Talk presented by Ray Edmondson at the lecture/workshop on film archiving, Australia Centre, Manila, on 21 April 1994.

Building blocks are what I see as essential components of film archiving. To some degree they are sequential, to some degree simultaneous.

Let me first define three other terms - film archiving, preservation and access.

By Film archiving I mean: - the collecting of films and associated material for the purpose of preservation and permanent access in the broadcast sense - research, re-use, re-release. Here I focus specifically on archiving for cultural purposes - i.e. to ensure the preservation and accessibility of films and related material as part of the national cultural heritage. This always covers a larger ambit than archiving for commercial purposes, for much culturally important material can never “ pay its way ” commercially in preservation terms; it will never earn significant income.

By preservation I mean: all practices and procedures necessary to ensure continued access, with minimum loss of quality, to the visual or sonic content or other essential attributes of the films, related artefacts, documentation, etc. It includes such things as examination, repair, restoration, copying, surveillance and collection control systems as well as collection storage environments and methods.

By access I mean anything and everything which makes the preserved films and other material available to people: screenings, loans, re-use of excerpts, research, telecasting, release on video, exhibitions and displays and so on. Access may be initiated by the archive or by its users.

These definitions and building blocks are, by the way, equally applicable to the archiving of the other AV media - television, radio, video, sound recordings. But our subject today is film. So let me suggest twelve bricks in the edifice:

1. Good Films:

There needs to be something worth preserving! To many people it is NOT self evident that public money spent on preserving film is well spent! And I would suggest that not all films ARE worth preserving. Nor would such an objective ever be practical or feasible. The good films have to exist. Those who believe their survival is vital have to argue for them. The reasons - historical, artistic, commercial, practical - have to be convincing, for you must answer the question: how much would it really matter if Film X didn't survive? Yesterday's entertainment may be today's heritage, and cultural attitudes do change over time - but they need help and persistence.

2. Good People:

The corollary is that the advocates must be committed and persistent, for only in this way is the validity of argument demonstrated and tested and refined. You have to show you mean business - that the alternative of letting everything decay and disappear is not an option. The history of successful archives - and I could give examples - is built around the faith, vision, ability and commitment of a core of people who get their teeth into it for the long haul. Pioneering and building an archive may be satisfying but it can also be hard, unglamorous and risky - and it is never smooth. Yet it attracts and produces people of infectious enthusiasm and dedication.

3. Support Base:

To operate and to grow, an archive needs a developing support base of people and organisations. This may be drawn from among its clients and suppliers - producers, directors, students, private collectors, academies, researchers; from interested individuals in culture, politics, government, the media and other walks of life- and from the government and non-government institutions to which it relates. Through the careful promotion of its work, it may engage the passive or even active support of large sections of the public. Film touches everyone - everyone has their own special memories or associations with favourite films. You may be surprised at the depth of sentiment among the general public - once the realities of film survival are made clear - about the loss of their film heritage: because people often assume that “ they ” are looking after everything and don't know the facts.

An informed support base is the best answer to those who question the value or validity of an archive's work. And it helps to keep the archive itself honest and in touch with its constituency.

4. Ethics:

For an archive to function effectively, those who use it must be able to trust it completely, in such matters as honouring copyright, handling films with professional care, and providing fair and equitable service. A film archivist is often the repository of commercial confidences - as, for instance, when servicing the access requests of rival producers with rival projects - and must sometimes be an “ amnesty ” ground between private collectors and producers. Trust can be easily lost, even through quite innocent mistakes: equally, because it is so meaningful, it is a strength on which the work rests. It is developed over time, often through the credibility of the key people involved in the archive. Many archives have formal codes of ethics.

5. Skills:

Like other institutions, archives have to be managed well. They call on a range of skills which to some extent are unique to the field. These include collection management, cataloguing, film copying, restoration and handling, collection development, marketing and promotion, service delivery and exhibition. They include the capacity to think strategically and to set priorities knowledgeably. The skills of the entrepreneur are also welcome. Because, in any country, film archivists are relatively few in number, the availability of discrete formal training for the work is uncommon. Archivists develop their skills on-the-job, or by visiting other archives to observe, discuss, or be taught by their colleagues? A well-trained film archivist is often a well-travelled film archivist! And while, over time, there will be turnover of staff, a core of long term people with a corporate memory is essential.

Audiovisual archives differ from other collecting institutions in many ways because the nature of the material they deal with determines the approach taken to cataloguing, collection building, access and collection management. In the case of the latter, for example, the organising of the collection by status - into “ preservation ”, “ duping ” and “ access ” copies - indicates that not all copies of a film are equal and different categories of material are handled differently. Collections are managed according to inventory control rather than cataloguing precepts. Many of the principles of film archiving, in fact, are still unwritten - though followed in practice - because the field is relatively young. The first serious international effort to document a philosophy of AV archiving will take place this year.

