New section about film archives?

[Simon Wyss]

Hello, all

 

The discussion among film technicians and archival people has reached an unknown point, namely that of the direction of the Bundesfilmarchiv, the film archive of Germany, having deciced to abandon everything photochemical. To me it is beyond comprehension that an institution that was created explicitly for the preservation of motion-picture film turns against its object proper.

 

Jean-Pierre Gutzeit, a very engaged film historian, living in Berlin and being best informed, has alarmed me. There is little I can do as a private person at this moment except letting the world know that the Holocaust is coming to Germany’s film past.

 

http://www.news.uzh.ch/de/articles/2014/wir-verlieren-unser-filmhistorisches-erbe.html

http://www.filmvorfuehrer.de/topic/22528-initiative-filmerbe-in-gefahr/page__st__20?do=findComment&comment=279316

 

I can provide translations, if desired.

 

Can we institute an archives section for these subjects?

 

From the bottom of my heart

Simon

[David Mullen ASC]

Do you mean you want a film archiving subforum category? You'd have to ask Tim Tyler...

[John E Clark]

I think it would be a good idea. The article mentions that as time passes, there will be fewer and fewer people who know/knew what the process was, and so, this feeds into the conservation and conversion to 'digital' form as an archive method, since how the film was processed and presented, will become unknown.

 

The article mentions a restoration of "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari"(1920), which most people who have taken any form of film history class have seen, at least in part... in strictly 'black and white', were as in the period the film may have been tinted, and projected with light that may differ from even modern Film film projector lamps.

 

I have just a sort of 'passing' interest, and have asked such questions as 'what did 2 and 3 stripe technicolor 'really' look like'... as I've never seen a 'new print' of any film that used such, and even if I had... it would have been over half a century ago... where does the time really go...