Re-situating Film Technicity in the Archive
Preserving Photochemical Technology as a Radically Productive Apparatus
MA Thesis Heritage Studies: Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image Faculty of Humanities University of Amsterdam Tulta Behm 10848053 15 June 2017 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Giovanna Fossati
1 Introduction...5
1.1 Film: artistry, industry and a system in jeopardy...5
1.2 Film still remains...6
1.3 Research questions and thesis outline... 8
1.3.1 Structure...8
1.3.2 A note on terminology...9
1.3.3 Object and period of research...10
1.3.4 Summary of approach, gains and position... 11
2 Reconceptualising film archives, technologically... 12
2.1 Film laboratory knowledge as a part of museology...12
2.2 The Future of Film Archiving – or, why does film acquire new energy now?...14
2.2.1 Availability of raw materials...14
2.2.2 Continuation of laboratory services...16
2.2.3 Adapting technology...17
2.2.4 Labs, skills, succession...17
2.2.5 Evolving innovative formats...18
2.3 CASE STUDY 1: Swedish Film Institute...20
2.3.1 Future-proofing access to archival technology...20
2.3.2 Rotebro laboratory – Swedish Film Institute... 21
3 Film production as archival practice...25
3.1 Film as a living network... 25
3.1.1 Film manufacturing – an impossible project?...26
3.2 CASE STUDY 2: FILM Ferrania...29
3.2.1 Manufacturing film from the archive...29
PART TWO: Creative solutions to technological obsolescence...34
4 The philosophical impact of archival technology...35
4.1 The technological conditions of possibility...35
4.2 Remediating film technology...39
4.2.1 Technostalgia and technicity...39
4.2.2 Exploring film's inherent technicity...41
4.2.3 Technological phenomenology – a need for new errors...42
4.2.4 A new archiving praxis in film technology...43
5 An imaginative future for film technology...45
5.1 The film laboratory network...46
5.1.1 The need for common survival strategies... 48
5.2 CASE STUDY 3: Re-Engineering Moving Image...50
6 The political potential in technological empowerment...53
6.1 Slow movement as a reconception of technological duration... 54
6.2 CASE STUDY 4: Reset The Apparatus!...56
7 Conclusion...60
8 References...64
8.1 Works cited...64
“Every time a piece of film dies, a human thought dies with it. If I can do something to preserve that thought, isn’t it worth doing?”
1
Introduction
1.1
Film: artistry, industry and a system in jeopardy
As the quote from Kemp Niver on the preceding page attests, archived film represents the historical realisation of creative efforts in the technological practice of filmmaking. Whilst film can be thought of as an output of mass production systems, through the work of artist filmmakers, we may view it as the product of a singular technological approach. By foregrounding the importance of that combination of technical knowledge and creative thought, I intend to focus my research on the intersection between archiving film's technological pasts, and artistic practices which innovative film production techniques from the history of its development as a medium. In so doing, I will consider ways in which these artistic approaches reshape our conception of the role of film technology within the archive – beyond functioning as a system of duplication and presentation – by re-engineering film as a creative technology operating at the intersection of the factory, the archive and the laboratory.
Studying the organisational structures and economic contexts of the film production industry is largely outside the bounds of my research, but it has formed the basis for a field of scholarship in its own right; one which owes a debt to Mae D. Huettig's “early forays into film industry studies,” as the title of W. D. Phillips'
retrospective analysis of her contribution puts it.1 Huettig's main area of research is the “integration and internal
reciprocity of the motion picture industry” at its height after the Second World War. Huettig's early assertion is “that the production of films is not an industrial phenomenon which can be studied by itself. Almost every question concerning film production led into distribution and exhibition.”2 It is possible that archives find
themselves in an inverse position now, that film exhibition or the desire to show prints necessitates a fully reciprocal production and distribution mechanism, including commitments to these networks from archives, artists, audiences and manufacturers – or faces collapse. I will explore this hypothesis through reference to rhetorical positions within archiving, and in case studies of practice in film archive laboratories, film
manufacturing, and artistic production networks.
1 Phillips, W. D. “A Maze of Intricate Relationships: Mae D. Huettig and early forays into film industry studies.” Film
History. Issue 1 Vol. 27, 2015. pp.135-163. Accessed as plain text without page numbers.
An assessment of archival practice from a technological and artistic standpoint enables us to both posit questions about future practice with the virtue of understanding film's interlinked production and exhibition mechanisms, and to challenge the dominance of an imbalanced production system. Film, for all it is an industry, has also since its inception formed a part of cultural and social life, and, as Huettig outlines in her examination of the American people's prosecution of the film industry over antitrust laws, the intervention of public life in its history has been political and economic, as well as creative. This is film's heritage, throughout which it has been subject to competing impulses, and the practice of film preservation is no different. In the following thesis, I explore the means by which artists, filmmakers and archivists refute the dominance of film's historically industrial model over production, dissemination and archival organisation, and examine possible revolutionary futures for preservation practice, against technological loss, and from a philosophical and collaborative position. As Huettig concludes, the industry is “a maze of intricate relationships,” where rupture (if not collapse) is implied by the termination of any one part of the system. Film's industrial past acts as a prologue to its present archival state, where its exhibition is commercially dominated by digitally networked distribution outside the archive, and restricted rights to project prints onsite. In the absence of other models of duplicating and exhibiting prints, and although minor as opposed to the scale of control historically exercised by major studios, such a system would position archives once more as gatekeepers, restricting access to analogue film screenings. The neglect of current analogue filmmaking practice, and failure to incorporate the technological means of producing, preserving and presenting these works through the development of stable networks with
filmmakers and laboratories, may jeopardise those “intricate relationships” with which to ensure film heritage's future sustainability.
