 1893 to the present era. It is a medium sized film preservation archive with nearly 50 people working on the organization and it is from its inception an assiduous participant on the international debate about audiovisual archival practices.

Tate’s Time-Based Media Art Conservation Department is part of the Collection Care division of Tate, an executive non-departmental public body founded in 1897 in London by Henry Tate with the aim of exhibiting a collection of British artworks. Tate is funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and supplements its funding with additional sources such as admissions, fundraising activities and trading. Tate’s collection has expanded over the years to include not only British artworks from the 1500s to the present era but also international modern and contemporary art, with its archival holdings summing up to 70.000 artworks. Tate’s collection of time-based media art consists of roughly 350 artworks from the early 1970s to the present day. It includes pieces on film, video, 35mm slide, audio and computer-based technologies with a focus on artists’ installations rather than single-channel pieces. Although the first permanent position for time-based media art conservation was established in 1996, a separate Time-Based Media Art Conservation Department was only created in 2004, under the broader department of the Collection Care division of Tate. Currently, Tate’s Time-Based Media Art Conservation Department staff consists of 4 full-time conservators and 2 to 5 technicians, which makes it a rather small department working within the context of a much larger organization.

3

Regarding the practices of preservation, according to Alessandro Bordina and Simone Venturini3, “there are basically three questions that we must answer in order to work correctly: a) What is the identity of the material that we are analyzing? b) What are its conditions? c) How can we look after it?”4 In this paper, in the interest of space, I will focus solely on the issues pertaining to the latter question which, as the authors define it, “is of a prognostic nature and depends on the level of the intervention.”5 The levels of intervention are threefold and it is in line with this framework that I will look at the preservation practices of the OeFM and of Tate’s Time-Based Media Art Conservation Department (henceforth referred to as Tate).

“The first level of intervention is the storage and (…) [it] guarantees the survival of the artifacts over time.”6 It can be situated within the context of passive preservation strategies, which aim at “keeping the material in an ideal environment”7 to guarantee its continued existence over time. The OeFM’s collection, due to its diverse medium specificities, is stored in two different locations: the safety-films, stills and documentation are, since the early 1980s, stored in an air-conditioned repository in Vienna-Nussdorf whereas the nitrate film collection is kept in a separate climatecontrolled storage outside Vienna since the 1970s.8 Although the OeFM is not overly specific about its definition of “the best possible conditions”9 under which its collection is stored, I am willing to infer that being a member of the International Federation of Film Archives, the OeFM’s collection is stored according to the Federation’s best practice procedures which determine that film should be preserved in a “a cold and dry storage environment”, “at 5ºCelsius and 35% Relative Humidity”, “in appropriate

3

Ibid.

Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 (National Film and Sound Archive of Australia n.d.)

8 (The Austrian Filmmuseum n.d.)

9 Ibid.

4

4

containers, flat on shelves and the recommended conditioning time observed when moving between different environments.” 10 Tate is not detailled in what regards its time-based media storage conditions.

However, the institution is explicit when it specifies that “a preservation strategy is designed for each new acquisition, based on how each work was made and what is important to its ongoing preservation and display.”11 In light of this, it is possible to infer that passive preservation strategies are fine-tuned individually to attend to the requirements of each new acquisition, despite the fact that, even if they remain unstated, broader storage guidelines might already be in place. The DOCAM’s Research Alliance definition of “storage”12 consists of a twofold designation concerned with storing the work physically and securing multiple duplicates of equipment. Thus, it can be considered that Tate operates altogether according to these two principles; on the one hand, by storing the technological equipment and the remaining parts of the installation separately in climate-controlled vaults13 and, on the other, by regularly acquiring spare parts and additional equipment as well as by maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the industry, technicians and other experts that can help complement the know-how required to operate, maintain and fix the rapid obsolescent technologies of Tate’s collection.

“A second level of intervention is the preservation which “prolongs the existence of all that exists” (Païni, 1997), ensuring the transmission, the right reproduction of the visual and audio information preserved on the artifact”14 and it can be understood within the framework of active preservation practices. This usually encompasses the practices of duplication, refreshing and migration. The OeFM is of the opinion that the characteristics of the film medium have made duplication a deep-seated practice in the process of film production and distribution since the very beginnings of cinema. Thus, it is only natural for film archival institutions to maintain it in their film preservation activities. In the OeFM’s perspective, “long term preservation standards for digital data do not exist yet”15 and thus, accordingly, “for long term preservation and for the

10

(International Federation of Film Archives s.d.)

(Tate n.d.)

(DOCAM Research Alliance n.d.)

13 Pip Laurenson, the head of Time-Based Media Conservation at Tate, details in an interview to PACKED – Expertisecentrum Digitaal Erfgoed, that technological equipment and the remaining parts of the installation are stored separately and that the equipment is stored in the art stores which are maintained at 18ºCelsius at 45% Relative Humidity. (PACKED s.d.)

14 Venturini and Bordina, op.cit.

15 (The Austrian Filmmuseum 2011) 11 12

5

museum’s exhibition activities, it is (…) a basic aim to create a new negative and a projection copy of the work on Polyester motion picture film.”16 Furthermore, the OeFM’s active preservation activities also include striking new printing masters and screening copies, combining digital restoration techniques as well as photochemical duplication methods, scanning up to 6K resolution for digital film restoration, access purposes and 35mm laser film recording and the periodical migration of the data stored on LTO tapes and on magnetic hard drives.

Tate, on the other hand, because the time-based media contents of its collection are by definition highly dependent on technology and, as a result, “defy stasis”17, has to devise different active preservation strategies to address the particular obsolescence problems posed by the wide medium and technologic diversity of its collection. In line with their passive preservation approach, specific strategies are set up for each new acquisition even if broader strategies for each medium in the collection are already in practice. The longevity of video, for instance, is safeguarded by creating a preservation master on a non-compressed video format and by migrating it every 5 years onto either a new stock or a new format. Artworks made on film, contrastingly, require a more complex preservation strategy. Tate needs not only to produce an inter-positive from the artist’s negative but also two inter-negatives and two check prints. Furthermore, because film installations usually go on display for long periods of time and film prints need to be changed repeatedly due to the wear and tear caused to the prints by the continuous running through the projector, Tate also needs to maintain a close relation with the remaining manufacturers of 16mm film stock and laboratories in order to produce additional archival and display materials. 35mm slides represent one of the main challenges to Tate’s conservation team because they are produced without a negative.

