Universiteit van Amsterdam
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Media Studies
MA: Preservation & Presentation of the Moving Image
Preservation-Skepticism and Self-Destructiveness of Films
in
the Current Revival of Nitrate Film Projections
Aleksas Gilaitis
Supervisor: Giovanna Fossati
Second Reader: Christian Gosvig Olesen
Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
3
1.1
OVERVIEW
3
1.2 A
IMS AND
O
BJECTIVES
4
1.3 S
TRUCTURE AND
L
IMITATIONS
5
1.4 B
ACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW
8
2. HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL CONTEXT
14
2.1 O
RIGINS AND HISTORY
14
2.2 ‘P
RESERVATION
-
SKEPTICISM
’
21
2.2.1 W
HAT WAS CINEMA
22
2.2.2 P
ERFORMATIVE CINEMA
23
2.2.3 T
HE NOTION OF LOSS AND OBSOLESCENCE
25
2.2.4 C
HERCHI
U
SAI
’
S
D
EATH OF
C
INEMA
27
2.3 H
ARE VS
. T
ORTOISE
29
3. CASE STUDIES
34
3.1 O
VERVIEW
34
3.2 T
HE
N
ITRATE
F
ILM
F
ESTIVAL
, B
ELGRADE
35
3.3 T
HE
N
ITRATE
P
ICTURE
S
HOW
, R
OCHESTER
42
4. COMPARISONS OF THE CASE STUDIES
47
CONCLUSION
55
1. Introduction
1.1 Overview“In February 1951, the Eastman Kodak Company announced that its manufacturing plants had discontinued production of nitrate cellulose film, and had begun using triacetate as the only base for photographic motion pictures from then on. Half a century after the event, little has been said or written about the significance of this technological shift for the history of visual culture; compared to the so-called ‘digital revolution’ and its promise of a Brave New World of the moving image, its consequences were barely detectable by the public of the time, and taken for granted by the exhibitors. Nitrate burns, acetate doesn’t: was that the only reason? To what extent did audiences really care about the difference between the two carriers? If they didn’t, how about the preservationists? […] it’s quite hard to find a single instance in their [archives] internal correspondence of curatorial mourning, a word of regret, the hint of a doubt that something important was about to be lost forever.”1
Prior to the mid 1950s, all commercial films around the globe were made and copied on nitrate flammable film stock. After the take-over of safety acetate film stock, previously common nitrate film distribution and projection drifted into a legal grey zone, or even outright illegality. In many countries it became illegal to screen, transport or even possess nitrate films. Hundreds of films since then have been destroyed, completely repurposed to make other items, or, in the luckiest scenario, held and in some fashion preserved in archives for future generations. Nitrate went
1 Paolo Cherchi Usai, “Film as an art object” in Preserve then Show, ed. Dan Nissen,
Lisbeth Richter Larsen, Thomas C. Christensen and Jesper Stub Johnsen, (Copenhagen: Danish Film Institute, 2002), 24
from everyday use in the projection booth to an almost forgotten and unused base in less than a year. For decades nitrate films were considered strictly conservation- only objects; used mainly as sources of information for preservation, and eventually, as the primary source for digitization projects. However, in recent years, there have also been events devoted to the public projection of nitrate prints. The very same films and prints that were banished from the projection booth over 60 years ago have had the opportunity to experience new life. But what has changed? And how long can we expect such a “revival” to last?
1.2 Aims and Objectives
This thesis will take a close look at current discussions pertaining to the base of nitrate film, and more specifically at the current practices being employed for nitrate projection. Whilst a number of contemporary film archivists and scholars have explored the materiality of cinema and the importance of the contextual framework of early and classical cinema in writings2, some have instead attempted
to further the discussion between active and passive film preservation by introducing annual events concentrated on nitrate films. I will analyze two of these annual events in particular that operate in the shadow of the highly restrictive legal boundaries for nitrate projection. Furthermore, I will explore conceptual ideas about viewing the so called ‘original’, later suggesting that non-nitrate prints or digital copies of nitrate-born films are simply not the same.
‘The Original’ of a film is a very broad, controversial and widely debated term, but in this thesis it relies on the framework of “film as original”, which “offers strong arguments for stressing the importance of the original film artifact (i.e. the very
2 Tom Gunning has explored the contextuality of early film in his “The Cinema of
Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde” (Wide Angle, Vol. 8, nos. 3 & 4 Fall, 1986) and “And Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the
(in)Credulous Spectator” in Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural
Studies, Volume 3, by Karen J. Shepherdson, 2004; Material aspects of film analyzed
by Jonathan Walley – “Materiality and Meaning in Recent Projection Performance” from The Velvet Light Trap, n. 70, Fall 2012, etc.
artifact made at the time of the film’s original production and distribution)”3.
Additionally, in contrast to the widely practiced transference of original film to different carriers, I stress the importance of “maintaining as much as possible of the original format of the film”4. By comparing the two film festivals and looking into
their motives and goals, this thesis seeks to connect such practices with the film preservation ideas of respecting the original aim of film – to be screened as long as it is possible, and challenge the usual view of nitrate prints as archival-only objects, never to be run through a projector again. Furthermore, I will question the role of nitrate screenings in our digital environment and will position nitrate film projections as a weapon to fight the rise of digital cinema. These ideas will be connected with other similar theories, which I define in this thesis as “preservation- skeptic”. Likewise, I intend to continue to discuss the nitrate projections in relation with the iconic archival debate between Henri Langlois and Ernest Lindgren. This will provide a broader perspective on the debate as to whether or not nitrate prints should be projected, and if not, opposing arguments that remain valid today more than 60 years after the end of its production. I will argue that festivals like the two case studies featured in this thesis celebrate disappearing media in an unorthodox fashion similar to that of Henri Langlois and his celebratory screenings of nitrate films in the 1950s and 1960s.