1.2
Film still remains
In the edition of the Federation of Film Archivists' (FIAF) Journal of Film Preservation (JFP, 94/April 2016) dedicated to the Future of Film Archiving group (FoFA, a group initiated by archivists at the BFI in 2012 which looks to incorporate the views and knowledge of film laboratory technicians into archival practice), editor Gian Luca Farinelli, Director of the Cineteca di Bologna sets out the questions which will form the focus of that edition's “Open Forum”. These are questions which preoccupy film preservation at the current digital turn, and around which my own line of enquiry will orbit, namely: “What does restoration mean today when digital technology has taken over but film still remains and acquires new energy instead of disappearing?” and “What is the relationship between filmmakers and film archives regarding restoration projects? What are the social and
historical functions of preserving film?”3 These questions, succinct in their wording but vast in their implications,
provide the structure for my thesis, proposing as they do two linked provocations – why save film technology, and why now? – followed up by two main lines of enquiry; the reconceptualising of what film archiving means, technologically (and what film technology means in the context of an archive), and; the reformed social and historical functions of restoring film by collaborating with filmmakers to preserve film technology. Later in the same JFP edition, conservationist Sowon Choi clearly defines the parameters of film as a restoration medium with the phrase, “Film can be reproduced technically during its inherent technological timespan, because materials and techniques for technical reproduction are available in this period.”4 Whilst the statement seems
self-evidently true, it strikes at the heart of what is at stake when discussing film restoration as a product of increasingly scarce photochemical facilities; the loss of technologies and knowledge of these processes effectively shortens the reproducible lifespan of film on and as film. And, as Farinelli points out, whereas digital technology may have taken over the archive, for many filmmakers, film not only remains but has taken on a new energy in their practice. In the following thesis, I will explore the (con)juncture of these two approaches to working with film, as an archival and productive technological medium at the end of its industrial lifespan. In 2013, and again in the pages of the JFP, Gian Luca Farinelli had already advanced a hypothetical total loss of photochemical film preservation, by claiming in “Film Archives after Film,”5 that “the popularity of digital
technology is causing the end of everything that preceded its existence: no more production of film stock and projectors, no more projectionists, processing and printing laboratories, 35mm screenings… In other words, the end of the culture that developed around film stock as we know it.”6 In this article, Farinelli puts out a call to
archives, to recognise the scale of this industrial shift, to plan accordingly, to preserve discarded film equipment, and to safeguard the knowledge of technicians and artists, of audiences, of the time when film existed as a system. And to continue to demonstrate this knowledge in projection. Farinelli exhorts FIAF directly to act on this threat of film's technological obsolescence, by creating a network of filmmakers, in order to raise awareness of film's cultural importance and fragility in the face of market-driven digitisation. From an emotive point of view, Farinelli's rhetoric is compelling, but it is also instructive in setting out a practical approach, something which I will look to follow in my research.
3 Farinelli, Gian Luca. “Editorial.” Journal of Film Preservation. 94/April 2016. 3
4 Choi, Sowon. “A New Restoration Proposal Dedicated to New Discoveries: German Missionary Films Shot in Korea in 1925”. Journal of Film Preservation. 94/April 2016. 60
5 Farinelli, Gian Luca. “Film Archives after Film.” Journal of Film Preservation. 89/October 2013. pp.12-14 6 Farinelli, 2013. 12
1.3
Research questions and thesis outline
Following Farinelli's exhortation, I am interested to understand how the networks and photochemical practices which have emerged in artistic and archival approaches to film since the recent collapse of the film
manufacturing and laboratory industries might affect the practices, politics, epistemological possibilities, and aesthetics of the film archive in future. The key focus of my research is to explore the work being done to safeguard film as a creative medium, drawing inspiration from the archive of heritage practices, as means of turning a dialogue around safeguarding film technology from obsolescence, into praxis. I will also consider whether archives are responsible for rehabilitating film as a medium, whether in archiving or duplication, or beyond it in creative practice, and by extension, whether archives themselves might become sites of production. Such provocations raise the question of whether film's properties as a technology are experiential, or materially quantifiable, and rather than considering these as opposed facets of film, I will examine ways in which they are linked in comprising both the phenomenological and technical value of film heritage.
1.3.1 Structure
In the following chapters, I will explore the implications of such a changed landscape of film technology for archival practice across four case studies; two which place the equipment of photochemical production within the archive and vice-versa in order to understand the technological change required to maintain our current concept of film heritage, and two which explore the extent to which our concept of film archiving itself can change within the limits of the same technological apparatus through its innovative use in artists' filmmaking practice, thereby reforming the social and historical functions of preserving film.
By focusing on the potential contributions of artists to film preservation, I hope to draw conclusions on how their practices might provide solutions drawn from film heritage to the problems identified by archivists of preserving film technologically, beyond those strategies adopted by archive laboratories. As a result, my research will follow a structure which identifies such archival strategies, before considering their implementation, and the potential shortcomings of this approach. I will then examine an alternative, industrially based strategy to safeguard film heritage, before exploring how the solutions devised by artist filmmakers go beyond those previously outlined in my research and implemented at either the archive laboratory or the factory.
I turn first to the case for a technological conception of film heritage, and its survival as a commercial and preservation network, making reference to the political and rhetorical positions adopted by archivists through such initiatives as FoFA. I then consider current initiatives among archivists and manufacturers to safeguard the technological knowledge and machinery of photochemical film manufacture and preservation routes, making use of two case studies; the Swedish Film Institute's laboratory at Rotebro, and the film factory at Ferrania, Italy. In the first, I address the practical steps taken by an archive to ensure technological continuity with film. In the second, I venture to Ferrania to uncover the importance of archival knowledge to sustaining film in
manufacturing. By approaching the laboratory and the factory as sites of archival knowledge, I hope to re-conceptualise what film technology means in the context of film preservation, by implication of its working inclusion.
In the second half of my thesis, I will examine the philosophical arguments grounding technology in our experience of film heritage, and expand on the epistemological and remediative gains of re-situating it in the archive. Following this strand of enquiry, and by the use of two further case studies of filmmaking practice, I will explore the means by which artists and archivists refute the dominance of film's historically industrial model over production, dissemination and archival organisation, and examine possible revolutionary futures for preservation practice, against technological loss, and from a political and collaborative position. These last two case studies examine the possibilities latent in film technology for new archival knowledge, and consider projects between archivists and filmmakers to safeguard, redefine, and draw innovative results from film technology.
By my conclusion, I hope to have demonstrated the potential importance of this radical understanding of film technologies to archival practice, by outlining the new model of media ontology it offers, conceived as it is through film's technicity. I will also highlight the ways in which artistic networks present new opportunities to share knowledge and expand support for maintaining film technology in operation, beyond those strategies proposed by FoFA. This outcome would have threefold benefits for archivists; in ensuring the future accessibility of film as and on film broadly speaking, in safeguarding the means by which to preserve and restore specifically artists' films and present them as intended, and in developing innovative and participatory projects which may redefine the (past and future) products of film preservation practice.
1.3.2 A note on terminology
Throughout this text, I will be referring to film, that is, the (for my interests, specifically motion picture) photochemical medium, as film. Whilst this might mean hand-drawn, cameraless film, cell animation, or even handmade emulsion on a film base, in any gauge, this definition is distinct in my usage from any other system of
moving images. And although I will predominantly be considering film technology, as a system, it is not possible in my view to detach a technology from the social function it performs and from the users who perform it. Therefore I will also make somewhat interchangeable reference to film's system of production and restoration, and its various apparatuses, as either its technology, or its technicity. In essence, technicity is a term which
expresses the efficacy, functionality, or experience of a particular technology in ways which are integrative of the human interaction with technological apparatuses. We experience media through sensory perception and conscious attention, however, it is also possible to conceive of ways media and therefore media technologies
add to our perception of the world. Technicity therefore represents a processual relationship to
phenomenology, and to technological “being” – where, in philosophical terms, the reference to sensibility is both symbolic and machinic.7 The term technicity has also been used,8 primarily by Gilbert Simondon9 and Bernard
Stiegler,10 to describe the ways in which humans “co-evolve” with technology – particularly, for Stiegler, in
developing a technics of memory – and to attempt to give expression to technology's definitive function in retaining and expressing memory; made durable through technology and technical knowledge.
