Jan-Christopher Horak

A. History

FIAF was founded in 1938 by the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Cinémathèque Française (Paris), the National Film Library (London) and the Reichsfilmarchiv (Berlin). After World War II FIAF expanded considerably with the founding of film archives in Lausanne, Prague, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Rochester, and Moscow. By 1959 FIAF consisted of thirty-three members.

Its founding statutes included one essential clause: "Rigorously excluded from the Federation are all institutions or organizations whatsoever which use their films for a commercial purpose." While this lofty goal has always played an important role in the statutes and a "decisive role in reassuring rights holders", according to the FIAF's 50th Anniversary publication, the exact interpretation of this clause remains open to considerable debate. When a reconstruction is sold to television for a broadcast, is this commercial or non-commercial? When films are loaned to commercial cinemas in either the country of origin or foreign countries, does this constitute a commercial distribution? When a film archive charges researchers as much as US$90 per hour to view films from the collection on their premises, does this constitute a service or a commercial activity?

If we look at the history of FIAF, then, as well as the original statutes, it becomes apparent that the founders of FIAF envisioned an organization of film archives that was divided within itself. On the one hand, a mini-United Nations atmosphere was to be created by allowing only one film archive per country to join FIAF. This rule was then immediately broken in the case of the United States with the admission of George Eastman House into FIAF, some years after the Museum of Modern Art had become a member. The reason for making this exception had to do with the way the organization really functioned: namely as a private club of film collectors and enthusiasts who had contrived to have their collections "nationalized" or had taken positions in national archives.

Members were "elected" into FIAF only if the old members decided that the archivist or film archive was worth of membership in this exclusive club. That this "club" should remain exclusive, was the foremost goal of some FIAF members.

Such exclusivity was indeed necessary, given the privileges of membership. According to the statutes, only full members had the "right" to vote in elections, or, more importantly, to borrow prints from other members, to request material for restorations, etc. (Collectors only gave their treasures to their friends!) It was thought that only FIAF members loved cinema enough to save it. Only FIAF members were qualified to protect the holy grail of film art. Only FIAF members were competent enough to screen films under proper cinematic conditions. Only FIAF members were willing to make sacrifices, beyond the crass commercial considerations of the film companies.

Certainly, attempts were made to modernize FIAF. With the creation of the Preservation Commission in 1961, not coincidentally shortly after the departure of the quintessential film collectors Henri Langlois (Paris) and James Card (Rochester), FIAF began to lobby at an international level for film preservation. In subsequent years other commissions were founded, a series of publications begun, and FIAF was recognized as an important international organization (B status) by UNESCO. By the 50th Anniversary, FIAF had admitted into its ranks fifty-three full members and twenty-five observers. With ever increasing pressure from film archives, especially local archives, to expand membership, the FIAF Congress in Athens in 1991 decided to restructure membership according to three categories: members, provisional members, and associate members. This solution, unfortunately, failed to satisfy either the traditionalists, hoping to keep FIAF small and exclusive, nor the expansionists who wish a super-FIAF made up of all audio-visual archives.

While the days of FIAF as a little club are long gone, the first generation of film archivists having (with a very few exceptions) passed into retirement or moved on to the big film archive in the sky, the debate over FIAF's goals, purposes, and structure continues. The discussions at the last Executive Committee in Tunis demonstrated that everyone intuitively understands that FIAF can no longer live in the past. The FIAF model as it once existed - a few lone archivist-cineaste-collectors fighting valiantly to preserve and exhibit cinema art in their own countries - is dead as a doornail. It is dead, because the archives themselves have been professionalized: collections have expanded, administrative practices instituted, preservation activities based on scientific research, huge computer catalogues organized. The budgets have expanded geometrically, as costs have escalated. Film archiving, and specifically film preservation, has become a "joint project," since no one can afford to preserve everything.

Yet the three-tier structure of FIAF membership, like the previous two-tier structure, ultimately fails to function, because the rules and statutes governing these structures are continually violated by individual members (names shall not be mentioned here!). If Associate Members of FIAF enjoy virtually the same privileges of membership as full members (other than voting and paying full membership fees), the question can be posed, why bother with the extra expense? Just for the right to vote?

