Our FEDS Trainee Scheme offers participants a ten-month long paid traineeship in the exhibition sector, as well as mentoring and expert industry advice. In this blog we hear from Asif Vehvaria, a current trainee based at Phoenix in Leicester, about the history of film preservation, the importance of archival work and the ways they bring these films to audiences at Phoenix.
Having been exposed to cinema from an early age, I encountered film on many occasions whilst growing up. But my love for cinema was ignited at the Hong Kong Film Archive, where I was shown the processes of archiving, preserving and restoring lost films. My next stop was the Hong Kong chapter of Il Cinema Ritrovato and seeing the preservation efforts on display there. During these visits, I learned that Wong Kar-wai had helped with the preservation and restoration of many Chinese/Cantonese films that were found in Chinatowns abroad in the 1990s. In the Mood for Love (dir. Wong Kar-wai, 2000) was accompanied by a short film titled Hua Yang De Nian Hua, which consisted of a montage of scenes from these once lost films.
Soon after graduation, I secured an internship at the Media Archive for Central England (MACE), where I learnt about the scope of an archive’s work in curation, preservation and making material accessible. Being in the climate-controlled storeroom containing heaps of historically significant material, I felt overwhelmed by just how much media was produced about a single region of Britain.
As the years have passed I’ve retained my interest in archiving, and am always fascinated by the innovative steps being taken in restoration and preservation. Early on, the pessimist in me wondered if archives were the last stop in a film’s journey. But in recent months my view has become much kinder, having witnessed the great efforts made by individuals and organisations to enable the continued accessibility of these films.
The Early Archives
At the advent of cinema, film pioneers primarily focused on one thing in particular: the image. Early film lacked structure and was, for the most part, unsophisticated. But this crudeness in form did not matter, as the marvel of the moving image was more than enough to captivate audiences. At the height of its popularity, queues to the Lumière brothers’ ‘Cinématographe’ shows were a quarter of a mile long and were bringing in between 1000 to 2,500 francs a day, at 1 franc per show.
Such demand led to efforts to provide a varied programme by filming additional shorts. As this rudimentary form of film exhibition began taking shape there was a slight shift in focus, and the wondrous miracle that was the moving image quickly turned into a form of cheap entertainment. Another early form of film exhibition came in the form of the Kinetoscope and Mutoscope erotic films (which were later named ‘peep shows’), with films such as What the Butler Saw from the early 1900s. The novelty of this new medium of entertainment served as an incubator for early cinema, and further advancements were introduced as it became more popular.
The early film industry established, new material continued to be produced and storage rooms soon became full of highly volatile film reels. It can be argued that this was archiving in its earliest form, though there was never a focus on preservation. With storage spaces filled to the brim with films that were made, shown and forgotten about, some production companies began using them as makeshift pyrotechnics for explosions in their upcoming films. Others looted film reels for their silver, or simply threw them out due to a lack of storage space and maintenance proving expensive.
There were a few fires in the vaults of these early archives, and these eventually forced a change in attitude from storage for the sake of storage to actual film preservation. Although efforts were made to save these early works, The Film Foundation believes that around 90% of American silent films made before 1929 and 50% of American sound films made before the 1950s are lost. An estimate by Deutsche Kinemathek states that over 80% of silent films are lost. The true number of these perished films can and will never be quantified, but the general assumption is that more was lost than preserved.
Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull brought to light the issue of fading colour in film stock, a problem that was already known about but hadn’t been addressed properly. Alongside this, the 80s saw the rise of ‘vinegar syndrome’ – an issue unique to safety film. So while the focus shifted to preservation and efforts were made to rectify the mistakes of the past, new problems kept arising. The arrival of digital arguably means physical storage is less of an issue than in the past, albeit while bringing its own new challenges. But every few weeks or so, lost films are unearthed; light being shed on film canisters that haven’t been touched in decades, and work being done to get these materials back to their former glory.
Just as Decasia (dir. Bill Morrison, 2002) once served as an eerie reminder and commentary on the state of film preservation (or rather the state of film decay), a recent film by Charlie Shackleton, The Afterlight (2021), has again highlighted the importance of preservation and doubled-down on the fragility of film. The film exists as a sole 35mm print that will tour cinemas across the country, over time developing signs of decay and wear before one day being lost altogether.
Archives and Audiences
Currently, there are many national archives which deal with material in hopes of not just restoring films but also of adding the missing pieces and unlocking a greater understanding of the past. The Film Foundation is a great example of a collaborative effort between archives and studios to highlight films that would otherwise be lost and forgotten. Their World Cinema Project has made pieces of underappreciated cinema accessible to the mainstream. The BFI National Archive is another great example of a gargantuan archiving effort – from silent films, TV and cinema adverts, daily life in Britain from different eras, snapshots of the British colonies and much more – which looks to preserve materials and make a huge selection readily available to access, some even for free.
At Phoenix, in Leicester, we host archive screenings of local interest, such as Railways Remembered, Bygone Leicester via a collaboration with The Leicestershire Film Archive. Generally, these shows are sold out, with audiences consisting of varying demographics. These microcosmic examples reflect the importance of archiving at any scale. Interest in such initiatives from local arthouses further serves to prove that archives alone cannot shed light on why the work they do needs to be continued. It is only through public exhibition that audiences will become aware of the notion of archiving, preservation and restoration; and why these processes are necessary and important. It will often be the general public that finds the materials that expand and enrich archive collections.
In the past, I looked at archives with some scepticism, as I felt that more could be done to make this work accessible for audiences and more collaboration should be taking place to put archive film in the spotlight. But looking at how much is done, how much material is being made available, nationally and internationally, and the level of collaboration taking place between national archives and studios, it’s safe to say that film preservation is on the right track. Now the onus is on the exhibition sector to make use of these materials, expand audiences’ knowledge, raise awareness and realise the power of archive film.