1.3 Structure and Limitations
The second chapter examines the theoretical and historical background of nitrate projection practices. First, I briefly explore the settings of such phenomena throughout the first decade of the cinema, and follow this thread up until the decline and immediate switch of the nitrate base to safety film stocks in the early 1950s. Nitrate’s popularity and public image is heavily reliant on its flammability and illegal
3 Giovanna Fossati, From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition.
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011), 113
4 Paul Read and Mark-Paul Meyer, Restoration of Motion Picture Film. (Butterworth-
projection in most of the countries in the world. With this in mind, I introduce a timeline of nitrate’s restrictive usage and how it has changed since the late 19th
century. The nature of the projected nitrate image, which at that time accounted for cinema as a whole, was immensely influential on its early success. Every nitrate film related fire that occurred in the late 19th century damaged the reputation of the
medium and opened a debate on the status of the medium. In this chapter, I connect the negative press-related headlines of historical nitrate related fires with the analogous headlines of contemporary nitrate film projections, where the possibility of danger is used to stir up excitement and separate these events from the more common screenings of alternate formats. I attempt to look beyond the heavily analyzed and discussed ban of nitrate film projections to the transitional period between the 1950s and 1980s, and posit this period as the link between the nitrate era and so called New Film History, which arguably started after the 34th
International Federation of Film Archive (FIAF) congress in Brighton in 1978.
I continue the chapter by establishing the term “preservation-skepticism”, one intended to refer to various efforts made towards highlighting the original materiality of cinema, and to some extent push back against the increasing reliance on digital methods of preservation and projection. Skepticism in this case is not a movement against the whole concept of film preservation and film archiving, rather it’s a renewal of support for traditional preservation methods. This movement, as I will later describe, is best understood through several writings by the Senior Curator of Motion Pictures of the George Eastman House, Paolo Cherchi Usai. His academic writings on ethics and aesthetics in film preservation, as well as his criticism of the diminishing respect shown towards the original form of films, serve as the basis for several of my thesis arguments. I especially associate this term with an approach that focused on film materiality, original form and format and attention to the passive preservation of film prints. All these ideas are presented within their wider contextual surroundings in several categories further divided into sub- chapters. I introduce the theme of long-gone cinema in the sub-chapter ‘What Was Cinema?’; the performative aspect and idea of the impossibility of showing the same film twice in ‘Performative cinema’, the contemporary reuse of decomposition and
disappearance in ‘the Notion of loss and obsolescene’; and perhaps most importantly, the notion of a ‘model image’ of perfect quality and film as a self- destructive medium in Cherchi Usai’s The Death of Cinema5.
In chapter two, I look back on the ‘Hare vs. Tortoise’ debate between Henri Langlois and Ernest Lindgren, which I more extensively analyze in the last section of the chapter. The debate is well represented by Henri Langlois, his active film projections at Cinémathéque Française after the anti-nitrate laws were imposed in a number of countries, and Ernest Lindgren’s actions to seclude and isolate film archives' access for better care of film prints. This debate shows how the preservation-skepticism and recent practices of public nitrate projections can relate with this now considered iconic, half-century old dispute.
The third chapter presents the two case studies sequentially. First, I present the Nitrate Film Festival in Belgrade, Serbia, and second, the Nitrate Picture Show in Rochester, USA. Due to the lack of publicly available information about these festivals and the aims and ideas of their curators and programmers, chapter three is heavily based on the interviews with Paolo Cherchi Usai – Senior Curator of George Eastman House, and Aleksandar Erdeljanovic – the Head of Archive of Jugoslovenska Kinoteka that I made in the summer of 2015. Since this thesis is heavily centered on the practices of Henri Langlois, who stood behind his screenings as the sole representative, I will filter Usai’s and Erdeljanovic’s personal opinions and perspective through a similar lens. Considering that they represent the only two festivals in the world that contribute towards the revived tradition of nitrate projections, their opinion in this case is significantly influential in the field. In this chapter I use the information obtained during the interview to present the festivals, their national and cultural backgrounds, a quick glimpse of their historical backgrounds and the opinions about the subject from their initiators.
The fourth and final chapter brings together the threads of my research and presents a comparison analysis of the two festivals. The differences between them are presented in relation with the global current trends of archival film festivals and
5 Paolo Cherchi Usai The Death of Cinema, (London: British Film Institute, First
with the general historical context of nitrate film projections in both Serbia and the USA. This chapter is followed by a conclusion where I return to the research aims of this thesis, and subsequently summarize how my case study analyses do or do not cohere with: current perspectives on nitrate film projections, early and recent film archival practices, film projection traditions and the timeline of the cinema as a whole.
This thesis has a number of limitations. As my approach to the subject heavily depends on case studies constructed almost entirely through the use of interviews, interviews that only involve these two nitrate projecting venues, it lacks a broader perspective that could yield further insight. In addition, my personal observations only relate to the Nitrate Film Festival in Belgrade, which I visited and attended in 2015. On the other hand, any information on the Nitrate Picture Show was based on the aforementioned interview with Paolo Cherchi Usai, and several reviews and comments made by visitors of the first festival in 2015. For a more thorough analysis of the differences between the festivals it would have been beneficial to have first-hand experiences with both. Nevertheless, I hope that I have presented a balanced analysis concerning the limitations of nitrate projection and extended the general academic knowledge of such an overlooked subject in the fields of archival film studies and film festival studies.
1.4 Background and theoretical overview
Like Henri Langlois, Paolo Cherchi Usai has a passion for nitrate film beyond its visual quality. During “The Last Nitrate Picture Show", which was held by FIAF at the British Film Institute in the year 2000, Usai gave a speech about his own personal nitrate experience 6 . The speech combined details about his first
unintentional encounter with nitrate together with an exploration of sexual
6 Paolo Cherchi Usai, “An Epiphany of Nitrate” in This Film is Dangerous: A
Celebration of Nitrate Film, ed. Roger Smither and Catherine A. Surowiec. (Bruxelles:
attraction and the visual thrill that accompanies seeing something secret. However, what left the biggest impression on him was the smell of the nitrate7, a very special
smell now so familiar to those in the archival world. Though early written accounts noting the peculiar smell of the film can be difficult to come by, Henri Langlois, an undoubted expert on nitrate projections, was one of the few who did. Penelope Houston describes Langlois:
“He had a truffle-hound’s instinct for sniffing films out: the most loyal subscribers to the legend were prepared to believe he could literally smell them."8
In 2000, attendees and presenters of The Last Nitrate Picture Show in shared their passion for nitrate projection, glorifying the celluloid base for its unique quantity of silver, its alluringly dangerous flammability, its smell, its special relationship with forgotten carbon-arc projectors, perforated screens and its ephemeral aura. To trace back the history of the rise of the modern film archival world and its transformations, one must note the landmark year 1978 and the 34th
congress of the FIAF, which took place in Brighton, UK. The event gathered what was at that time the largest collection of early cinema in the medium’s history. Over time, the conference has “gained an almost mythical status”9 and is now considered
to be an essential factor in the birth of a new era of Film History. The myth grew as time wore on, and by the late 2000s and early 2010s many young scholars who have only read about the Conference seem to have adopted its status without further question10. The image of the Brighton Congress is every bit as iconic as the figures of
Langlois and Lindgren, who are considered to be pioneering symbols in the archival world. Nearly a half-century ago, their conflict established basic archival principles