As a result, despite the fact that the original positives are duplicated for display purposes, Tate is currently researching the possibilities of creating a digital intermediate in order to use it in the future to create 35mm positive duplicates. Audio is another important part of Tate’s time-based media art collection but the preservation strategy worked out for this medium is rather straightforward. All audio produced in analogue formats is digitised. A fundamental element to Tate’s preservation efforts, without which all the previous strategies would be of no consequence, is, regardless of medium, the artists’ interviews carried out in the moment of acquisition which must evidently be 16 17

Ibid.

Tate, op. cit.

6

considered in the context of active preservation practices since it is this tool that assures, not only the permanence of the artist’s intention but also the transmission of what is important to preserve, in terms of the integrity and authenticity of the work.

Finally, the third level of intervention “is the restoration (and of the critical reconstruction of the text). (…) [which] is not limited to preserving what exists or replicating or transmitting information preserved on originals, but aims to recover lost quality, former synchronic and authentic conditions and, in doing so, reveals approaches and finality that can be very different.”18 This generally refers to practices that involve a higher and more complex set of ethical and editorial choices such as restoration and emulation. Regarding film restoration the OeFM has published a digital film restoration policy to be used and serve as guideline for other audiovisual archival institutions.

However, this document can also be read as an attempt to establish a clear moral code to be used by the OeFM in the guidance of its own practices, especially, in face of the new digital tools. Nevertheless, the OeFM’s position in this respect stands at odds with the very definition of third level intervention preservation practices which encompasses the idea of recovering an artifact’s lost qualities. To the OeFM, the idea of a film’s original look is always a fabricated assumption since “there is no such thing as a single original in Motion Picture Film, and there never was”19, accordingly this should lead us to think instead in terms of sources and versions. The OeFM has produced several film restoration projects, using for the effect both photochemical and digital tools, such as, for instance, the recent restoration of films by James Benning, Josef von Sternberg and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Regardless, it remains the OeFM’s priority to strike a new polyester film negative and projection copy at the end of each restoration project.20 Considering that film restorations do not occur that often in the context of timebased media art archives, the third level practices that perhaps find a more apposite parallel with film restoration in the context of a time-based media art conservation department, of which Tate is an example, are those of the emulation or the installation of a time-based media artwork. However, the editorial and ethical choices involved in the process of emulating a time-based media artwork or in the process of installing it for purposes of display are equally relevant and complex. Considering the diversity of mediums of its collection, Tate is understandably not specific about either the emulation 18

Venturini and Bordina, op.cit.

The Austrian Filmmuseum, op.cit. pp.3 20 The Austrian Filmmuseum, op.cit., pp.4 19

7

projects they have produced or the time-based media art installation practices they have utilized. In any case, one thing Tate’s time-based conservators are clear about is the argument that since “time-based media pieces only really exist in their installed state”21 they “depend on a second stage of creation – the installation in the gallery – for their realization”22 and that is why “installation brings a host of decisions which can ultimately change even the most tightly specified work.”23 As a result, this is what leads me to conclude that time-based media art installations, although usually disregarded in this context, rightly belong to the third level of intervention in preservation practices.

In conclusion, the comparative survey of the OeFM and Tate’s preservation practices in view of preparing for the continued existence of their collections has underscored the shared goals of both institutions in face of material decay, technological obsolescence and integrity corruption while at the same time shedding light on the diverseness of priorities that inform such interventions.

In the first place, by

implementing first level intervention preservation practices, such as storing their collections in the most suitable climate-controlled environments for the specific medium requirements of each object, both institutions attempt to offset the adverse effects of material deterioration and as such, preserve their collections in optimal conditions for the future prolonged existence. Secondly, by putting forth a combined set of second level intervention preservation practices, both institutions endeavor to counteract the undesirable outcomes of technological obsolescence and thus to prolong not only the transmission of “all that exists”24 in its integrity but also the persistence of the viewing experience by preserving playback materials, duplicated technological equipment, spare parts and specialized expertise. Lastly, by taking on the complex challenges of third level intervention preservation practices, both organizations strive to some extent to return to the work a version of integrity and authenticity assumed lost.

Despite the fact that the OeFM and Tate stemmed from fundamentally distinct intents, in spite of the evident differences of their institutional backgrounds and regardless of the diversity of their collections, at the core of their preservation practices lies a shared mission to, in face of decay and obsolescence, assure the prolonged existence of their collections not only as material artifacts but, more importantly, as a 21

Tate, op. cit.

Tate, op. cit.

23 Tate, op. cit.

24 Venturini and Bordina, op.cit.

22

8

time-based experience. If this latter goal was self-evident from the outset in Tate’s understanding of its time-based artworks – which are by definition highly dependent on technology, have duration as a dimension and only exist in their installed state – Alexander Horwath’s intervention25 at the International Symposium “The Digital Revolution: What Would Happen If Films Lost Their Memory”, organized by the Centre National de la Cinématographie et de l’Image Animée and the Cinémathèque française in 2011, clarifies any subsisting doubts regarding the OeFM’s analogous take on the issue. Horwath, when discussing the social function of a film museum and the type of social space it can be, argues: “When I say film museum (…) I am referring to institutions that define the cinema auditorium as the actual museum space, this is the space where film itself can appear, the work that is not an object but an event in time. It is the space where a museum of film can turn its film collection into actual films, into projections which are also performances between humans and technology. This means that we do not really collect film reels as museum objects, we collect film reels and technology that represent the potential for museum performances.”26 Relevant perspective indeed since it is at this point that the preservation practices of both institutions really come together in the common project of safeguarding an overarching goal to which all the preservation practices discussed above contribute only separately. Namely, the momentous undertaking of assuring that the time-based viewing experience – a condition without which the preserved artifacts are of no meaning – can be can be re-enacted indefinitely for years to come. As a final note, I would like to conclude my paper with a quote by Rosalind Krauss as, in my opinion, it ties in seamlessly with the ambivalent tension, between the effort to safeguard long-term existence and the economic urge to drive obsolescence, at the core of moving image archival practice discussed throughout my paper: “This structure in which two opposing forms of equivalence can converge in the object - that of exchange and that of "proximity" - is a dialectical condition in which everything within capitalism - every object, every technological process, every social type - is understood as invested with a double valence: negative and positive, like an object and its shadow, or a perception and its after image. (…)

25 26

(Horwarth 2011) Ibid.

