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Valencia
Generalitat Valencia

Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, the film archive of the regional government of Valencia, was founded by an act of the Valencian government on January 8th 1985. It first began regular operations, however, in April 1988, when it was officially inaugurated at its current headquarters in the Rialto building facing the city's main square, Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

Not many years have elapsed since then, and although some of the Archive's aims have not yet been achieved, it is with pride that we can confirm that we are one of the most firmly consolidated film archives in Spain. Perhaps our most important step forward was the inauguration of our own storeroom equipped with state-of-the-art technology for the attainment of temperature and humidity stability enabling us to achieve optimum conditions for the preservation of the cinematographic materials which have now been recovered by Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana. These materials now measure over five million meters.

They are films which have been retrieved from oblivion thanks to several revival campaigns implemented by our Archive, resulting in the discovery and recuperation of long-lost films such as L'oeuf du sorcier by G. Méliès, Land O'Lizards by F. Borzage, or Il processo Clémenceau by A. de Antoni, which features the first screen appearance of Vittorio de Sica in the role of the young Clémenceau.

The film collection now restored by Filmoteca Valenciana continues to grow in size and cinematographic scope, including a wide variety of genres. Such restoration work forms part of the most difficult tasks in our efforts to ensure that future generations will derive benefits from yesterday's cinematographic materials. On the one hand there are technical problems arising from the state of preservation or lack of preservation in which the original materials are sometimes found, and on the other hand, there are also frequent problems involved in determining the exact filmographic data involved. Practically all restoration work we have undertaken involves nitrocellulose material, as the film base and its state of preservation are the determining factors in our selection criteria, apart from the historical interest of the material. This is why there is so much variety in the restorations done by Filmoteca Valenciana, with the spectrum including short films, full-length feature films, documentaries and fiction films, advertising reports, and other types of productions from Valencia, Spain and abroad.

Of the entire collection, special significance is given to the restorations of Castigo de Dios (H. Negre, 1927) and Moros y Cristianos (M. Thous, 1926). Both of these presented serious technical problems whose complete resolution allows us to enjoy these early motion pictures today. They stand as landmarks in the restoration of the Valencian film heritage because they are two essential works allowing viewers to understand the evolution of Valencian cinematography during the nineteen twenties. The negatives of Castigo de Dios had suffered dramatic shrinkage. It was also necessary to adapt the mechanics of our present-day reproduction devices to the small format of the original material, which underwent a painstaking development process so that the entire film could be viewed today. Some of the sequences were practically impossible to view. As for Moros y Cristianos, the Filmoteca acquired the negative and the work prints together with the script, the producer's annotations for the credits and his ideas on coloring, but the film itself had not been completed. A careful comparison of materials used then and those available today, plus a faithful observance of the producer's ideas, were the basic principles serving as the guide to the restoration of this work, which successfully concluded the labors of Thous initiated sixty-eight years before. Continuing along this line, and making yet another approach to the very problematic subject of restoration, Filmoteca Valenciana has recently had to face a new challenge consisting of the restoration of a film for which we have all the materials but which has no known script. The only thing we do know is the plot, the book on which the film was based, and a few sparse testimonies from the past. We are referring to El monje de Portacoeli, by Romón Orrico Vidál, 1921. In addition to the technical and documentary problems mentioned above, we now have an ethical problem as well.

Completing the line-up of Valencian films awaiting restoration and/or recovery is an ample group of documentaries which provide information on our urban and our geographical environments, our economic activities, our fiestas. The materials to be restored are distribution copies which have suffered grave lesions due to usage (scratches, loss of sprocket holes), or they are incomplete or lacking credits or have simply been badly stored and preserved in the past. Also of note is the fact that they also show how difficult it was to achieve quality photographic standards due to the technical limitations of the epoch. They are films for which we can find no other information except that which is given by the images and sounds themselves, yet in combination with a well-stocked palette of amateur films, they have served to make the name of the Valencian film archive more widely known, thanks to the collaboration agreement we have signed with the regional television station, Canal 9, which has been airing a television program called Images from the Past, attracting a large audience and placing the sometimes silent and secret, yet characteristic, work of the Valencian Filmoteca in today's limelight.

As a result of our efforts in the field of film recovery, we have also been successful in locating material for a number of foreign films whose recovery was also placed high on our agenda due to their unquestionable historic value. L'oeuf du sorcier or the brief Secuencias de animación presented numerous problems due to shrinkage and the fragility of the former, difficulties which were also characteristic of the comic film series restored by us under the appellation of the "French Primitives" and due to the need to reproduce the colors of the latter. Danza serpentina was also lacking in color, in addition to the difficulties presented by the adaptation of the mechanics to a film with circular sprocket holes.

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Il cappello prezioso is a good example of a turn-of-the-century comic Italian film, and Il processo Clémenceau, restored within the framework of the Lumière Project, was one of the most memorable successes of the Italian diva Francesca Bertini. This film presented numerous difficulties during the restoration phase, and it was only with the help of two copies in a state of advanced deterioration that it was possible to find the necessary footage to recompose the entire picture, with its complex chromatics capable of trying the best of nerves. Sposa nella morte completes the restoration work we have done in the field of Italian filmography.