1.3.3 Object and period of research
I am preoccupied by one moment in cinematic technology history: the integrated technological system of manufacture, duplication and developing which surrounds motion picture film, and as it has been refined since its introduction, to encompass electromechanically standardised production and synthetic colour. By necessity I must distinguish this from the conceptually stable properties of movement and synthesis that characterise one aspect of the technicity of moving images from pre-cinematic to digital eras, regardless of the elements of optical technology common across all. Contrary to this commonality, it is not useful to my project to think through film technology merely in terms of its utility, as this would lead to a conflation of digital and analogue technological systems by concluding that they perform the same function in making images move. Despite the consistency of their effects, my consideration of film technology draws distinction between, on the one hand, projected images in movement, which is a vast field with many technological possibilities, and my object of study – the system of photochemical motion picture film – taking a medium-specific approach to an industrial
rupture and its post-industrial implications. By necessity, my study will also be “deaf ” to the many systems and 7 I take my understanding of the term technicity from the writings of Mark B. N. Hansen, who in turn adopts it from
Vilém Flusser, as referenced in the introduction to Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 6-8
8 (in translation)
9 Simondon, Gilbert. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958) trans. Ninian Mellamphy. University of Western Ontario, 1980. The work of Pascal Chabot has been an invaluable source for me in reading through Simondon: Chabot. The Philosophy of Simondon: Between Technology and Individuation trans. Aliza Krefetz with Graeme Kirkpatrick. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
10 Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time [vol.1-3] trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998-2010. Vol. 3 deals specifically with “Cinematic Time”
technological properties employed to record and replicate sound on film. Beyond the omission of sound in its entirety, there is also an argument for further research to consider the effects of merging pre-cinematic with motion picture film technology, in a way which does not blur the individual significance of their technological properties by mistakenly privileging the continued lineage of images in motion. Sadly, it is outside the scope of my study, which will only touch upon work being done to bring the pre-cinematic – referred to as a
“retrograde” cinematicity – into the reconceptualised film apparatus in my final case study.
1.3.4 Summary of approach, gains and position
In summary, through the course of this text I will adopt an approach which places film technicity at the centre of my analysis of film preservation practice. I will analyse first the rhetorical position of archivists towards preserving technological knowledge in my chapter regarding the argument for including film technology in the archive, and outlining the strategic propositions of the Future of Film Archiving group (“Reconceptualising film archives, technologically”). I will then go on to consider practical steps taken by the various actors in film heritage – archival, industrial and artistic – which provide potential solutions to the problems identified in the opening chapter. Analysing photochemical film archiving as a technological system through two linked pairs of case studies, I will outline a theoretical framework for each, with the pairs separated by a philosophical consideration of film technology as an object of archival knowledge. From this philosophical and strategic foundation, I will explore what knowledge might be gained from artistic filmmaking practice to be incorporated into archiving. The result is a reconceptualisation of film heritage that has the potential to alter our uses of film in technologies of resistance and collaboration, thereby offering archivists a theoretical and practical redefinition of preservation goals, against technological obsolescence.
In order to situate myself more fully in this research, I will state that my interest in studying film in its
technological context comes from my practice as a filmmaker working hands-on with Super-8 and 16mm film, in independent laboratories. I have also made it my goal during my time studying film preservation practice to gain insight and experience from working in archival and commercial preservation laboratories, in both digital and analogue restoration workflows, and I approach this research as the continuation of that study into the film apparatus as a creative and archivally productive technology.
2
Reconceptualising film archives, technologically
2.1
Film laboratory knowledge as a part of museology
In attempting to take stock of what it means to preserve film in what appears an increasingly digital era, and in order to reconceptualise this formulation through a focus on the technology of film, I turn first to Alexander Horwath, vocal supporter of analogue film preservation and Director of the Austrian Film Museum (OeFM), writing in the Journal of Film Preservation #86 in 2012.11 The theme of Horwath's essay centres on what he dubs
“the restricted time of film”. His analysis reflects a presumed diminishment in film's status as an archival medium, evident in what he sees as a crisis of futurism and of memory affecting archives striving to keep pace with new digital technologies. Speaking of the practice of film preservation at OeFM, Horwath presents two assumptions OeFM have made regarding film in its technological context: one, that there is an importance of preserving the manifold forms of film heritage in a way that ensures they are appreciable as distinct
technological expressions in future, and two; that digital media represents a cultural form and praxis in its own right, within a separate technological context. Accepting these statements regarding cinema's technological contexts, one can argue that it is equally important to retain the skills and equipment which enable us to perpetuate the lifespan of film as distinct from digital, and of its creative praxis as an inherent part of film heritage
and film's future, as it is to retain the films themselves. Throughout the course of this thesis, it is my intention to
provide a basis for this assumption, by examining not only the place and potential of film technology within the archive, but its remediative relation to film memory, heritage, and future. Horwath, in turn, bases his assertion on his claims for the ethics and philology of archiving, through which an organisation can be “confident enough to rely on certain kinds of knowledge that are themselves based on centuries of archival and museum
experience.”12 However, his confidence represents a double-edged sword, since the technical knowledge
embedded in photochemical practice is more recent and adaptive, yet more at risk, than most film museum objects, and has never formed part of the museological canon. Historically, technicians' skills have been missing from a conception of archival experience, and despite Horwath's suggestion that …the term “laboratory” is actually a great metaphor in the wider sense of what film museums and participatory archives may strive to 11 Horwath, Alexander. “Persistence and Mimicry: the Digital Era and Film Collections.” Journal of Film Preservation.
86/April 2012. pp. 22-30. Accessed as plain text via the EYE Film Library online collection, 7 pages. 1/7 12 Horwath. 2012. 3/7
become,”13 this is also the case at OeFM. The laboratory represents a lacuna in the archetypal archival collection
– jeopardising film's preservation as a distinct technology against systemic change, and jettisoning new filmmaking as a means of renewing film heritage.