9

Benjamin believed that at the birth of a given social form or technological process the utopian dimension was present and, furthermore, that it is precisely at the moment of the obsolescence of that technology that it once more releases this dimension, like the last gleam of a dying star. For obsolescence, the very law of commodity production, both frees the outmoded object from the grip of utility and reveals the hollow promise of that law.�27

27

(Krauss 1999) 10

WORKS CITED

DOCAM Research Alliance. "DOCAM." Glossaurus. http://www.docam.ca/en/see-theglossaurus.html (accessed 16/12/2016).

Horwarth, Alexander. "Canal-U." PERSISTENCE AND MIMICRY: THE DIGITAL ERA AND FILM COLLECTIONS. LECTURE BY ALEXANDER HORWATH. 10 2011. http://www.canalu.tv/video/cinematheque_francaise/en_persistence_and_mimicry_the_digital_era_and_f ilm_collections_lecture_by_alexander_horwath.7757 (accessed 12/12/2016).

International Federation of Film Archives. “fiaf.” Resources of the Technical Commission (TC): Preservation Best Practice. http://www.fiafnet.org/pages/EResources/Technical-CommissionResources.html?PHPSESSID=nog6blf9ip372ssf1f5vkpqul4 (accessed 16/12/2016).

Krauss, Rosalind. A Voyage On The North Sea. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc., 1999.

National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. "Glossary." National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. https://www.nfsa.gov.au/preservation/preservation-glossary (accessed 20/11/2016).

PACKED. “SCART. A website on audiovisual heritage by PACKED.” Interview with Pip Laurenson (Tate). https://www.scart.be/?q=en/content/interview-pip-laurenson-tate (accessed 16/12/2016).

Ranger, Joshua. "avpreserve." Three Views Of Digital Preservation. 05/02/2014. https://www.avpreserve.com/blog/three-views-of-digital-preservation/ (accessed 15/12/2016).

Tate. "Tate." Conservation – time-based media. http://www.tate.org.uk/about/ourwork/conservation/time-based-media (accessed 16/12/2016).

The Austrian Filmmuseum. "filmmuseum." History. https://www.filmmuseum.at/en/about_us/history (accessed 16/12/2016).

11

—. "The Austrian Filmmuseum." Film Preservation. Digital Restoration Policy.

20/09/2011. https://www.filmmuseum.at/jart/prj3/filmmuseum/data/uploads/Vermittlung_Forschung /Textmaterialien/Digital%20Film%20Restoration%20Policy.pdf (accessed 17/12/2016).

Venturini, Simone, and Alessandro Bordina. "Operational Practices for A Film and Video Preservation and Restoration Protocol." In Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art, edited by Julia Noordegraaf, Cosetta G. Saba, Barbara Le MaĂŽtre and Vinzenz Hediger, 253-269. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013.

12

University of Amsterdam | Cinema Histories and Cultures Article Proposal | Group 4 | Eef Masson | 23/12/2016 Sofia Pires (11315636)

“THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE”1: THE PROPORTIONATE DISTRIBUTION OF IMAGE AND SOUND ON EUGENE LAUSTE’S 1911 SOUNDON-FILM 35MM FILMSTRIP

Amidst the Google searches in view of my presentation on the Sounds of Cinema, my at times not so commendable compulsive obsession with balance and order was gripped by an obscure object of unexpected proportionate distribution that entirely escaped the by now proverbial symmetry of sound waves. This object was an image of Eugene Lauste’s sound-on-film 35mm filmstrip.

Figure 1 – Printscreen of the google search. Colors added by the author.

While reading the two websites2 to which the images directed me to, I rapidly realized that I had never read about this part of sound film history. To my surprise, Eugene Lauste’s invention and the author himself had been altogether eclipsed out of the narrative of the development of sound film. As a result, I decided to focus my research project on this material artifact and steer my investigation in line with my original

1 “That Obscure Object of Desire” a film directed by Luis Buñuel in 1977 2 https://thebioscope.net/2010/07/09/movements-and-sounds/ | http://www.movingimagearchivenews.org/detecting-the-history-ofsound-on-film/ (both accessed on 05/12/16) 1

University of Amsterdam | Cinema Histories and Cultures Article Proposal | Group 4 | Eef Masson | 23/12/2016 Sofia Pires (11315636)

attraction towards the artifact: that is, the surprisingly commensurate distribution of image and sound on the filmstrip.

In light of this, my research seeks to discuss the formal relation between the proportionate configuration of sound and image on the material artifact of Lauste’s sound-on-film filmstrip and the configuration of the analogous senses on the human body and the sort of implications this might have had to the later dismissal of Eugene Lauste’s contribution to sound film technology. My research project will be divided in two parts. In a first moment, I will focus on the material artifact in its relation to the human senses of vision and hearing. I will start by drawing a parallel between the symmetric location of eyes and ears on the human face and the location and commensurate proportion of image and sound on the Lauste’s filmstrip. I will proceed by tying the main characteristics of vision and hearing – such as the fragmentation of vision into non-simultaneous fields of vision and the continuous three dimensional and enveloping nature of sound – to their material representation on the film strip – with the image being conveyed as a sequence of still images able to be viewed in even when the film is not being projected and the sound being expressed as a continuous soundtrack that can only be experienced in time. I will conclude the first part of my research with an overview of how the very characteristics and limitations of the two senses informed the visual representation of their counterparts on the filmstrip and, how in their nonhierarchical distribution, this could have created an inconvenient model for the relation between sound and image in motion picture. The second moment of my research will expand on the last argument by interrogating the ways in which Lauste’s invention might have been dismissed precisely because it disrupted the hierarchical power relation of image over sound, especially in the late 1920s, that is, in the transition between the so-called “golden age” of silent film to sound.