7 Paolo Cherchi Usai, “An Epiphany of Nitrate”, 129
8 Penelope Houston, “Fortress Archive” in Keepers of the Frame: The Film Archives.
(London: British Film Institute, 1994). 49
9 Fossati, From Grain to Pixel, 104
10 Philippe Gauthier, The Brighton Congress and Traditional Film History as Founding Myths of the New Film History. (Université de Montréal/Université de Lausanne,
that remain relevant when assessing the grounds of current preservation practices. Yet the most significant aspect of the Conference was again the large compilation of early films from the late 1890s and early 1900s borrowed from a variety of archival sources. Though early cinema was not completely unknown/unseen before 1978, and some light was shed on its vitality in earlier events (notably 30th FIAF congress
in Montreal and Ottawa in 1974; Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1977; 2nd
Annual Purdue Film Conference at Purdue University in 1977) 11, the Brighton
conference was the largest attempt to show early cinema at that time. It generated a number of articles and books on the subject that eventually formed a new academic field centered on analytical studies of early cinema. These scholarly studies were a key component in the establishment of a new terminology, one that reemphasized the importance of the preservation of early films. Much like the 1978 FIAF conference in Brighton is now widely considered to have been a crucial step both in the formulation of the New Film History12 and the film archival movement as a
whole (including an increased number of restoration projects and the founding of several archival film festivals), the 56th FIAF conference held in 2000 might be
considered the tipping point for nitrate film projection. That same year also saw the screening of a historically essential program of Biograph films at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto13. each of which demonstrated the need for a more thorough
understanding of the context in which such films were created.
The 56th congress of the FIAF in London appears to have been every bit as
grand as that which took place in 1978. It is still too early to say if the aftermath of the 2000 conference will equal that of the one in 1978, but even if it ultimately does not have quite as notable an impact on theoretical/academic analyses in the field, it has already warmed influential film archives and curators to the idea that films with
11 Gauthier, 1-2
12 Wanda Strauven, “Media Archaeology: Where Film History, Media Art, and New
Media (Can) Meet” in Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art: Challenges and
Perspectives, ed. Julia Noordegraaf, Cosetta Saba, Barbara Le Maitre and Vinzenz
Hediger. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 2012), 61
13 Giovanna Fossati, “Multiple Originals: The (Digital) Restoration and Exhibition of
Early Films” in A Companion to Early Cinema, ed André Gaudreault, Nicolas Dulac, and Santiago Hidalgo. (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 552
a nitrate base can and should be screened for cinephilic or educational purposes. Even if nitrate projections in Serbia (and perhaps elsewhere) took place long before the 56th congress, international attention to the flammable base and the slow revival
of projection events can clearly be connected with this particularly unique occasion. One especially memorable event at the 56th congress was the screening of
Abel Glance’s Napoleon with a score by Carl Davis14, a film that has become a
celebratory emblem of the post-1978 era of film preservation. Even more importantly, the congress held “The Last Nitrate Picture Show”, where selections of films were shown from nitrate prints. Its title “The Last Nitrate Picture Show” was intended to raise awareness of the part of film history that is stored on this potentially dangerous and endangered material However, the myth that these films were unwatchable and highly decomposed was shattered in just a couple of days. Paolo Cherchi Usai remembers:
“The epiphany was still there, alive and well, and those who witnessed it with me shared my view that such epiphanies can and should be repeated.”15
Over time Cherchi Usai’s wishes for nitrate screenings to be repeated have been increasingly fulfilled and now, in 2015, archival film lovers and early nitrate aficionados have the opportunity to attend at least ten public nitrate screenings in around the world, including two nitrate only festivals and several more single screening opportunities considered to be on an ‘archival only base’. While exploring this issue Giovanna Fossati, film archivist and chief curator at the EYE Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, mentions that a number of archival curators such as Paolo Cherchi Usai, Alexander Horwath and Mark-Paul Meyer have variously underlined the notion of “authenticity” that only the analog projection of analog film can provide 16 . Taking their argument further, she writes, “authenticity is fully 14 British Film Institute, Annual Review. (London: British Film Institute, 2000/2001),
18
15 Usai, “An Epiphany of Nitrate”, 128
experienced only when an original (vintage) print is projected”17. These arguments
are heavily dependent on the belief that the visual aesthetic of the nitrate prints are different from all other material forms, and some say superior 18. Even if it visually
differs from the acetate/polyester print, it is hard to determine if the general public would appreciate or even recognize this difference given that the aesthetic qualities of recent polyester 35mm prints are becoming forgotten in this digital age. The popularity of digital cinema and the gradual disappearance of analog film projections could call into question the relevance of film materiality altogether. If it does matter for at least a few select audiences, then does that materiality (the physical context of the film) matter more than content (the cinematographic specialties, aesthetics and storytelling)? Much like other events that prize the performative and material aspects of archival cinema, nitrate film screenings stress the ‘how’ and ’when’ of film watching over the ‘what’ of any particular film’s narrative.
To justly present my general direction and arguments on this subject, I must first mention several archivists and theorists who share somewhat similar thoughts on current trends of film preservation and likewise defend the necessity of screening early cinema in a manner that is as close as possible to its original form. Such “movement” I will here label as ‘preservation-skepticism’. Although I do not intend to strictly categorize these particular people, at least some of the ideas shared in their writings can in one way or another be associated with this movement. My intention is not to focus on the claim that the scholars I will reference disagree with the idea of film preservation in general, but to further explore some of their criticisms that specifically concern the too narrow approach of many of today’s active preservation practices. The term is much better understood with regard to the relatively modern trend of preserving a film’s content by migrating it to other forms and formats; in large part as a means of making the film
17 Fossati, “Multiple Originals”, 564
18 British Film Institute. “The Smouldering Screen: Kevin Brownlow on the lustre of
nitrate” by Kevin Brownlow, 29 April 2014, Accessed 15th May 2016.
more accessible for public screenings. The fruits of active preservation are often more visible due to the general public’s engagement with films in various digital formats (e.g. Blu-Ray, DVD, etc.), thereby fostering a lack of appreciation on the part of casual observers for the less immediately noticeable benefits of passive preservation. Furthermore, because passive preservation is increasingly considered to be part of the digitization and/or migration process, the analog prints naturally become less accessible, while the quick transition of cinemas to digital only projection has served to further this trend. The tradition of passive film preservation for the purpose of extending print accessibility and projection, for as long as possible, generally opposes the ideas behind several of the more common activities of active preservation. This is doubly so if the conversation is about the accessibility of rare and original prints. Even if any current film archivists were capable of denying the importance of readily accessible archival prints, blurring the line between the archive-only and projected material for some may be seen as anti- preservationist or stemming from a ‘preservation-skepticist’ practice.