Regarding technological change, Horwath claims that, “According to Rosalind Krauss and Julia Chang, when a form falls into obsolescence, it also reemerges as an evocation of the Utopian ideals that the form held in promise at its advent.”14 What this affords is the opportunity to consider current engagements with film in its
technological medium-specificity as a practice of political expression whereby analogue film material and the technologies with which it is formed become – rather than mementoes of loss or the detritus of technological transition – “a site of resistance.”15 Horwath's statement regarding film's radical renaissance in obsolescence is in
a contradictory sense backed up by the appearance of new capitalist models for film's manufacture and marketing, under the aegis of “saving film”. In the course of my research, I wish to explore the intersection of archival work, art, innovation, and industry, that is keeping film from obsolescence, and to understand why the movement to save analogue film appears to have acquired new energy now, as precisely such a site of resistance. If increased scrutiny of film's technological parameters and their longevity more sharply defines the medium's contours, as Horwath argues, then this places film as an object of knowledge accessible only in part through its aestheticisation, exhibition or collection, and leaves it with an unquantified potentiality in terms of its defining technicity, as I hope to prove by my conclusion. For, despite the ironic twist in his tone, Horwath is correct in claiming that, in a time of analogue obsolescence, “The technologies of archival preservation and presentation will have to change so that our concept of film can remain the same.”16
Using Horwath's invitation to incorporate a conception of the laboratory within archival practice, I will first examine the efforts of archivists more broadly to outline rhetorical and practical strategies to preserve the technological knowledge of film's photochemical reproducibility, using the examples of the Future of Film Archiving group and the Swedish Film Institute. Going beyond Horwath, by recalling Farinelli's focus on building networks with filmmakers, I will also reinstate film production – materially and creatively – in my consideration of the technological future of film as one offering a radical potential within archival practice, by turning to the activities of film manufacturers and artists' laboratories later in my research.
13 Horwath. 2012. 5/7 14 Horwath. 2012. 4/7 15 Horwath. 2012. 4/7 16 Horwath. 2012. 4/7
2.2
The Future of Film Archiving – or, why does film acquire new energy now?
In a parallel step towards reckoning the changes necessary to preserve our concept of film, “a small group of senior managers from the BFI Collections and Information team”17 met in spring of 2012, to discuss the
implications of technological obsolescence ushered in by digital film production – and following this meeting, formed what is now a consortium of experts representing international film archives drawn together under consideration of 'the Future of Film Archiving' (FoFA) from the standpoint of laboratory technology, training, and film manufacture. Their organisational analysis of what it would take to integrate laboratory skills, equipment and technological innovation in the archive responds to Farinelli's earlier plea, and the first public
announcement of FoFA strategies with which to implement such aims came in 2016.
Outlining the practices of the Future of Film Archiving group in JFP 94 (April 2016), BFI Head of Conservation and convenor of the group, Charles Fairall, states that from their earliest attempts to address the question of film's future sustainability, the group sought the contribution of laboratory technicians. From the off, their strategy sought to “protect the interests of film”18, and the name of the group is instructive as to its ambitions in
identifying the risks and planning for changes across photochemical film preservation cycles, including estimating the length of such a cycle. The primary challenges FoFA outline are [and here I borrow their wording]: the availability of raw stock; the continuation of laboratory services; the manufacture of film digitisation equipment; the imperatives of long-term preservation, and; staff training. I will take the time to outline key assumptions FoFA have made regarding each of these challenges, as they give an indication of archival attitudes towards continuing to work with film technology for preservation. These questions of technical ability, access to
laboratory facilities, machine maintenance, routine practice and technological innovation, are issues I will return to across my research as a whole. However, I will also explore the shortcomings of FoFA's approach, in neglecting the creative potential of film technology to renew archival knowledge and holdings, in the second part of my thesis.
2.2.1 Availability of raw materials
Regarding raw stock, FoFA assume a total loss, with no predictable time-span. Their strategy, justified by the predicted rising cost and reduced availability of film stock, requires that archives “become more circumspect in 17 Fairall, Charles. “FoFA: The Future of Film Archiving.” Journal of Film Preservation. 94/April 2016. pp. 9-15. 9
their purchase and use of film.”19 This exhortation runs counter to its more pragmatic assertion that “archives
should make maximum use of film while it still exists and they should jointly articulate which stocks are needed.”20 The FoFA compromise between these two positions is to stockpile raw stock, whilst representing
the joint needs of the archiving community to film manufacturers in hope of increased, relevant output. Stockpiling material is not a manufacturing solution, and increases the risk of rising costs, and of quotas
regarding selection of materials for preservation, and with this a potential for lack of diversity and reputations of “gatekeeping” cultural knowledge. It even poses a threat of competition between archives, and between
archives and laboratories, and assumes the end of filmmaking in future. In Fairall's words; “In a digital world, archives need to be very clear about why they need to make copies on film.” Determining access to raw stocks on the basis of arguments of cultural need or validity has potentially normativising impacts on heritage
collections, and side-steps the issue of whether it is important to archive film on film, for longevity, cost, aesthetic or technical integrity (as is presumed by the FIAF Code of Ethics21). Ultimately, the FoFA strategy that
archives should implement “robust digital archiving mechanisms”22 performs a transmedia trick of
dematerialising film, leaving only the technology of digital media intact. An alternative strategy not considered by FoFA would be to commit to annual purchases of raw stock from manufacturers, working at sustainable rates based on projected usage. On this, they could collaborate with manufacturers and filmmakers to ensure access to raw production materials for future films. This would have the two-fold effect of safeguarding film
manufacture within a system of archival use and ensuring the appropriateness of archival outcomes and supported duplication stocks to new material, and new films. It would also place predictable timeframes on preservation cycles, and by so doing, ensure the maintenance of skills and technologies associated with photochemical practices, more on which below.
The loss of skills and knowledge of working with raw stocks is an area of key concern for FoFA, as “Reverse engineering traditional analogue processes will also become more difficult as raw materials become scarcer.”23
However, their proposed strategy regarding ways of working with diverse film materials is to collect samples of heritage and modern stocks, as record of their composition and qualities. If facing the total loss of film
manufacturing capabilities and the unlikelihood of its reverse engineering, especially colour film with its many-layered complexity, the motivation for holding samples becomes unclear – beyond documentation. Again, collaboration with film manufacturers, such as FILM Ferrania, who I will examine in my second case study, and artists working with handmade emulsions, as in my third case study, could offer a better strategy for survival.
19 Fairall. 9 20 Fairall. 10
21 “Code of Ethics”. FIAF. Accessed 12 June 2017. <http://www.fiafnet.org/pages/Community/Code-Of-Ethics.html> 22 Fairall. 10
2.2.2 Continuation of laboratory services
Laboratory closure, another aspect of diminished technological provision addressed in the FoFA strategy for film survival, is understood as already placing archival access to film reproduction in jeopardy; in light of decreasing demand due to the digital turn, FoFA expects the situation to worsen.24 Whilst FoFA outline the
extent to which laboratory services have and may increasingly move in-house to archives – such as at the Swedish Film Institute (SFI), which is represented in the group and whose laboratory forms the first of my case studies – this strategy limits the scope of collaboration to sister archives and active technicians, and does not look beyond to filmmakers for potential partners, despite the fact that many work independently in film production even at the laboratory level. What strategy they do outline for safeguarding laboratory skills intimates the possibility that, in an industrially impoverished landscape, the laboratories of European public archives might meet preservation demand by becoming service providers. Fairall states, “Archives should consider collaborative working and maintenance of specialisms so that they can support one another and are able to provide services to those archives that might not have in-house capacity.”25 The question of what
services an archive could or would provide to partners must be presumed to lie within the nature of their collaborations, or else be offered for profit – for resourcing this additional service must be taken into consideration, as should the position of the archive with regard to its public remit, funding obligations, and staffing capabilities. Again, the SFI laboratory case study offers an opportunity to test FoFA's strategy. Fairall goes on, “As aspects of film laboratory work diminish, it will be important to ensure that archive personnel are multi-skilled so they can make contributions across the operation.”26 This assertion raises many questions, for
my research as well as for an archivist considering moving a laboratory in-house. What skills would it be necessary for archive staff to develop individually and as teams to ensure the skilled operations of a laboratory, and how easy is it to ensure the transferability of such skills? Can archives incorporate laboratories within existing collaborative structures and how might cooperation be defined in order to support laboratory functions? How might non-standard projects be accommodated alongside routine preservation functions, and would the necessary space for experimental production and technological innovation be made available? I will examine these issues more closely in the first of my case studies with SFI, whilst approaching the questions of collaboration, non-standard film production and the potential for experimentation in my third and fourth case studies.