Whither FIAF? Shall we have a small organization, dedicated exclusively to film art, film preservation, film history, or an all-encompassing multi-media organization, encompassing film, video, broadcast television, CD-ROM, holography, etc.

Strong arguments can indeed be made for keeping FIAF small, for maintaining a degree of exclusivity, for focusing on the collecting, preservation and presentation of film, i.e. cinema, as opposed to video, television or other new electronic moving image media.

The central mission of FIAF is still and will remain film preservation, film restoration, film exhibition of preserved films. If we embrace this fact, rather than attempt to relativize it by expanding this mission to include video and other moving image media, then we need to focus our attention. Film preservation means dealing with celluloid-based photographic moving images in 35mm, 16mm, 8mm and all other obsolete formats. It also means that we are dealing with a medium that has approximately a one hundred year history, which will in the foreseeable future come to an end. Sometime in the first half of the next century we can assume that film, i.e. cinema as we know it, will cease to exist. It will become an archaic art form with a history limited to the period 1890 to ca. 2025. Film archives and film museums would dedicate themselves to this medium the way museums of medieval or renaissance painting focus their efforts on those eras of art history. In other words, film archives would become institutions for the preservation of a specific history, without any contemporary mission.

The importance of even such a limited mission should not be underestimated. The field of players in the "old film business" has expanded immensely, i.e. film archives are no longer alone in their quest for old films. Commercial interests who once stood by the sidelines, no longer concerned with films whose commercial value had been reduced to a liability for storage and preservation, now frantically search for their lost catalogues. They hoard material, ever conscious of the fact that every last strip of film, no matter how old or how obscure, may have a surplus value, through video, satellite, cable or CD-ROM exploitation. Collectors with large collections of "ephemeral film", i.e. industrials, newsreels, amateur footage, TV footage, have themselves become professional stock shot operations. Film studios and producers scramble to find pre-print on the films they once burned with abandon. Cable companies frantically search for material. In such a landscape, FIAF archives could and should return to their original mission to protect and safeguard the national film patrimony, regardless of any commercial considerations.

Secondly, it needs to be emphasized that the project of film preservation and restoration is far from completed. I would venture to speculate that the great majority of films presently housed in the archives of FIAF members are not archivally secured. It is estimated that in the United States alone, nearly 35 million meters of nitrate film remains unprotected. When we begin to scratch the surface of the acetate era, when we begin to think about color preservation, when we consider the many "obsolete" wide-screen formats of the 1950s, then the work of FIAF is far from complete. The preservation of only the first 100 years of cinema will take at least until the middle of the next century, maybe longer.

Thirdly, the point made by many traditionalists, that film and cinema are a unique media, hardly to be compared with video, needs to be taken seriously. The act of watching a film in a cinema is a unique experience, the preservation of which (the experience, not only the film) is a primary cultural responsibility of all FIAF archives. If the day comes when commercial cinemas only screen films electronically, then it will still be the goal and purpose of FIAF to screen films as celluloid-based films. Just as it is the purpose of those archives that can legally do so to screen nitrate prints, since the experience of watching nitrate is qualitatively different than watching polyester.

C. Returning to the Roots

Do such speculations mean that we close off membership to any new archives and organizations? No. It does however presuppose that the new candidate members be primarily focused on the film preservation project, whether at a national or a local level. It also presupposes that membership in FIAF be a commitment to film preservation on film. Those archives that are now "preserving" films digitally or electronically would not be fulfilling the mandate of FIAF.

This means that the rules and statutes of FIAF need to be taken much more seriously than they presently are. It also means that those activities that have become essential for any film archive operation, in order to generate income (listed above in A), need to be standardized and regularized through the FIAF statutes and rules. Much more will need to be done to advertise the film preservation work of the archives.

It should also mean that we no longer differentiate between members, provisional members and associates, if the archive in question makes a primary commitment to the activity of film preservation, collecting and exhibition.

Membership status and fee structure should no longer be connected, rather fees should be uniform for all members. Those archives unable to pay fees in a given year would have the option of working out a deal with the FIAF administrator.

If we decide to embrace the traditionalist view of FIAF, we must take another look at the statutes and recall their original purpose and apply them universally and fairly. Only then can FIAF's original mission be truly fulfilled.

