As Grierson put it, the newsreel "is just a speedy snip-snap of some utterly unimportant ceremony. Its skill is in the speed with which the babblings of a politician (gazing sternly into the camera) are transferred to fifty million relatively unwilling ears in a couple of days or so". Grierson's caustic Scottish wit notwithstanding, the comment betrays both the documentarian's bias and his blind spot, implying incorrectly that newsreels are neither visually sophisticated nor aesthetic, damning them as "talky", a kind of "canned theatre" for celluloid reality.

Another realist, Siegfried Kracauer, called newsreels, "almost devoid of creative aspirations," even while emphasizing their credibility vis à vis reality. Unfortunately, newsreels have often been perceived as little else, even by film archives. The newsreel's value is measured in terms of its use as historical evidence, as a record of real persons, things and events, as a visual imprint of time.

Certainly, this is one of its use values, but as Mo i Rana also demonstrated, they are also filled with visual pleasures. Even the dullest newsreels seemed to fascinate the eye, revealing the mysteries of faces long dead, of clothes now out of fashion, of social rituals near forgotten, of landscapes sunk in the sea of progress, and, oh yes, of politicians eternally silent. Organized by Wolfgand Klaue and Roger Smither, the stated goal of the Symposium was to bring together film archivists and users of newsreel holdings, in order to discuss the state of preservation, access and historiography. The latter group includes, on the one hand, academic historians who see in newsreels a visual source of historical evidence for the production of articles and books. On the other, are those filmmakers making compilation films who utilize newsreels as a resource for cheap footage in their film and television productions. Both categories of researchers rely on the ability of film archivists not only to provide preservation and access, but also the filmographic date to gain access to such material. While this goal may not have been achieved, at least according to Wolfgang Klaue's closing statement, most participants agreed that something more than a first step had been taken.

Admittedly, the symposium got off to a somewhat slow start with a series of lectures on the location of significant newsreel collections. Except for the extremely entertaining Norwegian newsreels from the silent period, unfortunately shown at the wrong speed and aperture, much of the information could have been better communicated in a bibliogtraphic hand-out. The second morning session, however, took off with a lecture on French actualités, from the Frères Lumière to Josef Rosenthal, a pioneer who documented virtually every war and revolution in the cinema's first twenty years, from the Balkans to Cuba, Salonicki to Vladivostok. Next, film historian Bert Hogenkamp presented a very informative lecture, focusing on the Dutch newsreel scene, in particular, the reception of newsreels in Holland, as reflected in the contemporary press. He noted, as did a number of subsequent speakers from a host of other countries, that nationally produced newsreels tended to avoid direct political reportage (a function of censorship), preferring soft news and entertainment. This tendency led left-wingers in the Netherlands to reedit commercial newsreels, utilizing Vertovian techniques to construct a dialectic critique of bourgeois mas maedia, a practice also instituted by Film and Photo League artists in the United States and Germany. The concentration on the proverbial dogs, children, and royal entourages earned newsreels the reputation of being trivial, a situation which only began to change in Europe after World War II and the complete propagandization of newsreels through the Nazis. If, as several speakers noted, the German Fascists were reduced to showing - with the lights on and spies in the audience to monitor subversive behavior - their newsreels of Aryan armies marching from one Endlösung to the next, in order to ideologically indoctrinate their viewers, then, the Hungarian Communists began their propagandist efforts no less subtly by directly addressing children.

In the Stalinist newsreels of the 1950s, Young Pioneers filled the screen, smiling, happy, freshly washed faces, newly liberated from the oppression of class society, now joyfully learning to exterminate ground-hogs, the enemies of the workers and peasant state. For some who had lived through it, it was a horror film, rather than a newsreel.