7. Facilities:

The physical nature of film mandates the need for examination, handling and storage facilities that complement its nature: especially low temperature and low humidity storage facilities, particularly important in protecting film in tropical climates where acetate film is rapidly affected by colour fade and vinegar syndrome. This is where film archiving gets expensive, for there are no known shortcuts for this need. Broadly, the colder and drier the storage, the longer the films lasts. The hotter and wetter the storage, the sooner the film has to be copied if its survival is to be assured.

8. Money:

Film archives, like other institutions, must be paid for, and because their work is long term by nature, they need stable and secure funding. As non-profit organisations, it follows that this funding must come from government or similar sources, in the same way, and for similar reasons, as the funding for libraries, museums or document archives. It is possible, over time, to supplement this base funding with additional income from sponsors, international bodies like UNESCO, marketing or exhibition activity, or public donations. But they are only add-ons: government funding is a tangible expression of government priority, and sponsors are unlikely to support institutions which do not have the obvious support of their own governments.

9. Policies:

If they are to be accountable to the public, and especially to their constituencies, film archives need to have clear and publicly available policies to guide their activities, especially in the areas of collection development, preservation and access. These will explain what the archive does do, and why, as well as what it doesn't do (which is just as important). They are a frame of reference for staff as well as users.

10. Information:

A film archive develops many kinds of information related to the collection and to the general impact of the cinema on its country. These are important for public and staff information, for management of the collection, and for future planning. They include, for example, a catalogue of the collection, the accessioning, housekeeping and technical records of the collection, a national filmography, supporting documents (press clippings, posters, scripts, stills etc.) to add meaning and context for study and use of the collection. Increasingly, archives computerise much of this information so its use can be more flexible and widespread, and exchanged with other archives.

11. Coordination:

Because it is an expensive field, the total task of film preservation in any country is frequently shared among several institutions who agree with each other on their respective roles and responsibilities. But someone - usually the “ national film archive ” or equivalent - needs to play a coordinating and standard setting role; because it is likely to be the only one which can focus exclusively on film archiving in its own right and in all its aspects, and can pick up all the areas that others DON'T pick up.

12. Intellectual framework:

Last, but in some ways most important of all, for it underpins the other eleven building blocks. It's hard to define: the totality of thinking and research about the country's cinema, the assimilation and debating of the disciplines, worldview and philosophy of film archiving, itself, relating the work of the archive to the life and history of the society it documents. This is the fertile field in which the work of an archive grows and becomes meaningful and enriching beyond the mechanics of storing, managing and retrieving film reels. It's how you observe that a successful archive really does change the society, and the world of which it is part.

Lors d'un atelier sur l'archivage de films présenté au Centre Australien de Manille en avril 1994, l'auteur a comparé l'activité d'archivage de films à un édifice dont les trois piliers seraient l'archivage (collecte de matériel filmique à des fins de préservation et d'accès permanent dans un sen large), la préservation (les procédés nécessaires à garantir l'accès permanent avec une déperdition minimale de qualité) et l'accès aux collections (toute activité qui rend le matériel préservé disponible pour tout public). Pour compléter son image architecturale de l'archivistique, l'auteur propose douze sortes de briques devant intervenir dans l'édification: de bons films, des personnes idoines, une base institutionnelle solide, une déontologie, des capacités, des procédés et des règles, des conditions de stockage adéquates, de l'argent, une politique de préservation, de l'information, de la coordination ainsi que d'un cadre conceptuel approprié.

Los pilares del archivaje de películas

En un taller de archivaje de films organizado por el Centro Australiano de Manila en abril de 1994, el autor comparó a la actividad de conservación de films a un edificio cuyos tres pilares serían: el archivaje (la colecta de material fílmico con fines de preservación y de acceso en un sentido amplio), la preservación (los procedimientos necesarios para garantizar el acceso permanente con una pérdida mínima de calidad) y el acceso a las colecciones (toda actividad que permita el acceso de distintos tipos de público a las obras preservadas). Completando su imagen arquitectural del archivaje, el autor propone doce tipos de "buenos ladrillos" para la construcción de tal edificio: películas seleccionadas, el personal idóneo, una base institucional sólida, una ética profesional, capacitación, procedimientos y reglamentos, condiciones de estacionamiento adecuadas, recursos financieros suficientes, una política de conservación, buena información, coordinación y las bases conceptuales apropiadas.