"La mission première pour la FIAF est et restera la préservation, restauration, et projection de films préservés. Une fois que le film cessera d'exister (vers 2025 selon l'auteur) il deviendra une forme archaïque d'art et, alors, les musée du film deviendront des institutions consacrées à la préservation d'une histoire particulière, sans mission contemporaine, à l'instar d'un musée d'art médiéval ou de peinture de la renaissance".

L'importance d'une telle mission ne doit pas être sous-évaluée. La preuve? Même, et surtout, l'industrie et les affaires s'intéressent à chaque bout de film.

D'autre part, il faut rappeler que nous sommes loin d'avoir préservé et restauré le patrimoine qui nous reste. Le travail de la FIAF est donc loin d'être épuisé. La préservation des 100 premières années prendra encore 50 ans, sinon plus.

Finalement, si l'on accepte que film et cinéma constituent un médium unique, il incombera aux archives du film de projeter des films lorsque le reste du monde sera passé à la projection électronique.

Pour conclure, Jan Christopher Horak n'exclut pas l'admission de nouveaux adhérents à la FIAF, à condition qu'ils soient engagés dans des projets de préservation de films. (Il préconise l'abolition des catégories ainsi que l'application d'un tarif unique).

En revanche, selon le point de vue traditionaliste, seraient exclues les archives qui "préservent" des films par des méthodes digitalisées ou électroniques ne remplissant pas les conditions définies dans le mandat de la FIAF. Il suffirait pour cela de prendre les statuts et règles actuelles beaucoup plus au sérieux qu'elles ne le sont actuellement.

Un punto de vista tradicionalista.

En una revista histórica introductoria, el autor señala que, luego de su fundación en 1938 y habiendo transcurrido la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la Federación contaba con 33 miembros en 1959. Esto significa que, veinte años después, aún era un "club" de coleccionistas que habían logrado hacerse "nacionalizar" o cuyos dirigentes se habían implantado en los archivos nacionales.

Un nuevo miembro sólo era "elegido" a la FIAF si los antiguos miembros consideraban que era digno de entrar en el "club". La condición de ingreso predominante era la exclusividad de sus miembros.

Para su 50° aniversario, la FIAF contaba 53 miembros y 23 observadores entre sus rangos. La creación en 1991 de la categoría de los "asociados" no satisfizo ni a los tradicionalistas (que desean una FIAF pequeña y exclusiva) ni a los expansionistas (que propugnan una super-FIAF compuesta por todos los archivos audiovisuales). ¿Porqué, en definitiva, proteger el estatuto de miembro?, se pregunta Horak.

En realidad, el autor aún piensa poseer argumentos fuertes para preferir una FIAF pequeña, que goze de una cierta exclusividad, dedicada a la colecta, preservación y proyección de películas, concentrada en el cine, resistiendo al video, a la televisión y demás medios electrónicos.

"La misión primera de la FIAF es, y será siempre, la de preservar, restaurar y proyectar películas de cine restauradas. Cuando deje de existir (por el año 2025, según el autor), el cine se convertirá en una forma de arte arcáica y los museos del cine serán instituciones consagradas a la preservación de una historia particular, sin misión contemporánea, como lo son hoy los museos de arte medieval o de pintura del Renacimiento".

Tal misión tiene su importancia. La prueba es que la industria y el comercio se interesan por cada fragmento de película. Por otra parte, nadie ignora que aún no hemos preservado todo lo que nos queda. Mucho trabajo espera a la FIAF. La preservación de los primeros 100 años aún nos llevará, por lo menos, unos 50 más.

Finalmente, si se acepta el carácter único de la película y el cine, mientras que el resto del mundo habrá pasado a la proyección electrónica, le tocará a los museos proyectar los films en su forma originaria.

El autor no excluye la admisión de nuevos adherentes a la FIAF, a condición que estén comprometidos en proyectos de preservación de películas (también prefiere la abolición de las categorías y la aplicación de una tarifa única). En cambio, se opone a la admisión de archivos que "preservan" películas por métodos digitales o electrónicos que no cumplen con los requisitos contenidos en el mandato de la FIAF. Alcanzaría, concluye , con tomar los estatutos y reglas en vigencia mucho más en serio que hasta ahora.