I will take a media archaeological approach because, instead of aiming at reestablishing Lauste’s sound-on-film filmstrip hypothetical genealogical significance to the later developments of modern sound (on) film technology, my research will be instead focused on the relation between the forgotten technological artifact and the human senses. In particular, I intend to center my research within the German tradition of Media Archaeology as this is the one that most clearly engages both in the 2

University of Amsterdam | Cinema Histories and Cultures Article Proposal | Group 4 | Eef Masson | 23/12/2016 Sofia Pires (11315636)

investigation of neglected or ephemeral technological phenomenon as in the interrogation of histories of disregarded inventions or technological dead-ends omitted from the grand historical narrative(s). I am the of the opinion that this approach is particularly well suited for my research because it encourages, through the close analysis of forgotten media artifacts, a historic revisionism of alternative or elapsed pathways that are helpful not to establish a genealogy of linear progress but instead, through the tentative recount of the histories of what might have been, to reflect on the current developments of media. As a result, I suspect that the conclusion of my research project might result in a revisionist historiographic exercise of attempting to, through the materiality and physicality of Lauste’s filmstrip, with its even distribution of image and sound according to no hierarchical relation whatsoever, theorizing the implications of reimagining the possibility of a egalitarian relation between image and sound in the transition from the silent films to sound.

3

University of Amsterdam | Cinema Histories and Cultures Article Proposal | Group 4 | Eef Masson | 23/12/2016 Sofia Pires (11315636)

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abel, Richard, and Rick (eds.) Altman. The Sounds of Early Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

This book is especially relevant in the context of early sound film studies because it was the outcome of Dormitor's - an international association of historians and archivists devoted to the study of early cinema - biannual conference in June of 1998. It presents key texts on early sound film scholarship and I will be using it as a means to historically contextualize my artifact within the broader practices of early sound film at the time.

Elsaesser, Thomas, and Malte Hagener. Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. Routledge, 2009.

This book is relevant for my research because it is centered on the relation between human perception and cinema and thus it is entirely applicable to my project. Its media archaeological approach is also key in its articulation of specific technological devices in their relation to the human senses. Chapters 4 and 5 are of particular interest for my project as they address the two human senses in which I will be focusing, namely, vision and hearing, and relate them to their counterpart outer space of cinema (as an experience, a space or a technological artifact).

Indiana University Press. "Film Technology." Film History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1999.

This issue of Film History is entirely dedicated to Film Technology. It is relevant for my research especially because of the two articles dedicated to Eugene Lauste. They will be fundamental for the accurate framing of Lauste's biography and his documents and holdings.

4

Berlinale Forum 2017 Wed Feb 15 19:00 – Delphi Filmpalast

BERLINALE 2017_“SPELL REEL”, ARCHIVES & POSSIBLE PRACTICES OF THE PRESENT

© Stills from Spell Reel, 2017

Spell Reel (2017), premiered at the Berlinale (Forum), marks the transition of the Portuguese artist Filipa César from short and medium length films and installations to feature film. Based in Berlin for seven years, César’s most recent work is the result of an extensive research project initiated by Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art, in the context of its Living Archive label. The project, encapsulates in practice the idea that “an archive can only be significant if it refers to the practices of the present”i, and its approach is trifold: first, the creation of an online database; secondly, the two-year project Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice; and finally, the networking project Visionary Archive in the context of which Spell Reel was originated. Visionary Archive, defined by the institution as a “collaborative translocal experiment”ii, aims at examining the different challenges of archival work in five distinct cinematographic contexts, namely, Cairo, Khartoum, Johannesburg, Berlin and Bissau. “What transcultural, curatorial and artistic work with archives and archival research can look like today”iii was the question at the core of the project that each of the five thematic projects explored in one way or another.

Filipa César’s involvement with the Visionary Archive was lengthy, as it was part of the artist’s 6-year research project Luta ca caba inda (The Struggle is Not Over Yet). The mission of this latter project was to look for the surviving materials of Guinea-Bissau’s militant cinema amidst the archival holdings of the National Film Institute of Guinea-Bissau (INCA – Instituto Nacional de Cinema e Audiovisual) and to secure them and make them visible and accessible again, through digitization. This corpus of films covers a phase of militant filmmaking in Bissau that documented the period from the struggle for independence (1963-1974) to the socialist period post-decolonization (1974-1980). It is thus in the context of this wider project that From

Berlinale Forum 2017 Wed Feb 15 19:00 – Delphi Filmpalast Boé to Berlin – A mobile lab on the film history of Guinea-Bissau, one of the five thematic projects of the Visionary Archive, was developed. From Boé to Berlin – A mobile lab on the film history of Guinea-Bissau is dedicated to making the digitized films of INCA visible again through a variety of different activities such as a mobile cinema, film programs, exhibitions and workshops.

Spell Reel is the unparalleled object, midway between a moving essay, a documentary and a multi-screen installation, that puts all the different elements of the project in relation within the confines of the film screen. It might be best described as a journey where one is parallelly taken through the selective processes of History making and the process of making, or rather uncovering, the film. Filipa César uses the film surface much like a working table where all the elements are exposed and the possible relations between them are laid bare by the very act of researching and delving into the material. Like the tangled offshoots of the mangroves, a prevalent shrub in Bissau that appears recurrently throughout the film in lengthy travelling shots, César threads the different stories of the film according to a plastic logic of possible relations and contaminations that evades any definite and unambiguous finale. Thus, by means of the multiple frames, voices, timelines and textual notations that produce the filmic image, one learns simultaneously about the history of Guinea-Bissau and its struggle for independence, the history of cinema and of filmmaking in Bissau and the contingencies of moving image archiving in the tropics, all intercut with the untold stories of international (cinematographic) relations. Therefore, it can be said that this is a chorus film, made by and for several voices. At moments, the voice of Sana na N’Hada is heard commenting with a more than 40 years decalage the images he filmed back in the 1960s and 1970s; other times, it is the history of cinema itself which is brought to the fore by the reading of extant letters by Chris Marker; in other moments still, it is the history of Guinea-Bissau which is told and discussed by the audiences of the mobile cinema; and, lastly, it is the voice of the director herself which is read in the textual aphorisms that punctuate the film and in the sharp editing work. The film screen then becomes a space of reunion, a sort of assembly, where both the creators and the viewers of the images are given a space to, through the new visibility of the digitized images, collectively discuss and reconsider the past and present of Guinea-Bissau.