For the purposes of debate, one could impose a simplistic opposition between active preservation vs. passive preservation, and drawing such radical opposing lines in archival theory connects us back to the two iconic film archivists, Henri Langlois and Ernest Lindgren. Their debate, based on strongly established yet opposing ideas and principles of what film preservation generally is, has already been analyzed by several academics. It is hard to find two other archivists in history who so politely but resolutely defended their own principles to save the heritage of the cinema. In the shadows of the ongoing screenings of archival cinema, one might associate the Langlois tradition with nitrate projections and respect for original film formats. On the other hand, practices like digitization and digital projection are the arbiters of a time which Lindgren long waited for, a time when the longevity of film heritage relies on multiple forms and formats. During the many years of analysis of their defiance, the rivalry between the two has gained several names such as “The
battle lines between Langlois and Lindgren”19, “The Archive Paradox”20, and most
frequently, “Henri Langlois – hare/Ernest Lindgren – tortoise debate”21
During their careers they managed to draw very distinct lines between their respective understandings of what an archive is and what the archive should primarily do. If one (Lindgren) was a strict preservationist who sealed his archive from outside use and waited for better times to come for the safe access to preserved heritage, the other (Langlois) unintentionally made the profession of the archivist popular by openly exploiting films from his archive and spreading knowledge about cinematic heritage simply by projecting it on the screen and sharing it with fellow film lovers.
2. Historical and theoretical context
2.1 Origins and historyThe nitrate film base has played an important role in early film history. As the major film base during the first half of the history of cinema, it was naturally the only one used for commercial studio productions. Its infamous and secretive status is largely the result of various unfortunate accidents caused by its high flammability, the ceasing of its production in the early 1950s, and projection/transport restrictions in many countries with rich cinematic history. Admittedly, some part of this myth has been strongly exaggerated by a media that has taken the conversation surrounding the under-analyzed topic of the materiality of certain film bases and used it to create a nostalgic aura22 or fetishism23 amongst young generations of 19 Michael Binder, Light Affliction: a History of Film Preservation and Restoration,
(Lulu Press, 2014), 72
20 Ruth Beale, Lindgren & Langlois: The Archive Paradox, (London: Ruth Beale and
Cubitt Artists. 2011)
21 Houston, “Fortress Archive”, 49
22 The term aura is mostly used by Walter Benjamin to define the last notion in an
cinephiles. The titles from the reviews of rare nitrate projections are never subtle and often emphasize the danger it potentially poses and its unique, event-like nature:
“Film From the Ashes”24(The Verge)
“This Version of Casablanca had the potential to kill us all”25(The Verge)
“Don’t Try This at Home: Skilled Projection Required”26(LAC group blog)
“This Festival is Dangerous”27(Rochester City Newspaper)
The general rarity of these events and the possibility that certain nitrate prints might only be screened once in their lifetimes are two of the major aspects that sell tickets28. The fact that it is literally impossible to see a silent film in the
theater twice and get the same exact experience, makes film from the silent era inherently unique. Unlike later sound films, and, most importantly, current digital- born cinema, classic and silent films are always changing, developing, being rereleased in various versions, while final-cuts are being reprinted on film prints of various qualities and gauges. Additionally, silent films are always being shown with different live scores. Such a temporary performance can be compared to a theatre the Digital Age” by Barbara Flueckiger, 22 November 2012, Accessed 15th May 2016.
http://www.necsus-ejms.org/material-properties-of-historical-film-in-the-digital- age/
23 The term used by Paolo Cherchi Usai to define his own personal physical
relationship with nitrate films.
24 The title from “Film From the Ashes: A Beautiful but deadly art is reborn at the
Nitrate Picture Show” by John Lingan. Accessed 15th May 2016.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/17/8792169/nitrate-picture-show-film-conservation-festival
25 Underlined quote from “Film From the Ashes”
26 Title of the column from “The Nitrate Picture Show: A Festival of Conservation –
Highlights of 2015 Event” by Danny Kuchuck. Acessed 15th May 2016.
https://lac-group.com/overview-of-the-nitrate-picture-show-a-festival-of-conservation/
27 The title of “This Festival is Dangerous” by Adam Lubitow, 29 April 2015. Accessed
15th May 2016. http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/this-
festival-is-dangerous/Content?oid=2528439
28 Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, “Showing Different Films Differently” in The Moving Image, (Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2004), 7-8
performance, one that simply cannot be repeated a second time. Such a profound similarity with one-time shows or theater performances gives every such screening added value. It also accrues an extra layer of appreciation from attending audiences that are used to comparing the visual qualities of home-cinema Blu-Ray versions with digital versions screened in a public cinema. Nitrate film screening is now one of those movie theater events where the context of the projected film matters as much (or even more) than the film’s narrative content. If one is to refer to such events centered around their context, one can mention basically any silent film screening with live accompaniment, as well as projections with early carbon-arc projectors like those in Il Cinema Ritrovato since 2013, screenings of interactive B- movies in cheap popcorn theaters, highly restricted nitrate base films in the screening venues serving as this thesis’ case studies, screenings of irregular film gauges that range from the highest quality 70mm to 8mm home-movies, and even drive-in cinemas like those in provincial cities across the USA. These events collect audiences by presenting films through traditional, and sometimes very rare or seemingly forgotten, methods. In the wake of the now established and still growing dominance of digital projection, nostalgia for fading traditions of watching cinema in a theater and on celluloid film becomes an overriding motivation to return to the “silver screen”. As the list of cinemas that are leaving behind their film projectors grows, every film screening in the remaining film-projecting venues becomes a more valuable rarity.
