Journal of Film Preservation N° 60/61 - FIAF

1987 the institute’s technicians cooperated with some universities,
local and foreign science institutions to commence a research project
on the mould affected film and on how to overcome this problem.
The researchers identified types of moulds and conducted
experiments to kill them. The tests to identify moulds were
conducted in Hanoi Pharmacy University and in Prague Film
Institute (Czechoslovakia). Tests using some chemicals to wipe out
moulds were undertaken at the Vietnam Film Institute with two
requirements, firstly to quickly kill all types of moulds on films and
secondly that chemicals should not cause any changes chemically or
physically on film, namely color fading, film deformation and peeling
off of the Gelatin layer etc.
The research project was approved in 1991 with the following
outcomes:
- There were usually 35 species of 13 mould branches living on
films in Vietnam. There were mainly moulds of 2 branches:
Aspergillus and Penicillium.
- To kill moulds, Paraformaldehyde and Bifenyl can be used for
black and white and color films respectively. They are in solid
forms, such as in flour or in a pill with an amount of about 0.5 to
1/1000 the weight of film. Specifically, a bag of 1-2 grams of
chemicals can be used for a 35 mm film reel of 300 meters long.
The anti-mould process is undertaken as follows:
A bag of chemicals is inserted into each film can. After 20-25 days,
moulds are killed and their color is turned to dark grey. Then films
are cleaned in a film washing machine to wash out all moulds. After
washing, films are then moved to clean cans together with a bag of
the aforementioned chemicals to prevent the remaining mould germs
from developing. The clean films are then preserved in the film vault.
Through observation we have discovered that moulds don’t return
after 4-5 years. However, in order to reach a high safety level, 4 years
after treatment, we insert the chemicals again to all films. Up to now,
after nearly 9 years of implementing this process, almost 80,000
films in our collection have no longer been affected by moulds.
Vinegar Syndrome and methods to overcome it:
Previously, there were several hundreds of Nitro Cellulose film reels
in our film collection, which were gradually transferred to Acetate
Cellulose film and now all films in the collection are Acetate. In the
mid 1980’s, hundreds of films in the national collection were affected
by vinegar syndrome. Although these films were identified, there was
no solution to tackle the problem. In 1991, the Institute developed a
research project on vinegar syndrome to study the nature of the
phenomenon and to find ways to overcome it. In the first step
(1991-1992) people conducted quantitative and qualitative analysis
of vinegar left over on films. Some small pieces of vinegar-affected
film were cut and put into distilled water, this solution was then
analyzed through methods such as: Titration, Infra-red Spectroscope,
37 Journal of Film Preservation / 60/61 / 2000
L’héritage cinématographique national
au Vietnam
Le Dr. Ngo hieu Chi évoque les difficultés
auxquelles l’archive du film vietnamienne
est confrontée dans la préservation de son
héritage cinématographique, devenue une
priorité depuis quelques années. En dehors
des restrictions budgétaires, les deux
éléments le plus menaçants sont le syndrome
du vinaigre et la moisissure qui nécessitent
des traitements immédiats. Une enquête
réalisée en 1990 révèle que 90% des films de
la collection sont affectés par la moisissure.
Une description des différentes méthodes de
traitement des deux problèmes ainsi que
leurs avantages et inconvénients est
présentée. La méthode de tamis moléculaire
est maintenant utilisée comme procédé de
prévention pour tous les films de la
collection dans un effort de retardement du
développement du syndrome du vinaigre et
de la moisissure.
Néanmoins, le meilleur moyen de préserver
l’héritage cinématographique reste la
restauration, ce qui rend les films utilisables
pour la projection. Cette méthode fut
adoptée en 1998 lors de l’acquisition de
nouvel équipement de restauration, qui
fonctionne par transfert sur cassette vidéo
permettant de réparer les images
digitalement, avant de les retransférer sur
film négatif, vidéo ou disque laser.