Berlinale Forum 2017 Wed Feb 15 19:00 – Delphi Filmpalast

© Stills from Spell Reel, 2017

Spell Reel Germany / Portugal / France / Guinea-Bissau 2017 Portuguese, Fula, Guinea-Bissau Creole, English, French Documentary form 96 min · Colour Premiere February 15, 2017, Berlinale Forum Producer: Filipa César, Oliver Marboeuf, Maria João Mayer.

Production companies: Filipa César (Berlin, Germany), Spectre Productions (Rennes, France), Filmes do Tejo II (Lissabon, Portugal).

Director: Filipa César.

Screenplay: Sana na N’Hada.

Director of photography: Jenny Lou Ziegel.

Editor: Filipa César.

Sound design: Didio Pestana.

Sound: Nikolas Mühe.

Production design: Olivier Marboeuf.

World sales: Spectre Productions

All film stills were taken from the Berlinale website. i

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/living-archive/about-living-archive/the-project.html http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/living-archive/projects/visionary-archive.html iii http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/living-archive/projects/visionary-archive.html ii

University of Amsterdam | This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice Assignment 1b: The Reel Thing | Individual Paper Sofia Pires (11315636) | 13/03/2017

The Reel Thing is a technical symposium dedicated to introducing the most recent developments in the field of audio-visual preservation and restoration. It aims at bringing together relevant figures in the audio-visual archival field such as archivists, curators, researchers, preservationists and laboratory technicians to discuss the current issues on audio-visual preservation and restoration. Thus, as technological development is often unpredictable and wide-ranging, the themes and issues addressed vary from year to year.

Started in 1994 as part of the annual conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists in Boston, by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend, The Reel Thing was given its definitive name in 1995 at the following AMIA’s annual conference in Toronto. In the program of 1995, the symposium is introduced as “an advanced technical presentation including open discussion among laboratory technicians, studio personnel and archive preservationists.” (The Association of Moving Image Archivists 4) The aim to have representatives of all threads of archival practice in the conference is manifest in this brief introduction. Additionally, the symposium’s tight relation to the industry is made visible not only in the list of its long-term commercial sponsors1, such as Chace Productions and Fotokem Film and Video, but also in its mission to, since the beginning, bring to the event studio personnel. During its 22 years of activity, the symposium has expanded in scope and popularity, taking place at present twice-yearly in different locations across the globe.

It is my goal with this paper to discuss the development of the conference and to place it within the broader context of the audio-visual archival field. In a first instance, I will examine the parallel development of The Reel Thing and the audio-visual archival field, since the mid-1990s, when the first edition of the event took place. Secondly, I will be looking at The Reel Thing as a case-study to analyse the growing interest in the audiovisual archival field, since the late 1990s. Accordingly, I will delve into the phenomena that in my view contributed to this renewed interest and chart the relevant manifestations of it both to the symposium and to the audio-visual archiving field.

The Reel Thing came about in the middle of a decade of challenging transformations for the audio-visual archival field. In fact, the reference to the transitional context of the time is made twice in the title of the 1995 program, “Preserving the first

“The Reel Thing is made possible by the active and engaged support of some of the most important and innovative companies in the archival field. These firms work side by side with archivists and asset managers to constantly raise the standard of preservation and restoration, and to find new ways to ensure that moving images from public collections and the private sector will retain their quality and remain accessible as a resource for future generations.” (The Association of Moving Image Archivists 2) 1

1

100 years: A Changing Field, an Evolving Profession” (The Association of Moving Image Archivists 3) [emphasis added], and that is symptomatic of the pressing importance of the issue to the field. Accordingly, as Giovanna Fossati argues, “film and moving image media in general are transitional in nature.” (2) Thus, in the 1990s, the transitional nature of the medium was further pushed to the fore due to technological developments in digital film, that would lead to a steady replacement of photochemical film by its digital counterpart and that were slowly being integrated into film production and, thus, film preservation. As Fossati points out: “This transition […] profoundly affects not only the practice of filmmaking and distribution, but also the practice of film archiving, and the theoretical conceptualization of the medium.” (13) On the one hand, the reconceptualization of the film medium, in transition between analogue and digital technologies, renewed the debate on the ontology of the medium. On the other, the hybridization of workflows, brought about by the inclusion of digital technologies in film production and preservation, called for a re-examination of the deontological practices and strategies that had guided film archival practice in the past. Moreover, the discovery in the late-1980s that vinegar syndrome was putting at stake safety acetate-film copies in vaults all over the globe, was also instrumental in stirring up the deontological debate, where tacit and longstanding audio-visual archival practices were being re-examined, discussed and theorised in light of renewed and critical perspectives. Finally, by the mid-1990s, the audio-visual archival profession was reaching the end of a long process of codification and professionalization that was initiated way back in the 1930s but that was only formally legitimized by the broader field as late as 19802 and united in a shared code of ethics in 19933. Although individual institutional deontologies were in place since the beginnings of the film preservation movement, with strategies developed by pioneers such as Iris Barry, Henri Langlois and Ernest Lindgren, no general recommendation was followed by archives worldwide.

According to Andrew Abbott (92), the institution of a shared code of ethics4, the creation

2

When UNESCO decreed the Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Conservation of Moving Images which at last defined moving images as national heritage, therefore investing governments with the obligation to safeguard these collections, and thus officialising the statute of the field.

3 When the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) published the FIAF Code of Ethics.

4 FIAF Code of Ethics (1993) 2

of professional training5 and the establishment of journals and other specialist publications6 as well as the wider legitimation of the field by the broader cultural field7 are some of the typical events that indicate professionalization. Roughly, all these events took place in the decades immediately preceding the introduction of The Reel Thing in the mid-1990s and this contributed greatly to the lively intellectual atmosphere of the conference.

In short, it can be argued that in 1995 The Reel Thing was established right at the centre of all these exciting developments and that its programmes, themes and guest speakers reflect the environment of the field in this decade. In fact, an analysis of the symposium’s programmes demonstrates that since the very beginning several speakers were engaged in addressing issues pertaining to digital workflows and other digital developments. Furthermore, the establishment of The Reel Thing by two figures who worked within emblematic examples of the North-American audio-visual archival world, namely, studios and film archives, appears to be indicative of a need, experienced by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend, to find a place to reunite all the relevant practitioners in the field in the same place to discuss and share experiences. Ray Edmondson when recalling his first AMIA conference in Toronto in 1995, clearly highlights the energizing feeling of sharing experiences with his peers: “I have never failed to be energized by the experience. It may be a function of the size of the gathering—it is easily the largest annual conference in the audiovisual archiving field—or the diversity of the participants, or the quality and range of the sessions. It might be that so much is compressed into an intensive four or five days. But there is also an intangible quality to the event that derives from a specific source. I have always felt welcome. That does not mean faux camaraderie, nor does it mean organized mentoring, important as that is; it simply speaks to the character of the membership and the reason people join AMIA and come to the conference at all. We are there because we are engaged in a mission that matters, and anyone who shares that motivation is automatically welcome. We are energized and encouraged by each other.” (2)

5

Among others, FIAF Restoration Summer School; The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation; Dual Master’s Degree in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image.