One of the rarest of the previously mentioned events are nitrate film projections. The restrictions for the projection nitrate film are usually unclear and vary from country to country. The projection of nitrate today highly depends on the national laws and archival policies of the nation’s archives and cinematheques. Some of these (e.g. Britain and France) made quick and radical decisions to ban any actions related to nitrate films outside the knowledge of the archives, while others never changed the policies since the end of the nitrate era. Nevertheless, the transfer of feature production from nitrate to acetate in the 1950s was supposed to be the quick decline of nitrate stock. In France, the so-called ‘anti-nitrate’ law was passed in December of 1950, which “would make it eventually illegal to show,
transport or even possess nitrate film”29. Many countries followed France’s example,
some in the same year, some much later (the National Film Archive ((NFA)) in Britain had somewhat similar restrictions in the early 1970s). In theory, this law eventually did work to some extent in many of the biggest archives in Europe and North America30. However, in practice, nitrate films were casually screened even in
countries where this ‘anti-nitrate’ law supposedly enforced. For example, in one of the early annual festivals of Silent Cinema in Pordenone, some of the prints sent from the Danish Film Institute were nitrate31. In Italy, the projection of nitrate
prints by that time was, as it still is now, illegal. Hence, to minimize the possible danger of projecting flammable film in a closed movie theater, the films were subsequently shown in open-air screenings. Ironically, nobody in the audience was informed why these films were screened outside, nor did any of the festival staff reveal that the projected films were highly flammable32. This happened in the late
1980’s, when even Cinémathèque Française – considered the last fortress for nitrate – had followed the rest of the western world in stopping their nitrate projections. The aforementioned public screening of nitrate prints from the Danish Film Institute is one of only a few that was eventually revealed in one form or another to have taken place. Note that I am only referring to the public screenings, which does not include the closed-circle screenings by private collectors who still project nitrate in their homes under the responsibility radar33. Overall, as Giovanna Fossati mentions,
29 Houston, “Fortress Archive”, 43
30 anti-nitrate laws were never established as international laws, policies and
restrictions were set by the local governments or archival communities. Not all of such information is documented and can only be interpreted by generalizing documented examples
31 Usai, “An Epiphany of Nitrate”, 130 32 ibid.
33 Kyle Westphal, “Burned Out: The Nitrate Legacy” by Kyle Westphal, 2 October
2013. Accessed 15th May 2016.
http://www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org/2013/10/02/burned-out-the-
nitrate-legacy/ and
Anthony Slide, “A Personal Odyssey” in Silent Players: A Biographical and
Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses. (University Press of
the projection of these artifacts of cinema history is “usually illegal”34. I must stress
the description ‘usually’, which perfectly summarizes the ambiguous status of nitrate film projections in the western world 35. This status leaves space open for
various exceptions and accidental or hidden events, but by and large these sorts of screening are widely understood cross the line of legality.
The history of nitrate’s illegality and various overreactions against its screenings, as I have already mentioned before, is mostly a result of its flammability. Similarly to the coverage of the flammability of nitrate film today, media outlets were not silent about this aspect of nitrate in the early days of cinema. Unfortunately, instead of successfully pulling audiences to cinemas, it cast a negative shadow over the rising film industry and encouraged audiences to keep away from it. And in fairness the potentially lethal nature of nitrate was not to be taken lightly. Scholar H. Mark Gosser writes of, “The fatal fire of 4 May 1897 at the Bazar de la Carité in Paris, which claimed the lives of at least 120 people…along with the fire in a fairground tent at Stafford Market, [and] were certainly factors that caused the introduction of the London County Council Act of 1898”36. The London County
Council Act of 1898 initiated cinema and theater licensing, and encouraged proper storage, registration and inspection of film prints in the territory of London city. In the wake of the London County Council Act of 1898, restrictions and laws to make film projecting a safer and more regulated activity followed one after the other. The Act in 1898 was followed by one in 1900, and later by the 1909 Cinematograph Act37, which “required all premises where nitrate film was present and to which the 34 Fossati, “Multiple Originals”, 554
35 The cases of nitrate projections outside the North America and Europe are often
not documented. Especially until 1990s and 2000s. Due to high concentration of FIAF members in the western world, one can interpret that archives from outside of it, which were not members of FIAF during the decline of nitrate film were generally lacking any information related with restrictions of its usage
36 H. Mark Gosser, “The Bazar de la Charité Fire: The Reality, the Aftermath, the
Telling” in Film History, (vol. 10, no.1, Cinema Pioneers, 1998)
37 Vanessa Toulmin, “Phantom Fires: An Evaluation of the Evidence for Nitrate Fires
in Fairground Cinematograph Shows” in This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of
Nitrate Film, ed. Roger Smither and Catherine A. Surowiec. (Bruxelles: Federation
public were admitted to be licensed by the local authority”38. Various regulatory
acts eventually spurred technological innovations and led to a larger scale development of non-flammable acetate base. These acts also gave rise to the use of safety stock for theatrical film exhibition way before the mandatory conversion in the 1950s39. With such a direct connection between regulatory acts and nitrate
projection, I believe that the decline of nitrate film, at least theoretically, started as early as the first related fire in 1897. The most infamous nitrate fire occurred in the previously mentioned Paris Charity Bazaar, but also “among other places, the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, Eastman House at Rochester, New York(which is one of few places that still project nitrate), and particularly disastrously, the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City, when lives were lost and much of the Mexican film record burnt”40. Most of these fires did not occur during film projection. Instead,
they were caused by improper storage conditions or a simple lack of careful preservation. That is why most of the nitrate collections today sit in isolated, strictly regulated bunkers, far away from inhabited areas. Writings about fires started during nitrate projection, on the other hand, are harder to come by. Even if fires during projection did occur from time to time, the potential risk of a major fire resulting in loss of lives or large portions of film heritage was minimal. This was especially the case after the early 1900s, when film projection became a much more regulated activity than it had been in the earliest stage of cinema.
However, the public image of the nitrate film base has radically changed in several ways, most apparent when comparing the years before and after the 1950s. It’s important to point out that before the 1950s, excluding some rare exceptions, no other film base was used to make and duplicate the commercial cinema for movie theater projections. In that case the notion of celluloid film being flammable and
38 Leo Enticknap, “The Film Industry’s Conversion from Nitrate to Safety Film in the
Late 1940s: A Discussion of the Reasons and Consequences” in This Film is
Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film, ed. Roger Smither and Catherine A.