24 Fairall. 11 25 Fariall. 11 26 Fairall. 11
2.2.3 Adapting technology
One area where FoFA do predict a need to tailor film technology to custom requirements is in the
construction of transport parts for scanner benches. Whilst presuming a simultaneous decline in demand for digitisation technology due to rising born-digital productions, the archives represented at FoFA anticipate an increase in archival digitisation projects to deal with the quantities of film material left reliant on digital
preservation in the wake of photochemical's systemic demise.27 “Mothballed” parts kept in redundancy, and the
forging of close links with parts manufacturers, are FoFA strategies for securing a digitisation route even after laboratory closure and a collapse in stocks manufacture is expected to have nullified any photochemical alternative, since digital-native capture will have had a similarly deleterious effect on commercial scanning facilities. Technological innovation against obsolescence, in the form of creatively repurposing
precision-engineered movements from optical machinery, becomes, in the FoFA future scenario, the only way to ensure even digital restoration of degraded materials. Such technological obsolescence is a situation explicitly
addressed by both my second and third case studies, at FILM Ferrania and in the RE MI project; where industrial machinery has been respectively recovered from obsolescence, and repurposed to return it to innovative uses. In the strategies outlined for the Future of Film Archiving, so much rests on the assumption of collaboration between archives around laboratory facilities, “in defiance of market failure”28 that the projected extent of
laboratory closure implies a huge reduction in the availability of skills and technologies. FoFA places its stress and future reliance on the presence of non-commercial laboratories, so much so that the question of financial return on such investment, maintenance and re-skilling is not addressed. The minimum expectations and resourcing of photochemical laboratory functions are not specified, nor are the areas where losses would be acceptable or even unavoidable. And so the issue becomes one of publicly securing what reduced future film might have against industry collapse, and prioritising the adoption of certain skills within the forecast time available. The means of delivering this is left ambiguous in FoFA's plan for film's survival, and is something I will explore in terms of possible common strategies with artists' laboratories in sections 5.1(.1) and 5.2.
2.2.4 Labs, skills, succession
In light of film's industrial failure, FoFA predicts that laboratory technicians will “become available on the open market as laboratories close” and that, given the short-term expectation of stock availability, “Succession is perhaps not an urgent issue”.29 Nevertheless, over-reliance on even an hypothetically “temporary” restaffing
27 Fairall. 14 28 Fairall. 12 29 Fairall. 14
from the commercial sector overlooks pitfalls such as a workforce nearing retirement age, the culture of secrecy common to private practices, the spectre of technological obsolescence, relocation and installation factors which introduce teething issues as well as posing a barrier to timely training, human fallibility, and a potential reluctance to equip others with the skills which ensure an individual's competitive employability. In essence, the recommendations from FoFA amount to the amalgamation of the complete sector skills, knowledge, equipment and standards of the commercial laboratory industry, reshaped and re-scaled to meet the reduced financial and operational capacities of the archival field, and quickly.
FoFA's long-term planning for the future of film as a technology and reproducible system also ignores filmmakers' potential desire to work with the medium, and instead relies on projections balancing archival demand against reduced capacity, the equipping of in-house laboratories, and the development of cross-archive and manufacturing partnerships to enable the specialisation of skills, stocks and chemistry offerings to safeguard a limited future of photochemical preservation practices in defiance of its failure as an industrial medium, yet in ignorance of its potential as a creative one. With this in mind, I will focus my fourth case study on the artistic potential latent within film technology since its historical innovation, and which now in a time of obsolescence offers media archeological possibilities for the reconceptualisation of archival knowledge.
2.2.5 Evolving innovative formats
In considering the implications on available film formats of technological change, FoFA recommend archives proactively assess evolving format models, with an eye to monitoring losses and capitalising on innovations. FoFA's strategy here draws comparison to the development of Piql, a digital and photochemical hybrid preservation model for data storage using ultra-high resolution film, which carries at the head of every reel information in a human-readable form for recovering the data, independent of Piql hardware.30 Piql has drawn
substantial funding at international and EU-level, at the total cost of around €27million31, in order to develop a
complete archival system from data selection, integrity verification, and information recording to film processing and secure vault storage. As evidenced by the scale of Piql's project, the implications of format and
technological loss influence collection activity as well as long-term preservation and recovery.
30 Piql is a digital data storage system utilising OAIS-compliant archival file formats on photosensitive film. Piql was developed in part by the government-funded Norwegian archival sector on the assumption that technological development will outpace film's archival lifespans. Development of their film material is supported by the Image Permanence Institute, Rochester NY, and film processing is carried out in-house, under ISO-certified, yet confidential conditions. “Piql: Creating the ultimate digital insurance – Behind the curtains”. Piql.com . Accessed 29 April 2017. <http://www.piql.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Piql-Preservation-Services-Behind-the-Curtains.pdf> 31 Page 42 of the presentation, “The art to persevere” by Katrine Loen Thomsen – Project Manager, and Rune
Bjerkestrand – Managing Director, Piql. Accessed 29 April 2017. <http://www.forskningsradet.no/servlet/Satellite?
blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=+attachment%3B+filename%3D%22PresentasjonentilRunePIQL.pdf %22&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1274509189551&ssbinary=true>
In contrast, the digital preservation of a total system of motion picture film technology, as proposed by FoFA (inverting the Piql approach toward format longevity), would place additional onerous responsibilities on archives in terms of the documentation of materials science, colour systems, visual properties and physical conditions for use. Monitoring such properties might ensure significant gains in digitally recreating the material qualities of lost formats, however, it poses the deeper question as to whether film's properties are intrinsically quantifiable rather than experiential, and whether we have the capability to measure such quantities whilst a format is available for study – something I will pick up on in consideration of the phenomenology of technology. And, unlike Piql, which makes provision for such loss within its archival system, the presumption of digital preservation strategies is that the technological security of the preserved data is ensured by migration. If archives' financial constraints should ever compromise either film's technological longevity or secure migratory practices, then our entire approach to film heritage is in jeopardy.
