Dear Editor,

I am grateful to Harriet Harrison for the courteous attention paid to the questions raised in my guest editorial about the European Filmography (Journal of Film Preservation, #47, p.4).

With much of what she has to say I am bound to agree. For example, she is certainly right to insist that exchange formats are no substitute for the proper application of good cataloguing practice and that computers should never be thought of as providing an easy fix for underlying problems of organizing filmographic data. I would also agree in principle with her insistence on full cataloguing as a basis for filmographic science. If filmography is to aspire to the same status as bibliography then it has to base itself to a great extent on the meticulous examination and systematic description of existing texts. There are however certain practical and theoretical problems with a one-sided insistence on the extension of cataloguing practices into all forms of filmographic information gathering.

The European Filmography is not, and cannot be, a kind of ‘union catalogue' of film collections. It is a catalogue of films known to have been made and released in European countries - whether or not these films survive (catalogued or uncatalogued) in archives or other important collections. As such it is based on a variety of documentary sources, including censorship records, reviews (such as those in the Monthly Film Bulletin), and trade publications (such as annuals of national film production). It may be observed that these are secondary sources and not 100% reliable since the information they contain does not always correspond to the material evidence of surviving copies of the films.

There are, however, good reasons for proceeding on the basis of secondary documents rather than on catalogue information derived from examination of materials.

First of all, it is important in principle to establish which films are made (or can reliably be assumed to have been made) and what properties they appear to have had at the time of their original release. The people who should most welcome this information are in fact cataloguers themselves, since it enables them to assess where the copies they are examining are likely to belong in the historical tree relating to that particular work. It is also useful in tracing the history of the many, many films which are either lost or survive in places other than archival collections.

Secondly, it is a fact - regrettable no doubt, but nevertheless true - that many films are not in catalogued collections. Most countries have a system of statutory deposit for books and other published print materials, and the national libraries where these materials are deposited catalogue them with varying degrees of thoroughness. But in the case of films, very few European countries operate any equivalent system. Films enter and leave circulation without ever passing into the hands of a qualified archivist. Even films which do end up in archives often do so at the end of their commercial life, in versions which may be seriously downgraded compared with that in which they originally circulated. And the archives themselves, when they do get hold of the film, often do not have the staff to catalogue it properly. It is therefore a sheer practical necessity to rely on information like censorship records which may be the only place where one will find useful information like the length of a film at the time it was released to the public. (In this respect the abolition of censorship in some European countries has been little short of a filmographic disaster).

So while I agree with Harriet Harrison that there are scientific reasons for preferring to rely on information compiled as a result of cataloguing of archival materials, I would also argue that for knowledge to progress it is sometimes necessary to play a game of leapfrog and supply information not derived from cataloguing practices, in the belief that this information in turn will help the cataloguers in their own scientific work.

Finally a word on identification. I wrote in my article that the Filmography was structured around the assumption that three ‘identifying fields' - identifying title, nationality, and year - should normally be sufficient uniquely to identify a work. Harriet Harrison casts doubt on this - and quite rightly. Not only are there cases in which this will not prove to be the case, but even in those (the majority) where it does work, the choice of those three fields is in fact quite arbitrary. Part of the problem is that the information to be supplied in those fields is often itself uncertain.
Should the Flemish title of a Belgian film have priority over the French, or vice-versa? Should the German version of Pabst's film of Brecht's Threepenny Opera be given as Die Dreigroschenoper (which most people think it is) or as Die 3-groschenoper (which would appear to be correct)? Should a film that was trade- and press-shown in December 1956 but not released until January 1957 be assigned to the former or the latter year? What, in the case of many complicated European co-productions of recent years, actually constitutes nationality? In other words, even if the decision taken does produce a unique identification, it may still be unsatisfactory and require to be supplemented in various ways - by supplying two or more titles, two or more dates, or two or more accounts of the film's national make-up, or by bringing in information from other fields entirely.

There are also, I might add, many other objections, both practical and theoretical, to privileging year and nationality as identifiers of a film. To expound on these objections would take me deep into philosophical territory. These issues, and many others, are, however, the object of lively discussion among the filmographic team working on the Joint European Filmography, as it is now called. We are all, I think, learning a lot from the experience of trying to create the Filmography, and welcome further contributions to the debate.

Sincerely,

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
Project Director: Joint European Filmography

TRLuego del debate iniciado entre Geoffrey Nowell-Smith y Harriet Harrison en estas columnas (#47 y siguientes) acerca de la metodología que se debe aplicar para establecer la filmografía europea, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, director del proyecto, expone en una nueva carta abierta las razones por las que considera adecuado a) que se utilice como fuente de información documentos secundarios tanto como los tradicionales métodos directos de catalogación y b) que, a pesar del carácter arbitrario del método, es suficiente utilizar los tres criterios de identificación adoptados: título, nacionalidad y año de producción. El autor agradece todo comentario que le permita a él y a su equipo proseguir la elaboración de la filmografía europea.