Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Newsreels in Film Archives
edited by Roger Smither and Wolfgang Klaue
Flicks Books, Wiltshire, England, 1996, 224 pp., £35.
Those FIAF members who attended the 1993 Congress at Mo i Rana,
Norway, possess indelible memories of archive vaults built deep within a
mountain, of daylight lasting almost 24 hours a day, and of a particularly
stimulating symposium on the subject of “Newsreel Collections in Film
Archives.”
The symposium, organized by Roger Smither and Wolfgang Klaue,
offered a broad spectrum of subjects – historical, technical and practical
– dealing with the importance and development of newsreels within the
world of cinema and the cataloguing and preservation of newsreels
within the film archive framework. All of the wide-ranging papers presented
at that Symposium are provided in this volume – an enormous
resource for historians, researchers, and documentary filmmakers.
As seen in Bill Murphy’s article, the preservation of newsreels parallels
the preservation of film in general – there are regrettably few examples
which remain from the early period; there are serious complications in
acquiring the rights to these collections for the film archive which is preserving
the material; there are massive amounts of important historical
footage which must be transferred to safety film; and there is an increasing
interest in the commercial viability of newsreels as visual records of
history.
Henning Schou’s essay provides an analysis of archival issues dealing
with the conservation, restoration and reconstruction of newsreels. He
stresses the importance for film archivists to refrain from providing film
masters of newsreel materials for duplicating materials only. Of course,
this is also an important rule in film archiving in general. But it is crucial
when dealing with newsreels due to the demand from researchers and
producers of compilation documentary films. Schou’s in-depth discussion
also covers issues of rebuilding newsreels which might have been
cut up and used for stock shots, the importance of soundtrack preservation
for the archivist, problems of grading, image steadiness and film
processing.
Procedures and techniques of newsreel access and cataloguing are provided
in papers by Ann Baylis, Harriet Harrison, Carlos Roberto de
Souza, Olwen Terris and Roger Smither – all of whom participated in a
cataloguing exercise with regard to the same target newsreel: World
Pictorial News n° 277 (provided by the Imperial War Museum). Harriet
Harrison provides a fascinating view of the frustrations and complexities
of cataloguing – including standardization of terms and rules, dating of
the material, linguistic issues, cultural biases, and computerized subject
access methodologies.
Newsreels, which provided documentation of our visual history for
many decades, have found their importance in recent years as the
demand increases to produce more and more compilation documentary
69 Journal of Film Preservation / 53 / 1996
En 1993, a Mo i Rana, lors du
symposium sur les actualités
filmées, Roger Smither et
Wolfgang Klaue présentèrent un
large éventail d’approches - historique,
technique et pratique -
de l’importance des films d’actualités
dans le monde du
cinéma. L’ouvrage qui en résulte
présente les exposés d’une
trentaine d’intervenants et
devient ainsi une source importante
pour les historiens, les
chercheurs et les réalisateurs de
documentaires. Complément
visuel des sources de l’histoire,
de plus en plus sollicitées par
les producteurs de documentaire,
de télévision, les actualités
filmées sont devenues une
denrée ‘rentable’. L’archiviste
peut désormais compter sur
cette demande accrue qui
favorise la conservation, le catalogage
et l’accès de ce
matériel.
Editado por Roger Smither y
Wolfgang Klaue en Flicks
Books, Wiltshire, Gran Bretaña,
1996, 224páginas, £35.
En el simposio sobre los
noticiosos organizado en 1993
en Mo i Rana, Roger Smither y
Wolfgang Klaue presentaron un
amplio espectro de enfoques -
histórico, técnico y práctico - de
la importancia que reviste en el
mundo del cine los noticiosos.
La publicación a la que dió
lugar, presenta unas 30
ponencias y constituye una
fuente de documentación
importante para historiadores,
investigadores y realizadores de
documentales.
Como complemento visual de
las fuentes de la historia,
solicitado de más en más por
los productores de documentales
y las televisiones, el noticioso se
transformó en en un insumo
interesante para las cadenas de
televisión y por consiguiente en
una actividad ‘rentable’ para
los archivos. La mayor
demanda de este tipo de
material favorece, en fin de
cuenta, su conservación,
catalogación y acceso.
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