6 Among others, the Journal of Film Preservation, Griffithiana and Cinegrafie.

7 UNESCO “Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Conservation of Moving Images” (1980) 3

The initial decade of The Reel Thing was also witness to a growing interest in the audio-visual archival field. This growing interest took on many forms especially in regards to the interplay between the ongoing practices on the audio-visual archival side, a new and poorly theorised academic field in universities worldwide and concerns for preservation efforts on the production side. Two of the main factors that contributed to the growing interest in audio-visual archival issues from figures outside the strictly heritage field were the introduction of the field to broader audiences via university-level programmes and dedicated archival sections in general/unspecialized film festivals and the acknowledgement by key filmmakers that, in part due to vinegar syndrome, all their previous work could be in peril and thus, that preservation was a necessary and urgent effort.

Whereas, as discussed above, the transition to digital was leading the audio-visual archival field to question and re-examine itself and its practices, the creation and proliferation of academic training at university-level in moving media preservation and restauration was bracing the lasting need for a theory of audio-visual archival practice.

As a result, more and more scholars and practitioners grew keen to learn and theorise the pressing issues of the field. Key publications on audio-visual preservation and restoration, now paradigmatic in the literature of the discipline, were all given to the press in this decade8 and this coincidence clearly demonstrates the intense theorisation of the field at the time. Additionally, the establishment and development of specialized for-profit film restoration laboratories, outside of the national and regional film archive model, meant that people from other fields unrelated to heritage studies, like the hard sciences, were providing valuable input into the field. Finally, film festivals worldwide played a very significant role in mediatizing the efforts of film preservation and restauration in dedicated sections out of competition. The most relevant film festivals in Europe, such as Cannes, Berlinale and Venice, have had a dedicated archival section since the 1990s.

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Among others, Houston, Penelope. Keepers of the Frame: The Film Archives. London: British Film Institute, 1994.; Meyer, Mark-Paul. Restoration of Motion Picture Film. Eds. Paul Read and Mark-Paul Meyer. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000.; The Film Preservation Guide: The Basics for Archives, Libraries, and Museums. San Francisco: National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004.; Permanence through Change: The Variable Media Approach. Eds. Alain Depocas, Jon Ippolito, and Cailtlin Jones. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Montreal: Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, 2003.; Wetering, Ernst van de. Modern Art: Who Cares? Eds. IJsbrand Hummelen and Dione Sillé. Amsterdam: Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art/Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, 1999.; FIAF. "Special Issue: Manual for Access to Film Collections." Journal of Film Preservation 55, 1997.; Ketelaar, Eric. “Tacit Narratives: The Meaning of Archives.” Archival Science 2:1, 2001.; Cherchi Usai, Paolo. “The Ethics of Film Preservation.” Silent Cinema: An Introduction. London: BFI, 2000.

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Additionally, since the 1980s, there has been a steady growth in the establishment of dedicated archival film festivals as well as conferences and other symposia. Although they vary greatly in their mission, scope and goals, festivals like Il Cinema Ritrovato, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto and the Orphan Film Symposium, much like The Reel Thing, have witnessed in the past years an increasing expansion of their audiences and a new popularity amidst participants entirely outside the archival field.

Finally, the interest in audio-visual preservation efforts was further popularized to broader audiences when prominent filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg publicly acknowledged that their oeuvres were decaying in part due to vinegar syndrome and that preservation was thus of crucial importance. Ultimately, this gave rise to the establishment of foundations entirely dedicated to film preservation, such as The Film Foundation9. At the same time, major Hollywood studios came to the conclusion that profit could still be originated by releasing to the DVD market older catalogue titles and this not only lead to the creation of extensive and rigorous preservation programmes at some of the major studios10, but also, through the DVD market, brought the issue of film preservation to the fore by popularizing it amidst the masses of DVD consumers.

The Reel Thing has, of course, experienced this phenomenon in a similar fashion.

This comes across in the expansion of the frequency of the symposium from one standalone yearly event to a twice-yearly event that takes place in different parts of the globe.

This expansion, which includes and relies on the partner co-organizing institutions, has led to broaden the geographical scope of participants to include, among others, European and South American audiences. In conclusion, after this brief overview of the parallel development of the audio-visual archiving field and of the Reel Thing symposium, since the early 1990s to the present, I pointed to some of the reasons why the gradual expansion in scope and popularity of the conference is in many ways analogous to the expansion and growth of the audio-visual archival field. In short, I argue that even if quite insular and incomparable in its mission, aims and scope to any other audio-visual archival or technical symposium, The Reel Thing offers a privileged viewpoint to examine the audiovisual archival field in the past 20 years of intense transformation.

9

Established by Martin Scorsese in 1990.

I.E. Sony Pictures Entertainment Film Preservation programme established in 1993.

10

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WORKS CITED Abbott, Andrew. System of Professions. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988.

Edmondson, Ray. “Antipodean Reflections on AMIA.” The Moving Image, Volume 11, Number 1 Spring 2011: 130-131.

Fossati, Giovanna. From Grain to Pixel. The Archival Life of Film in Transition.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.

—. “On the Role of AMIA in Reshaping the Field of the Moving Image.” The Moving Image, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2011 Spring 2011: 155-158.

The Association of Moving Image Archivists. “Annual Conference Program.” The Reel Thing. The Association of Moving Image Archivists, 1994-1999. 1-24.

—. “The Reel Thing XXVIII.” Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: The Association of Moving Image Archivists , 2011. 1-16.