Surowiec. (Bruxelles: Federation Internationale Des Archives Du Film (FIAF), 2002). 203
39 Enticknap, 203
40 Penelope Houston, “Introduction: Fragile, Expensive and Dangerous” in Keepers of the Frame, (London: British Film Institute, 1994). 2
dangerous was taken as something of a given. Only after the conversion and after the ‘anti-nitrate’ laws did people get the chance to compare and question the superiorities of one or another film base.
The most important and famous feature of nitrate has always been its explosive nature. As we saw, during the first decade of the 20th century its
flammability was on the verge of damaging the whole film industry by inciting reactionary laws and frightening potential audiences. Eventually, after WWII, nitrate was officially and globally changed to other film bases. Its decline first started with the cancellation of production, then by restricting or banning its projection and transportation. After several decades of nitrate films being kept out of projection booths or projected only in unregulated occasions, the archival revival (sometimes called “the renaissance of silent film studies”41) in the 1980s re-exposed the
obscured issue of nitrate’s flammable heritage. The topics of contextuality and materiality eventually took a large portion of the academic interest in film preservation studies. The contextuality of cinema extracts and uses surrounding information and artifacts that explain where, when and how cinematic culture should be understood in relation to its historical and geographical context. It contains historical connections with the materiality of cinema, in particular film as a short-lived material object and the ephemeral state of the technology used in different stages of filmmaking and showing. The film base and its central role in nitrate film projections became the context which audiences need be familiar with in order to fully appreciate nitrate events and understand their cultural value.
The earliest of revival of nitrate prints via public projection took place around the late 1990s, while most of the rediscovery, projection and awareness of early color films grew throughout 1990s and 2000s. Rare carbon arc projections became public during the 2010s and became the annual event during the festival Il
41 The main events that marked the beginning of this renaissance were the 1978
FIAF international conference Cinema 1900-1906 and the presentation of Kevin Brownlow’s reconstruction of Abel Gance’s Napoleon (France, 1927), in two versions debuting in September 1979. (From “Silent Strategies: Audiovisual Functions of the Music of Silent Cinema” by Marco Bellano in Kieler Beiträge zur
Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. This short historical timeline brings us to the present, when prohibitions and bans are remembered via the effort towards the revival of archival cinema in the 2010s.
2.2 ‘Preservation-skepticism’
Concerning the tradition of screening classic and early cinema in its original format, specifically - and most importantly for this thesis - a highly restricted nitrate film, only a few contemporary archivists and film preservation theorists stand on the side that allows for its originally intended use and projection. Thus, when one is talking about screening vintage, unique prints, we must return to the iconic argument between Henri Langlois and Ernst Lindgren – “To show is to preserve vs. To preserve is to show.”42 Though many archives and archivists have now managed
to find a comfortable balance between active preservation and print accessibility (or between the Langlois and Lindgren approaches towards film preservation), some archivists and/or curators still appear to be sympathizers of one of the opposing sides in this iconic debate. Most famously, a Langlois-like approach is represented by Paolo Cherchi Usai in his book “The Death of Cinema”. What I want to stress the most here is the specific usage of nitrate base films, namely in relation to their inevitable temporality and relatively short-life. Such a subject fits well with the idea of a group of archivists, one I have labeled preservation-skeptics, joined together in an active fight against the rise of digital cinema and the fading of traditional cinematic culture. This group respects not only the content of film history but context as well, including the tradition of celluloid projection, silent film accompaniment, etc. In this sense, the aforementioned43 context and materiality of
cinema stand together with its inevitable decay and disappearance. Indeed, nitrate celluloid is just one element of film history destined to eventually disappear. To
42 Clyde Jeavons, “The Moving Image: Subject or Object” in Journal of Film
Preservation 73 (Bruxelles: Federation Internationale Des Archives Du Film (FIAF),
2007),
46 Fossati, “Multiple Originals”, 554
understand problematic nature of the broader field of film historicity, I will briefly introduce the related ideas of the archivists I have identified as “preservation- skeptics”.
2.2.1 What was cinema
To understand the materiality of cinema and the motives of film archivists and academics who emphasize it’s value, it is important to return to the famous question by André Bazín – ‘what is cinema?’. Alternatively, to compliment the title of Paolo Cherchi Usai’s book “The Death of Cinema” and its pessimistic but realistic message, we could use David N. Rodowick’s rephrasing of Bazin’s question to “what was cinema?”44 Such a cruel usage of the past tense can infer different things depending
on the various stages of film history. Rodowick describes cinema as “the projection of a photographically recorded filmstrip in a theatrical setting”45. Under this
presumption, no other media such as cassettes, discs or other forms and formats capable of carrying cinema’s content can be put under the same name. This could be extended even further by considering the wide variety of photographic bases. For example, cinema prior to 1950 projected on a non-nitrate base cannot be considered to be the same film as it originally was on nitrate. Giovanna Fossati, in respect to this subject, defends the distinct visual qualities of a film’s original form thusly:
“Experiencing the projection of an early film via its restoration on modern film stock gives a distorted impression of its inherent material characteristics in terms of density, contrast, and colors”46.
Moreover, film director, theoretician and painter Peter Greenaway mentions that “the end of cinema was…the 31st of September, 1983. That supposedly is the 44 David N. Rodowick The Virtual Life of Film. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2007). 25
date when the zapper (or the remote control) was introduced to the living rooms of the world”47. Interpreting Greenaway’s statement, one can understand his view of
the key feature of the cinema as being the immobility of the audience and their lack of its control over the moving images they see. Film restoration, the change of format or even the control given by the ‘zapper’ is something which “fights against its [cinema's] death” and is “a significant intervention into its being as a historical object”48. Such theory strengthens the importance of the context in which cinema is
made. Knowing the historical timeline of cinema related inventions and their role in changing the audiences’ vision could allow for a better appreciation of the medium’s past and its singular technologies. Following this line of argument, one can assert that watching an early TV show on a laptop with the possibility to pause and replay whenever the individual wants does not provide the same viewing experience as that of the original. Similarly, a film from 1920s, if projected from modern 35mm print with an optically added modern score, in many ways changes the essence of cinema of from that respective era.
2.2.2 Performative cinema
In some of her writings Barbara Flueckiger criticizes the restoration practices that digitally simulate and intervene in photochemical processes. These include the stabilization and de-flickering of the image, which raises the issue of the subjectivity of the restorer and the fact that it is technically impossible to restore the film exactly as it might have originally been49.