When considering the potential for digitally recreating lost formats, an ethical question which faces archives in their presumed function as film museums arises, namely, are archives responsible for rehabilitating film as a medium? And, following this, might archives also become sites of production? For arguably, ensuring the experience of film and safeguarding the longevity of film as a medium of cultural creativity are the founding functions of a film archive. In exploring this question, and the related matter of format loss and innovation, my case study on the RE MI project offers a different approach towards the technical knowledge invested in film, and one which extends its lifespan both forwards and backwards into the archive. Future-proofing existing preservation routes, meanwhile, are explored in the example of the SFI laboratory.
2.3
CASE STUDY 1: Swedish Film Institute
2.3.1 Future-proofing access to archival technology
Jon Wengström, Curator of Archival Film Collections for SFI has written ably and lucidly on the archival implicatons of both the loss of availability of photochemical laboratory facilities, and format transition to digital distribution,32 as a result of the industrial downturn identified by FoFA.33 The photochemical laboratory he has
managed through his role at SFI since its integration in 2012 provides a perfect case study for me to examine FoFA's proposed strategies in practice, and to reflect on what the working inclusion of film technology means in the context of an archive, or how our technological understanding of preservation practice might be altered in light of this shift. Wengström's writing on digital distribution alerts us to the fact that future-proofing access to our global film heritage extends to much more than developing methods for data retention. Wengström points to ways in which digital distribution and encryption is altering archives' identities profoundly, by limiting future repertory programming to only digital restorations. In light of this, he sees the national archives' role increasingly defined as offering access to projection prints not stored or shown elsewhere. That these showings will be restricted to the archive site is a function of the reduced availability of photochemical facilities, stocks, and technicians to duplicate prints, as well as the impossibility of seeing rarer titles, except on film, within the archive which houses them and retains projectionists to show them. Striking a note of optimism at the end of this assessment, Wengström hopes that
…if every archive (and studio!) were determined to make sure that new analogue prints could be struck from negatives held in their collections – either by setting up their own lab facilities or by actively using the few commercial and/or archival labs that exist – the global “supply” of viewing prints in their original formats would still be available for inter-archival loans in the future.34
With this appeal, echoed in the FoFA script, Wengström imagines a parallel future and indeed a parallel industry 32 Wengström, Jon. (2013) “Collection Building and Programming in the Future: the fate of non-national films in archives
in light of the change from 35mm to DCP in theatrical distribution.” Journal of Film Preservation, 88/April 2013. pp.17-20
33 Wengström's 2016 contributions to the FoFA Case Studies published in JFP speak to my point
Wengström, Jon. (2016) “Case Study One” in Jon Wengström, Anne Gant, Guy Edmonds, Ulrich Ruedel, “FoFA Case Studies 2012-15.” Journal of Film Preservation, 94/April 2016. pp.17-23 (pp.17-19).
model for film technology, not reliant on current titles, broad distribution or mass manufacture for survival. The publication of Wengström's FoFA case study35 on the SFI laboratory at Rotebro, Sweden gives me
opportunity to reflect on my visit there in June 2016 in light of the strategies outlined within his report. Whilst I aim to refrain from simply restating what has been published elsewhere – regarding the decision to move the laboratory in-house, and what he views as the advantages of retaining the means of photochemical
reproduction – it is important to our understanding of Wengström's vision of film preservation to revisit his aims in setting up the laboratory to begin with. “We believe that analogue preservation and duplication is vital to our archive's mission. Starting from the principle of preserving films in their original format…”,36 SFI policy is
to create safety film elements of titles earmarked for digitisation, where even then film-on-film preservation workflows take priority. “Our other main reason for wanting to sustain analogue laboratory work is the possibility to view prints of new preservations, and to be able to replace worn or damaged viewing prints…”.37
Aside from aiming to achieve a self-sufficiency in photochemical restoration, Wengström points to the curatorial potential in retaining photochemical practice, which enables archives to provide a “unique” viewing experience, and to the impact this technical knowledge will have on selection considerations. For all its restoration benefits, Wengström admits that retaining laboratory technology requires skills outwith traditional curatorial roles, to train operators and maintain it to ensure its future use, and that only “To some extent [are they] in control of these aspects.” Questions of particular importance to my thesis therefore centre on where this expertise might come from, and how these skills are shared and therefore safeguarded. The strategies outlined by Charles Fairall of FoFA suggest the importance of cross-archive and cross-industry collaboration, the provision of client services, and skills-sharing to long-term sustainability. How long-term these strategists perceive the future for photochemical restoration to be is another question for consideration.
2.3.2 Rotebro laboratory – Swedish Film Institute
On 1 June 2016, I met with Jon Wengström in Stockholm and travelled with him to the SFI laboratory in Rotebro, north-east of the city. Early in our journey, Wengström outlined the main motivations behind the decision to move laboratory services in-house. This decision had been precipitated by what Wengström termed a “crisis” in photochemical preservation in Sweden, with the closure of Nordisk, the country's last full-service commercial laboratory38. Critically, the financial argument warranted a local solution, buoyed by the offer of
35 Wengström. 2016. 36 Wengström. 2016. 19 37 Wengström. 2016. 19
38 SFI were pressed to take this decision when the last 'full-service' laboratory – but not the last remaining laboratory – closed. The sole remaining, small-scale commercial facility, STOPP AB, was bought out in 2015 by digital specialists Mediamonks. At that time, the laboratory equipment was purchased by a former technician, to become Focus Film AB Stockholm. It is fully operated by a two-person team, consisting of the owner/technician, and a digital colourist.
equipment from Nordisk; much of it received free. The SFI would be able to add this machinery to their existing film handling facility in Rotebro, and the full establishing costs of €300,000 were considered very low given the extensive restoration scope the proposal covered. With Wengström estimating the technological write-off period at 30 years, the decision to move laboratory production in-house would maintain SFI's annual
photochemical restoration costs over that period at a level competitive with outsourcing. Two other essential requirements needed to be accounted for: site alterations to accommodate the equipment, and skilled
technicians to operate it. The Rotebro site acquired by SFI in the 1970s was designed as a laboratory, and, given their prior working relationship, SFI was able to take on three of the Nordisk technicians. If SFI were fortunate at the outset, supporting the laboratory over the longer-term would prove more challenging.
SFI were able to make the case for salaried staff, slight refurbishment of the facilities, and the equipment itself. They then needed to take careful calculation of annual processing amounts and costs. To meet the same amount of output as in the previous era, it has transpired to be slightly more expensive to keep and staff a laboratory, “but not much,” Wengström assured me. And one of the principal benefits is the possibility to increase volume without having to pay more to a commercial provider. One of the salaried positions in the laboratory is made possible by funding drawn exclusively from external clients' work. In the case of SFI, this work mainly comes from other colleague archives looking to acquire new print copies of Swedish titles. Occasionally this has also come from archives looking to have photochemical preservation masters of their holdings made by the SFI laboratory. And there are still new Swedish productions shot on film. Whilst SFI is without colour negative developing facilities, this can be done by a smaller-scale laboratory in Sweden, Focus Film AB. Yet this laboratory is without capacity to print and process colour positives, or handle black and white (B&W) film. And so, however infrequently, SFI does sometimes become the laboratory of choice for new productions in collaboration with Focus Film.