As for German creations, these are currently represented by the 1929 R. Meinert film called Masken, which belongs to the age when the silent film industry was being bombarded with sound. With only one roll of colored nitrate belonging to F. Lang's Der Spinnen, we have now begun work, in collaboration with the Berlin Kinemathek, on seeking and locating more colored materials belonging to the same film in order to complete restoration work.

Our work on American films is represented by the complex restoration job we undertook on Frank Borzage's Land O'Lizards, done in collaboration with the Spanish Filmoteca. In this process, we were confronted with the arduous task of identifying film footage which had been mixed up, and reordering abundant gaps in continuity. As with L'oeuf du sorcier, restoration was done using the only copy which had been located in the entire world. We also collaborated in the restoration of The Better 'Ole (Charles Reisner, 1926), which was done by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and presented at the FIAF Congress last year. At present we are planning to restore The Devil's Claim, a film starring Sessue Hayakawa, thanks to which we are now entering into contact with Japanese film archives.

Another of our attainments is El naufrago de la calle de la Providencia, directed by Arturo Ripstein and Rafael Castanedo in Mexico in 1971, the only film in which Luis Buñuel ever appeared and which even Ripstein himself thought had been lost. Filmoteca Valenciana possesses the only surviving copy of this film, as far as we know, in 16mm, donated by Castanedo to Ricardo Muñoz Suay, director of our archive. The copy was extensively damaged through use, which is why we opted for restoring it and blowing it up to 35mm, with which excellent results have been achieved.

In 1996 we have begun restoration work on Don Juan Tenorio (Alejandro Perla, 1953) using a complete positive copy in nitrate and in a fairly good state of preservation. This is the filming of a theatrical play performed by the finest Spanish actors of the day, and both the set and the wardrobe were designed by none other than Salvador Dalí.

This information was intended to serve as a presentation to all our colleagues belonging to the FIAF, and may it serve to let all members know that we are open to any type of collaboration with them, at any time as is only proper and fitting among colleagues belonging to the same federation. We are a young film archive, that is true, but we are all the more enthusiastic about our work, perhaps for that reason. The work we have mentioned here is just the beginning.

Elena Vilardell


Les Archives du Film du Gouvernement Régional de Valencia ont été fondées par décret le 8 janvier 1985. Les activités débutèrent plus tard dans le bâtiment du Rialto, sur la place de l'Hôtel de Ville.

L'une des étapes importantes de l'histoire de la Filmoteca fut l'installation moderne du centre d'archivage de films, réunissant les conditions de contrôle de température et d'hygrométrie optimales pour la préservation de matériel cinématographique.

De nombreux films de toute sorte, (longs et courts métrages de fiction, documentaires, films publicitaires et éducatifs ainsi que des productions provenant de Valencia, d'Espagne et de l'étranger), totalisant plus de 5 millions de mètres de pellicule, ont pu être sauvés de l'oubli et rendus disponibles pour les générations futures.

Parmi les travaux de restauration conduits par la Filmoteca Valenciana, il convient de mentionner Castigo de Dios (H. Negre, 1927), Moros y Cristianos (M. Thous, 1926), El monje de Portacoeli (R. Orrico Vidal, 1921) et la contribution de la Filmoteca à la restauration d'oeuvres étrangères, telles que L'Oeuf du sorcier, Doña serpentina, Il capello prezioso, Il processo Clémenceau, Sposa nella morte, Masken, Land O'Lizards, El náufrago de la calle de la Providencia (où apparaît L. Buñuel) ou encore, Don Juan Tenorio (A. Perla, 1953).


Los Archivos de cine del Gobierno Regional de Valencia fueron fundados por decreto el 8 de enero de 1985. Las actividades se iniciaron más tarde, en el Rialto, frente a la plaza del ayuntamento. Una de las etapas importantes de la historia de la Filmoteca fué la instalación del centro de archivos del cine en locales que reúnen las condiciones técnicas óptimas para la preservación de material cinematográfico.

Numerosas películas de todo tipo, provenientes de la región, de España y del extranjero, totalizando más de 5 millones de metros de celuloide, han podido ser rescatadas para el público de hoy y las generaciones futuras.

Entre los proyectos de restauración de la Filmoteca Valenciana, cabe mencionar Castigo de Dios (H. Negre, 1927), Moros y Cristianos (M. Thous, 1926), El monje de Portacoeli (R. Orrico Vidal, 1921) así como su contribución a la restauración de películas extranjeras, tales como L'Oeuf du sorcier, Doña Serpentina, Il capello prezioso, Il processo Clémenceau, Sposa nella morte, Masken, Land O'Lizards, El náufrago de la calle de la Providencia (en la que aparece don Luis Buñuel) o aún, Don Juan Tenorio (A. Perla, 1953).