The defining component of this critique by preservation-skeptics of digitization and digital restoration processes is not only its influences on film as an interpretable text, but also its transformation as a material object and performative
47 “Peter Greenaway: Cinema is Dead, Long Live Cinema”, Youtube video, Posted 5
October 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6yC41ZxqYs
48 Flueckiger, “Material properties…” 49 Fossati, From Grain to Pixel. 88
instance50. The individual often providing an introduction to the screening, in
addition to the musical accompanist and the variable visual quality of every film print are but a few of the factors that explain the value of cinematic performance. While changing the film format or digitizing a film rarely affects its narrative content, such changes transform the film as a material object and its nature as a cinematic performance. In an ideal setting, restoration is “the methodological moment in which the work of art is appreciated in its material form and in its historical and aesthetic duality, with a view to transmitting it to the future”51. Unfortunately, real
world settings can compromise a film’s aesthetic and historical material form at the same time. When films are being digitized or migrated they often encounter the limitations of newer formats, which leaves some immobile qualities of the original (or previous form) behind. In that sense every migration and/or transfer puts the film at risk of becoming something new. With this in mind, one can only imagine how many transfers some of the earliest films have gone through. The audio-visual qualities of a film’s newly restored Blu-Ray release may hardly resemble the original qualities of its celluloid form.
It is important to emphasize that film screenings haven been and continue to be a performance as well. The materiality of a filmstrip and its visual content are not the only ways a digitally migrated or restored copy might differ from the “original film”52. Every film screening, especially during the early days of cinema, had some
sort of interpretive interactivity. Sometimes it was musical accompaniment, sometimes a narrator and sometimes it was part of a theatrical performance compilation in the tent. There is no doubt that the cinematic setting of a particular time is even more fleeting than the film itself. And even if a film restoration/reconstruction barely ever considers the performative elements of a
50 Flueckiger, “Material properties…”
51 Cesare Brandi, Theory of Restoration, (Istituto Centrale per il Resta, 2005), 231 52 the term ‘original’ can be understood in various ways – as the director/producer
intended to show, as the oldest surviving copy shows, etc., but in this thesis I use the framework of “film as original” stressing the importance of film as an artifact and the closest version to the one screened during the premiere, defended by Giovanna Fossati in Grain to Pixel, 113
film’s presentation, these elements do not suddenly become non-existent. Giovanna Fossati in her article “Multiple Originals: The (Digital) Restoration and Exhibition of Early Films” mentions two quite different projects – Mutoscope Biographe film programs presented at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in 2000 and the unique project Crazy Cinématographe, which celebrated the “film as performance” framework inspired by early cinema exhibition practices 53 . If one perceives a film
reconstruction as a new interpretive performance, she says, then that film screening can be understood as a new interpretation in the same way that “a representation of a play by Shakespeare is a new interpretation, whether it is performed in Elizabethan settings at the New Globe Theatre or in a modern setting”54. However,
when talking about the experience of the projection of a restored version of a film, one must admit that during the years between early cinema and “now,” perfectly “authentic” technical conditions became obsolete, illegal or in some other way technically impossible. This, not to mention the eventual incorporation of technological objects such as additional sub-title screens, superior sound systems, digital media, etc. that were not even imaginable at the time of the film’s premiere but are now so commonplace.
2.2.3 The notion of loss and obsolescence
Technological obsolescence is another major issue which is often mentioned by representatives of the film archival world. Obsolescence and rapidly evolving technical development result in all kinds of re-formatting, restoration and reconstruction processes. This is usually primarily occurs due to a shortage of equipment capable of keeping aging formats alive. In relation to the tradition of analog film projection, there is no doubt that recent transfers to digital equipment and the subsequent disposal of analog projectors make analog film untenable in a
53 Fossati, “Multiple Originals”, 552 54 Fossati, “Multiple Originals”, 553
growing number of venues. Likewise, considering how regulated projections of nitrate prints usually remain, only a handful of venues are nitrate-capable. The lack of capable venues in this case forces archives to digitize their collections and eventually only use digital copies. And while the complete disappearance of analog film projection will not occur anytime in the near future, one of the most popular solutions to analog’s steady decline is digitization (frequently in support of film restoration and reconstruction projects). This is the reason why Vinzenz Hediger calls the final product of such practices an “improved original"55. Yet this phrase in
some sense already contradicts itself, as the “original” (if we are talking about the actual original, i.e. the origin of its later versions), by being “upgraded” or improved, loses its inherent value as an authentic “original”56. As we have already established
several aspects of film historicity, Hediger’s self-contradictive argument can be adjusted, separately and as a whole, to every single part of the cinema. In that sense, Hediger's strongly worded statement that, “…the original is always lost”57, can be
reasonably interpreted as a belief that the performative element is lost right after the first screening. If the first master copy is approached as the “original”, it should never even be projected, only allowing its copies to lose their visual qualities, sound sharpness and generally perfect condition once it is first threaded through the projector. Without this approach, the “original” master is eventually lost when both the material and the technology that can project it. The notion of loss in retrieving the original or some sort of death of cinema (or film) altogether returns time and again in the writings of many of the above mentioned film theoreticians like Peter Greenaway, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Penelope Houston and Giovanna Fossati.
Some filmmakers also use the aesthetics of loss as a basis for their own work, like Bill Morrison, Gustav Deutsch and Peter Delpeut, just to name a few. They all primarily work with silent cinema material originally captured on nitrate stock. The visually unique quality of its decomposition results in an aesthetically complex
55 Vinzenz Hediger “Original Work Performance. Film Theory as Archive Theory” in Quel che Brucia (non) Ritona: What Burns (Never) Returns: Lost and Found Films (ed.
Giulio Bursi and Simone Venturini, 2011). 2
56 see footnote 52 57 Vinzenz. 13
distortion of the underlying image. The loss of the archival material and audiovisual art in these works is but one of its multiple meanings – as the savior of the source material’s remaining visual information; as a tool to raise awareness about the decomposition of nitrate films, and of course as the material for artistic expression.