Currently, collaboration works well between SFI and Focus Film, but the question remains as to what will happen when it no longer has a business case. At the time of my visit, Wengström was planning for the addition of a colour negative processing machine, despite still working in partnership as far as possible. Prior to 2016, Film Focus was in possession of a Scanity scanner where SFI were not; this partnership afforded SFI the opportunity to detail staff to the commercial lab to undertake scanning work for the collection in addition to colour negative processing, and in return for SFI carrying out processing required by Focus Film in either colour positive or B&W. By 2016, with the installation of scanning facilities in SFI, and Focus Film's loss of their scanner through an earlier buy-out, the roles had switched. In late 2015, the Swedish Society of Cinematographers launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise €60,000 and enable Focus Film to buy a Scanity film scanner to replace the one they had previously shared through SFI, and therefore transition to a digital facility. At the time of my visit, there were no immediate plans to formalise their collaboration, and yet dissolution was averted, since it had proved financially viable and flexible enough whilst both parties relied on it. Focus Film's Scanity was
installed early 2017, potentially leaving SFI without a colour negative processing partner.
In 2012, when the laboratory at Rotebro was set up, the experienced photochemical technicians SFI hired were already in their late 50s or early 60s. The immediate concern for SFI was to put in place a mechanism to enable the transfer of their specialist knowledge to a younger generation, working all the time against approaching retirement. Within two years of establishing the laboratory, SFI secured funding for a five-year long
apprenticeship which enables them to train a technician to fluency in most areas of operations, with a focus on relieving the bottlenecks where they most occur (at the time of my visit, this was predominantly in duplication work), and with a promised permanent position at the end of the apprenticeship period. Unfortunately, historic models of secrecy within the industry have had a detrimental effect on the training of new staff. Since the transition from a private commercial enterprise to a public institution already entails a shift in workplace attitudes for those technicians recruited alongside the equipment, for the SFI to expect the easy adoption of a culture of knowledge-sharing has in some respects proved naive. SFI's established six-month internship opportunities were also negatively impacted by this ingrained attitude of secrecy and individualism, and have been put on hold until the apprenticeship can be completed – thereby privileging the kind of mentoring relationship that would have been common within the industry, and easing the transition for older members of staff. Detailed schedules govern the transfer of knowledge on a person-to-person basis, and these are captured and documented for future needs – although Wengström's explicit hope is that through improving the training experience for their existing apprentice, they would achieve additional capacity for duplication and printing, leaving no need to hire additional team-members even if dealing with increased workloads.
The decision taken in 2011 to move the laboratory in-house has worked out well for SFI so far. Its economic viability is underscored by SFI's interest in planning for a future around the laboratory itself, as is clear from Wengström's contributions to the recent FoFA discussion. However, the issues of colour negative processing and transfer of knowledge are compounded by the possibility of mechanical failure. Life expectancy of the laboratory machinery is determined to a large extent by access to skilled maintenance engineers and spare parts. SFI works with an external engineer who has not only the experience maintaining these machines, but also built a couple of them. He was, at the time of my visit, 74. And, despite having access to his skills now, developing a transferrable machinery maintenance programme is posing unforeseen difficulties and taking far longer than anticipated, since every piece of equipment operates in a uniquely characterful way.
So does the preservation work done by SFI on film, and its commitment to running a photochemical
laboratory have a fixed lifespan coinciding with the renewal rate of the current laboratory staff and machinery, or will it continue to grow? SFI's expressed hope is to be able to continue offering photochemical facilities far into the future, for SFI and external clients, and skills are being captured towards this aim. But, Wengström concedes, even if the laboratory can only run for ten years, it offers photochemical capabilities unavailable
elsewhere in Sweden, and to few other archives. The intention is to translate this availability into an increased number of preservation titles on film, so that even in a shortened term, the laboratory offers SFI positive returns on their investment. Increasing the volume of work would be by nature an increase in work done for external clients, and so would by definition remain cost-effective, despite increasing overheads. The questions of increased demand for their client services, and of collaboration over shared facilities, are ones which complicate the SFI narrative, since both the laboratory's existence and a staff member's salary depend on them in
diametrically opposed ways. Being a state-funded organisation, the provision to offer photochemical services at Rotebro rests on the fact that there is no commercially viable venture in Sweden doing what SFI sets out to do at its laboratory. If it were to secure its survival through growth as a service provider and a joint venture, it would be an ironic outcome, and an enduring symbol of the technological and economic potential in industrial obsolescence.
Something that becomes increasingly clear across the course of both the FoFA Open Forum and the work carried out at SFI to preserve laboratory facilities is that the use of film technologies, and their proposed strategies for future accessibility are figured only in a sense of conserving film objects, and do not support the future of filmmaking prior to its archiving – much less address the types of dynamic preservation strategies required when working with experimental or varied media performances – and therefore do not stress the sharing of production methods as a strategy in and of itself. For this reason, I will focus my second case study on the productive potential latent in film technologies and the archive, by looking at the ways a company archive has been instrumental in returning film manufacturing technology to productivity at FILM Ferrania. Further in my analysis, I will explore the work being done to safeguard film as a creative medium, drawing inspiration from the archive of heritage practices in both the making of handmade emulsions [case study 3] and the revival of technical knowledge and media in performance [case study 4], as means of turning a dialogue around safeguarding film from obsolescence, into praxis.
3
Film production as archival practice
The importance of capturing the skills required for not only film restoration but film manufacture may be overlooked when contrasted to problems of persistent digital access, since the informational qualities of human-readable material obscure any loss of technological knowledge supporting a system of production and preservation. The potential loss of raw stocks jeopardises both archivists' ability to reproduce degraded
materials, as well as filmmakers' capacity to film new productions. But as the FoFA strategies highlight, the frailty of film both as an object and as a production system increasingly inflects what we have presumed of its
preservation lifespan in materials, formats and even digitisation routes, and so the obsolescence of film technology presents a struggle to be overcome in manufacturing as well as in restoration.
3.1
Film as a living network
In interview with Moving Image Archive News in 2012, Giovanna Fossati – who has written compellingly in From
Grain to Pixel39 on the ethical and practical parameters for the transition to digital tools within preservation
frameworks, as well as the need to understand the limits of their applicability – sets out the future as she sees it for analogue film technology. Regarding media transition, Fossati states, “…both old and new technologies keep changing in ways that are not converging.”40 Despite this, she views technological obsolescence with a degree of
optimism, and her words prove to be a touch prophetic: “I think that traditional photochemical film technology is becoming by the day a niche practice: it is already the case for some time with home movie formats and it will eventually become the case for all film formats. […] The disappearance of film as a living commercial network
will (or at least could) help the case for film as heritage.” 41[my emphasis]. If we assume the loss of its “living
commercial network,” film as heritage will by necessity be forced into different networks operating around film; contexts which will (or could) alter our understanding of film archiving's social and historical functions. It is this 39 Fossati, Giovanna. From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
2009.