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University of Amsterdam | This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice Assignment 2a: Public Lecture Series | Individual Paper Sofia Pires (11315636) | 03/04/2017 Proposal for a session to be organized in 2018:

LIGHTS ON PROJECTION BOOTHS

I will use this paper to propose a session to be organized in 2018, at the following edition of This is film! Film Heritage in Practice. If the program presents itself as a series of public lectures that offer “insight into what happens behind the scenes in film archives and museums” (EYE Filmmuseum), it would be relevant to dedicate a session to film projection, the craft that plays a key role in bringing to light what happens behind the scenes in audiovisual archival institutions and cinemas worldwide but that is usually kept in the shadow. As Karen Gracy argues “archival film projection is an intense, demanding job that often goes underappreciated in comparison to other aspects of preservation work” (37). As one of the main daily activities of a film heritage institution, film projection would make a germane topic for one session of This is film! Film Heritage in Practice.

Additionally, the framework of the program in combination with the longstanding expertise of EYE’s projectionists, well-versed in the rigorous standards of archival projection, would represent an ideal context to re-examine and shed light on this overlooked part of archival work.

Alexander Horwath, Director of the Austrian Film Museum, argues for the momentous importance of the cinematic event that takes place within the cinema auditorium, according to him the event that substantiates the very definition of a film museum. To Horwath, “the cinema auditorium [is] (…) the actual museum space” (Horwath). Accordingly, this means that the auditorium “is the space where a museum of film can turn its film collection into actual films – into projections which are also performances between humans and technology” (Horwath). It is to the specificity of film being an event in time, only actualized in the cinema auditorium, that the pivotal significance of film projection is intrinsically connected. Another voice within the audiovisual archival community to make a case for film projection is Mark-Paul Meyer, Senior Curator at EYE Filmmuseum. Meyer understands film archives “as the museums of film culture, not as libraries of moving images” (16). Thus, Meyer assumes that a film museum is more than a repository of moving images and that one of its major purposes should be the recreation, in every screening, of “the perception and appreciation of cinema as it was intended” (18). In Meyer’s view, in the era of digital archives, analogue film projection should coexist with digital film projection since it is the museological function of a film museum to screen a film as it was intended to be seen. Although commercial 1

film screening shares some of the challenges brought about by the development of digital cinema technologies, this transition represents a superior challenge to film museums and repertoire cinemas. As Jared Rapfogel points out, “the likelihood that the films of the past will increasingly be seen digitally, rather than on their original format, raises a number of questions” (Bordwell et al. 32) largely related to the impact of medium specificity on the cinematic experience and thus on film culture entirely.

However, audiovisual archival institutions are not the sole to argue for the importance of maintaining analogue film projection alongside digital film projection.

Artists and filmmakers have also joined efforts to raise awareness to the limitations that this abrupt shift poses to their artistic practice and to the medium of film. Initiatives such as SAVEFILM.ORG demonstrate that a number of individuals and institutions have come together with the common goal “to protect and safeguard the medium of film, the knowledge and practice of filmmaking and the projection of film print under (…)

[UNESCO’s] 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” (SAVEFILM.ORG). According to the organization, “film and digital are different mediums, in that they differ materially and methodologically in their artistic rather than technological use, and so make different cinema and different art” (SAVEFILM.ORG). Therefore, the point of the petition is to argue for the co-existence of both in view of keeping “diversity and richness in our moving-image vocabulary” (SAVEFILM.ORG). Of particular relevance to my paper is the importance given in the petition to analogue film projection, which is considered “nearly at the point of extinction” (SAVEFILM.ORG). In line with Howarth and Meyer’s positions, the importance of maintaining analogue film projection alongside digital projection is substantiated by the belief that each film should be screened as it was intended to be seen, in terms of format and screening conditions. Amidst the signatories of the petition, there are figures as diverse as Jane Campion, Stan Douglas, Cate Blanchett and Mark Peranson, among others. Of note to my proposal is the fact that not only EYE Filmmuseum but also the director of the institution, Sandra den Hamer, are signatories of this petition. This reinforces the pertinence of having a debate on film projection at EYE, framed within the context of This is film! Film Heritage in Practice in 2018. As Christopher Nolan points out, in a talk on The Future of Film at the Getty Museum, “we shouldn’t view film as a technology that is there to be supplanted, we should view it as a medium. We want to see a world where it’s there as a choice.” (Hernandez). Christopher Nolan has actually been

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one of the greatest enthusiasts of the savefilm.org ethos amidst Hollywood studios and the film industry. With other directors, such as Quentin Tarantino and Judd Apatow, Nolan has been able to strike a pact between Kodak and six major Hollywood studios in view of maintaining Kodak in activity as the chief supplier of film stock to meet the needs of studios as well as of archival institutions.

Moreover, both online and in academia a number of projects have been launched with the goal of supporting and sharing the existing body of knowledge and expertise on the craft of film projection. For instance, the Association of Moving Image Archivists has established the AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force (FATF) with “the goal of supporting celluloid film as the motion picture industry embraces digital technology” (The AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force). Also, the Chicago Film Society has a number of online projects dedicated to analogue practices. Leader Ladies Project, Celluloid Chicago and Projectionists Draw Projectors are a few examples of The Chicago Film Society analogue projection-related initiatives.1 However, particularly relevant to my paper is the Chicago Film Society wiki cluster of information on “non-digital film handling, film projection and film exhibition” (Chicago Film Society). Suggestively named Sprocket School the project “is intended to be a resource for exhibitors and archivists who want to safely continue projecting analog motion picture film of every gauge long into the future” (Chicago Film Society). Other projects initiated by individuals, such as Film-Tech (http://www.film-tech.com/main.php), Future Projections (http://www.fproj.com/), the Mad Cornish Projectionist (http://www.madcornishprojectionist.co.uk/) and We Can Still Show Film (http://www.wecanstillshowfilm.co.uk/) aim at developing a resource and a supportive online community “for all those people, companies, organisations and venues who are still able to run film, now that Digital has taken over the Film Industry” (We Can Still

Show

Film).

Finally,

The

Projection

Project

–

tell

your

story

(http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/research/current/theprojectionproject/) initiated by the Department of Film and Television Studies of the University of Warwick and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council aims at documenting “the projectionist’s role as it passes into history, following the switch of most cinemas to digital projection between 2010 and 2012” (The Projection Project) using as primary

1

For more information on these projects please refer to the Chicago Film Society webpage > Projects section (http://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/projects/).