2.2.4 Cherchi Usai’s Death of Cinema
Paolo Cherchi Usai is well aware of the many problems related to the physical ‘death’ of cinema (or film) and the continual disappearance of tools used to create or show that cinema, as he has expressed in various articles and books. In his book The Death of Cinema, he discusses the loss and natural decay of filmic heritage from a more ontological/existential point of view than a more broadly physical one. In the first chapter of the book, the author states that “Cinema is the art of moving image destruction”58. From this point forward the conception of the cinema that he
elaborates is applicable to both the subject of art history and the subject of the archive. On a similar note, Jacques Derrida describes the archive in his Archive Fever as that which, “produces memory, but produces forgetting at the same time”59. This
philosophy embraces film from a similar vantage point as one would the human body. It’s inevitable mortality makes the expected lifespan artistically valuable and precious. Usai relates cinema to oral expression, saying that: “extinction of moving images is considered as normal as the corruption of an oral tradition, or the vanishing of other ephemeral forms of human expression”60. Cinema is ephemeral,
or at least it was during the more than 100 years of celluloid prior to the birth of digital formats. In all these years, cinema’s existence was born out at the expense of itself, since from Usai’s point of view its purpose is fulfilled only when it’s being watched, while at the same time being slowly destroyed. In his theory, he introduces the term ‘Model Image’, meaning the perfect image, which some consider to be the
58 Usai, The Death of Cinema, 6
59 Jacques Derrida “Archive Fever” (transcribed Seminar) in Refiguring the Archive
(ed. Carolyn Hamilton and Verne Harris, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 54
goal of every screening of the film. Theoretically, the closest encounter to the ‘Model Image’ occurs during the first viewing of the film. So, that particular event is set as an impossible goal to achieve during every other following screening. This is applicable to every aspect of early cinema screening – screen, projector, room, lights, general atmosphere, sound, film print, etc… - that I have mentioned before. Thus, the only place to preserve the experience of the ‘Model Image’ is in the memory of that particular audience.
This theory strengthens the idea of film being a performance, with every screening different from the other. Usai says:
“Link between the ephemeral nature of the image and its exhibition in a number n of showing mistakenly perceived by the viewer as events which are identical to each other”61
Hence, as film is constantly changing or dying, an interruption to this process can be seen in a similar fashion to that of the search for eternal life. Therefore, restorations, as one of the best-known methods to increase the lifespan of a film “are at best alien, if not contrary, to the unstable nature of the carrier”62. ‘The Model
Image’ hypothesis is based upon the existence of films that are immune to decay. One could guess that the digital carrier is what he had in mind. The theory though is not necessarily attached to one precise form of carrier. Even though elsewhere63
Usai tends to stress the temporality of nitrate prints, here he expressively demonstrates his disbelief in the longevity of the digital form as well64. That
disbelief complements ideas of ‘digital being just another emulsion’65 by Mark-Paul
Meyer and Giovanna Fossati, creating a bond between celluloid and the digital form
61 Usai, Death of Cinema, 61 62 Usai, Death of Cinema, 67
63 Paolo Cherchi Usai’s writings in Burning Passions: An Introduction to the Study of Silent Cinema and Silent Cinema, an Introduction
64 Usai, Death of Cinema, 13
65 Mark-Paul Meyer, “Traditional Film Projection in a Digital Age” in Journal of Preservation 70, (Bruxelles: Federation Internationale Des Archives Du Film (FIAF),
not only in the linearity of the historical changes of emulsions, but also in a somewhat nihilistic sense of cinema's destiny to become history.
Paolo Cherchi Usai himself is one of the leading figures of the current field of film preservation. As the long time senior curator at the George Eastman House in Rochester, USA, and previously as the director of Haghefilm Foundation in the Netherlands, he is responsible for many of today’s major preservations projects. After getting familiar with his opinion as a preservation academic and grouping him within preservation-skepticism, one must further consider him as a traditional film archivist, one who actively works on film preservation and digitization projects and, after defending the natural death of film, works on supporting its digital immortality. In some of his projects, the most well-known of which is the restoration of the Orson Welles film “Too Much Johnson”, he has stood on the opposing side of his own arguments in favor of film’s temporality and mortality. “Too Much Johnson” was the unfinished and never finalized project by the famous Orson Welles – a film that was actually never made and never meant to reach the big screen. In that case, its restoration and premier, which took place in 2013, can hardly go along with the acceptance of its ephemeral state, temporality or even non-existence66. However,
he has simultaneously been one of only a few people who have not only seen hundreds of nitrate base films but has as well defended its projection, overruling the often-implied illegalities. From this perspective, it seems like the contradiction between his writings and his practice (excepting his role in Nitrate related events) resemble the historic debate between Henri Langlois and Ernest Lindgren.
2.3 Hare vs. Tortoise
Ernest Lindgren was the director of the National Film Archive in London (1934 – 1973), while Henri Langlois was the director of Cinémathéque Française in
66 “Team effort restores a ‘lost’ Welles film” by Michael Phillips, 8 August 2013,
Accessed 15th May 2016.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-08-08/entertainment/ct-mov-0809-talking-pictures-20130808_1_welles-pordenone- much-johnson
Paris (1938 – 1974). These two iconic film archivists represented two major film archives in Europe, and ironically their actions and ideologies towards their job were radically opposed to each other. As Clyde Jeavons aphoristically described their debate :
“To show is to preserve,” said Langlois.
“No,” said Lindgren. “To preserve is to show.”67
Unlike in the age of digital archiving, the time of celluloid as the only medium to preserve was a debate of special importance. Analog prints, unlike digital copies, have a very vivid and noticeable feature to change after every projection. It is usually being affected with scratches from a mechanism in the projector while being transported by the projectionist themself. Furthermore, film prints in many occasions deteriorate while being stored in unsuitable climate conditions. Due to various chemical activities, celluloid – especially nitrate and acetate – is relatively chemically unstable. However, during the era in which the aforementioned debate took place, individual archivists had much more freedom to act under their own ideas and beliefs, and even though Lindgren had already started combining the rules for the preservation Code of Ethics for FIAF, many archivists did not really follow it and instead followed their own intuition. Though neither Langlois nor Lindgren were ultimately right from the perspective of the somewhat balanced and moderate preservation practices at the present, Langlois as a defender of a high rate of accessibility in contrast to a greater attention towards preservation was (and is) much more criticized by contemporary archivists and film academics68. On the other
hand, Lindgren’s attention to the original artifact “in almost antiquarian sense”69 67 Jeavons, see page 20
68 David Francis, “From Parchment to Pictures to Pixels Balancing the Accounts:
Ernest Lindgren and the National Film Archive, 70 Years on” in Journal of Film
Preservation 71, (Bruxelles: Federation Internationale Des Archives Du Film (FIAF),
2006)
69 Caroline Frick, “Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation”, (New York: Oxford