Janet McBain's lecture on Scottish topicals introduced another phenomena, echoed in subsequent talks, namely the production of local newsreels. Produced by independent cinema owners as a form of advertising film, many Scottish newsreels documented local events as an excuse to depict as many local inhabitants as possible, thus constructing a ready-made cinema audience, keen on literally seeing itself on the screen. These three to five minute newsreels were shown between the "big" newsreel, distributed nationally or even internationally and the feature film, and were often financed by shopkeepers whose local establishments were prominently displayed in individual shots. Divorced from their contemporary value as cinema bait, these local newsreels are now an invaluable document for students of "history from below", revealing social history, mores, and behavior, a fact noted by speakers from Norway, Denmark, and Ireland. The question of national identity came up again and again, especially in the lectures by speakers from Ireland (Sunniva O'Flynn), England, Norway (Bjorn Sorenson), Australia and Israel. The fact was that international newsreels, in particular those produced by the American and French giants, Fox-Movietone, Warners, Paramount, Gaumont and Pathé, often eliminated national difference, while at the same time dominating local screens through control of exhibition chains.

Clyde Jeavons' two-part lecture/film presentation on the wholly British "Topical Budget", was particularly enlightening in this respect, not only because his selection and comments revealed a droll English sense of humor, but also because of their excellent condition and high visual quality, belying the widely held notion that newsreels are grainy, grey and gross. Thanks to sloppy filmmakers of latter day compilations, the public now associates washed-out and contrasty images of fast moving persons and things with "old newsreels". The real beauty of the "Topicals" naturally begs questions regarding preservation and screening conditions. In fact, the newsreels preserved by the BFI's National Film Archive, made from original 35mm pre-prints and projected at correct silent speeds were a delight to the eye, a comment that unfortunately could not be made for all the newsreel presentations at Mo i Rana.

The second day of the symposium also witnessed an extremely productive session on cataloguing newsreels for film archives databases. While a FIAF standard for cataloguing newsreels has admittedly yet to be realized, the discussions made clear that such work was extremely labor intensive, given the necessity to identify people, places and events often left unnamed on the newsreel's soundtrack. The FIAF cataloguing commission had gone to great lengths to demonstrate this point, sending a reel of "World Pictorial News" to a number of film archives who then catalogued it, each in their own fashion. One experienced cataloger admitted to me, spending seven hours cataloguing the "test newsreel". While there were differences in technique, emphasis, and organization of data, the depth of information, achieved through detailed, independent research, surprised many.

At the same time, it was realized that only through such cataloguing on the part of the archives will newsreels be useful to future users.

Jan-Christopher Horak

Le symposium de Mo i Rana sur les actualités filmées a peut-être été l'un des plus réussis de ces dernières années. Certes, la lumière grisâtre du jour (et de la nuit) quasi polaire, la rareté des occasions de diversion et le prix exhorbitant de la bière, contribuèrent à rassembler les participants dans le cinéma municipal de Mo et à valoriser un genre souvent négligé: les actualités. Mais il y avait plus que ça. Organisé par Wolfgang Klaue et Roger Smither, enrichi par l'apport de nombreux exposés de grande qualité, le symposium a fait progresser de manière sensible le débat entre archivistes et utilisateurs au sujet de la conservation, l'accès et l'historiographie. Mo i Rana fut aussi une occasion de découvrir les qualités visuelles et esthétiques, souvent méconnues, du genre ainsi que l'importance de la restauration et du catalogage pour saisir son importance.

El simposio sobre los noticiarios, Mo i Rana,. 1° y 2 de junio de 1993

El simposio de Mo i Rana sobre actualidades fílmicas ha sido quizás uno de los más logrados de los últimos años. La luz grisácea de los días (y las noches) casi polares, la escasez de diversiones y el precio exorbitante de la cervez contribueyeron sin duda a juntar en el cine municipal de Mo a los congresistas y a valorez un género a menudo menospreciado: los noticiarios.

Pero hubo más que eso. Organizado por Wolfgang Klaue y Roger Smither, gracias al aporte teórico y práctico de numerosos oradores, el simposio ha hecho progresar de manera sensible el debate entre archivistas y utilizadores en materia de conservación, acceso e historiografía.

Mo i Rana fué también buena oportunidad para descubrir tanto las cualidades visuales y estéticas, generalmente ignoradas, de las películas del género como para subrayar la importancia d su preservación y catalogación.