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sources interviews with projectionists and other materials such as photographs and feature films.

To come back to the initial purpose of this paper, the coincidence of these initiatives demonstrates that there is still space and interest in having a discussion on film projection in 2018. Considering that EYE is one of the signatory institutions of the SAVEFILM.ORG petition and that This is film! Film Heritage in Practice introduces itself as a program that addresses “presentation forms of film heritage” (EYE Filmmuseum), this would make it a relevant context to frame a public lecture on the topic of film projection. In my view, this session would be a valuable opportunity to bring together and critically discuss this scattered body of knowledge and initiatives as well as to shed light on the hidden dimensions of the practice of film projection, especially to broader audiences outside of the audiovisual archival circuit. It is also important to emphasize that the purpose of the lecture would not be to dwell exclusively on the significance of medium specificity to the authenticity of the cinematic experience but also to offer, in a public debate, a bird’s eye view of the current state of affairs. Additionally, this session would have an important role in bringing these issues to the fore especially to a younger audience who, born into the digital revolution, is likely unaware of the manifold ways in which the act of screening determines and produces their cinematic experiences. As Haden Guest argues, an understanding of the difference between the digital and the photochemical needs to be carefully cultivated (…) Fostering a better understanding and education of the history of film as an art, industry, and medium is absolutely essential, especially for younger audiences who need to be enticed into those cinematheques, archives, and museums. (Bordwell et al. 39) In terms of structure, the session would start by introducing a personal history of film projection as seen through the point of view of a projectionist. Ideally, the session would present accounts from projectionists representative of the different threads of film projection – the commercial and the archival world. Later, the session would proceed to an attempt at crystallizing and debating the current initiatives and projects on the topic of film projection, ideally through the voices of its main initiators and enthusiasts. If possible, the session would include comparative screenings, a brief tutorial on how to read a film print and decodify the mysterious cue marks left by projectionists and, finally, a surprise screening where the materiality of the prints would not be disclosed as a sort 4

of final quiz to the audience. If at all possible, the session would conclude with a visit to one of EYE’s projection booths. The topics addressed in the session are still contingent to the final list of confirmed guests, but a preliminary alignment could be, among others: how projectionists have learned their craft and how oral history is a key element of the profession; differences between the archival and the commercial screening worlds; how to read a film print; specificities of mediums screening wise; overview of current projects and initiatives and how they came about; current debates on the topic; the importance of oral history and of innovative methods of documentation in order to preserve the immaterial expertise of the highly skilled practitioners of film projection. Although I believe that personal accounts and projects should steer the course of the session, it might proof convenient to have a general guideline to guide the Q&A with the guest speakers.

In my opinion, the questionnaire proposed by CINEASTE on the article From 35mm to DCP: A Critical Symposium on the Changing Face of Motion Picture Exhibition (Bordwell et al. 32) is still a relevant and up-to-date tool to structure a discussion on the topic of film projection, around 6 of its major questions.

In regards to possible guest speakers, as mentioned earlier, it would be pertinent to let the projectionists have the word. Ideally, projectionists from the archival and the commercial projection worlds would be present and would share their different outlooks on the field. Later, on the second half of the session, dedicated to discussing current initiatives and projects, possible guests could be: Representatives of the initiatives discussed in paragraph 4 – Elena Rossi-Snook, chair of the AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force; Rebecca Lyon, projectionist and archivist for the Chicago Film Society’s parallel projects such as China Girls/Leader Ladies, Celluloid Chicago, and the Analog Film Exhibitor’s Database; Peter J. Knight, projectionist, cinema consultant, journalist and founder of the Mad Cornish Projectionist (www.madcornishprojectionist.co.uk) and We Can Still Show Film (http://www.wecanstillshowfilm.co.uk/); Professor Charlotte Burnsdon, principal investigator of The Projection Project – tell your story.

Authors of books on the topic of film projection –Torkell Sætervadet, author of FIAF’s two manuals on analogue and digital film projection.

An artist or a filmmaker whose practice is intimately connected to (analogue) film projection –among others, Tacita Dean or Nathaniel Dorsky.

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In conclusion, I believe that this session would greatly contribute to the debate on film projection and, if rightly advertised among film schools and academies, to a renewed interest for and attention to the importance of the act of screening to each filmic experience and thus, to film culture entirely. Lastly, “as the museums of film culture�

(Meyer) institutions like EYE should make every effort not only to keep the hardware operational but more importantly to preserve and expand, by sharing it with future generations, the immaterial, human expertise which is unfortunately so rapidly disappearing and that is one of the crafts that made motion picture‌move.

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WORKS CITED

Bordwell, David, et al. “From 35mm to DCP: A Critical Symposium on the Changing Face of Motion Picture Exhibition.” Cinéaste, Vol. 37, No. 4 Fall 2012: 32-42.

Chicago Film Society. “Sprocket School.” n.d. The Chicago Film Society. 30 03 2017. <http://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/projects/sprocket-school/>.

EYE Filmmuseum. “This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice.” Informative Flyer. 2017.

Gracy, Karen. “Documenting the Process of Film Preservation.” The Moving Image, Vol. 3, No. 1 Spring 2003: 1-41.

Hernandez, Eugene. “Notebook: The Future of Film.” 12 03 2015. FILM COMMENT. 29 03 2017. <https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/the-future-of-film/>.

Horwath, Alexander. “Persistence and Mimicry: The Digital Era and Film Collections.”

Journal of Film Preservation, no. 86 2012.

Meyer, Mark-Paul. “Traditional Film Projection in a Digital Age.” Journal of Film Preservation, no. 70 2005: 15-18.

SAVEFILM.ORG. “SIGN THE PETITION.” n.d. SAVEFILM.ORG. 30 03 2017. <http://www.savefilm.org/savefilm-org/>.

The

AMIA

Film

Advocacy

Task

Force.

“Who

We

Are.”

n.d.

http://www.filmadvocacy.org/about-us/who-we-are/. 30 03 2017.

The Projection Project. “Home.” n.d. The Projection Project. 30 03 2017. <https://projectionproject.warwick.ac.uk/>.

We Can Still Show Film. “Welcome.” n.d. We Can Still Show Film. 30 03 2017. <http://www.wecanstillshowfilm.co.uk/>.

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