40 Fossati in interview with Caylin Smith, “An Interview with Giovanna Fossati, Film Archivist and Curator.” Moving Image
Archive News. 23 May 2012. Accessed 27 April 2017.
<http://www.movingimagearchivenews.org/an-interview-with-giovanna-fossati-film-archivist-and-curator/> 41 Fossati, quoted in Smith.
possibility, and its implications, alongside the threat of technological loss, that I aim to explore in my research into the film manufacturer FILM Ferrania, which has adopted an explicitly social approach to production, a technological approach to communication, and a heritage approach to marketing, in its efforts to keep film networks “alive”.
Given its scant 100-year duration as a medium, film manufacture has a history marked by near-constant development.42 The working knowledge of industrial production methods was bound up with laboratories that
were franchised from manufacturers, operating under conditions of secrecy. In the twenty-first century, the prospect of film manufacturers or their franchises still being able to guide filmmakers or archivists on these processes is in doubt, and in order to test this hypothesis, I will look beyond archival laboratory knowledge to industrial manufacture, in the context of Kodak and, more specifically, FILM Ferrania, to consider what
knowledge, skills and technology can be restored from the archive of film's manufacturing past. The knowledge of artistic production methods rests with the “living network” of artists themselves, and so I will follow up my examination of manufacturing here in part two of my thesis, with two case studies drawn from artistic filmmaking where it touches on both the production of raw stocks and the retrieval of archival knowledge.
3.1.1 Film manufacturing – an impossible project?
Kodak itself has addressed the perception of film manufacturing's seeming impermanence and the implications for motion picture archiving, presenting at the 2016 FIAF Congress on the subject of “The Analog
Renaissance”.43 Placing motion picture film manufacture in the context of other analogue industries benefitting
from resurgent commercial interest, Kodak offered comparison between its business and that of the Impossible Project – a successor to Polaroid '600' integral instant film – perhaps unconsciously highlighting some
unfortunate parallels. The Impossible Project is a company founded in 2008 as an immediate response to Polaroid's Chapter 11 filing, with the purpose of buying its patents and taking over the last remaining Polaroid plant, returning those lines to production. Their website describes the “Impossible Project” ahead: “The machines had been dismantled, there were no formulas to follow and the supply chain had already been destroyed. If we
42 “Kodak was a prototype tech company.,” […] “In 2013, Kodak sold 1,100 patents related to digital image capture to a group of 12 companies, including Apple, Samsung and Facebook, for $527 million. Kodak retained the same access to the patents as the bidders, should it wish to compete in, say, photography once again. And it kept about 7,000 other patents, largely connected to the chemistry and physics of creating images, which the market sees as having relatively little value.” In this striking piece from the New york Times in 2015, regarding the potential technological assets developed by Kodak's Research and Development departments up until their filing for Chapter 11, the new financial partners invested in the company stress that its future lies in digital innovations, despite its exclusive patent holdings. Hardy, Quentin. “At Kodak, Clinging to a Future Beyond Film” New York Times. 20 March 2015. Accessed online, 17 May 2017. <https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/business/at-kodak-clinging-to-a-future-beyond-film.html?_r=0>
43 I am grateful to Chris Richter of Kodak for responding to my request through social media, and providing me with the slides from this presentation.
wanted to keep instant photography alive, we had to reinvent instant film from scratch.”44 This notion of
reinvention from scratch represents a common theme not only for Kodak (where it reflects a shift towards digital markets, as I explore below), but for my remaining case studies into industrial and artistic production of film's raw materials, alongside initiatives to rebuild a dismantled network around film.
In attempting to follow the Impossible Project's popular success, Kodak are placing emphasis on the
reintroduction of Kodak Super-8 formats, and the introduction of a new Super-8 camera (and smartphone).45
Kodak also work with directors to promote the use of motion picture film,46 highlighting issues around
craftsmanship and sustaining knowledge of the film medium for future audiences. In his presentation to FIAF, Chris Richter, Kodak's Vice President of Motion Picture and Entertainment, claimed as benefits of shooting on film: the perceived “gold standard” in picture quality, with an identifiable aesthetic maintained across diverse formats supporting a known workflow which allows for creative flexibility within a professional discipline. Film's lifespan was presented as providing a cost-effective archival route, “end-to-end”. Kodak recently announced a five-year joint venture with Pinewood Studios, UK to provide negative processing.47 In addition, they have
purchased wet laboratories in London, UK, and Queens, NY, and continue to offer regional support to existing laboratories through their network of sales.
However, their company model with respect to film has altered substantially in recent years from its pre-2011 peak. Writing in the business pages of the New York Times in 2015, Quentin Hardy outlined the scale of decline: “The 11.4 billion linear feet of film Kodak manufactured as late as 2007, enough to circle the earth about 88 times, has shrunk 96 percent.“ Regarding their film manufacturing plant in Rochester, NY, the new CEO of Kodak, Jeff Clarke, has said: “we want to keep it open, because that’s where we’ll produce the touch screens”48 –
touch screens sensitised to light on machinery adapted from film manufacture. For Kodak, the survival of photochemical technology facilitates an increasingly digital future49 (Kodak's line on technological adaptation
echoes FoFA's, who paradoxically rely on Kodak film), and they have prioritised the launch of their new cine-aesthetic smartphone ahead of relaunching Super-8 or reintroducing stocks.50 Neither the viability of their new
44 “About Us”. Impossible Project. Accessed 27 April 2017. <https://eu.impossible-project.com/pages/about-us> 45 Unlike their smartphone, Kodak's new Super-8 camera has yet to reach retailers, and progress updates are scant.
“Super-8 camera”. Kodak. Accessed 18 May 2017. <http://www.kodak.com/consumer/products/super8/super8-camera/default.htm>
46 Kodak have launched “Reel Film,” a campaign to push for increased feature film production on 35mm. “Reel Film”.
Kodak. Accessed 18 May 2017. <https://reelfilm.kodak.com/>
47 “Kodak and Pinewood Collaborate to Support Film Processing”. Kodak press release 16 May 2017. Accessed 18 May 2017.<http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/Press_center/Kodak_and_Pinewood_Collaborate_to_Support_Film_Proces sing/default.htm>
48 Clarke, as quoted by Quentin Hardy.
49 Hardy, “More important to Mr. Clarke are the ways the past, in terms of both intellectual property and Kodak’s manufacturing processes, can be adapted.”
50 Kodak Ektra, announced months after the January 2016 announcement of new Super-8 camera and stocks (still pending), and available now for €499. “Ektra”. Kodak Phones. Accessed 18 May 2017.
