Journal of Film Preservation N° 60/61 - FIAF

preservation plan, and it is just as necessary to get better archival
facilities. In December 1999 part of the archive (the total staff and
about a quarter of the film collection) moved to new temporary
facilities with climatic conditions better than we had ever had before
although not optimal for colour material. That is +5 c/ 35% RH. And
the cost for running this climate seems to be less than what we have
so far been paying to run the climate at the old facility we are still
using and which is far from the ANSI recommendations for film
storage. At the moment we are working for a permanent solution to
the film archive’s storage problems, and it is hoped that the ministry
will see both the cultural and economic long-term benefit of
establishing better storage facilities.
We have established procedures for accession of archival material for
new Danish films, both features, shorts and documentaries, for
technical control of the material and for cataloguing it. We will
improve our cataloguing, especially of shorts- and documentaries and
we are establishing a National Filmography, which will be available
via the internet in the first part of 2000. It will not be complete, but
will contain information on every Danish feature film produced. And
over the next years it will include shorts and documentaries as well,
and will hopefully be more and more complete.
Norway
The main task of any film archive is to preserve the national film
heritage, and ensure that it can be accessed now and in the future. In
Norway this work is shared by NB Rana (The National Library, Rana
Division, Nasjonalbiblioteket, avdeling Rana) and NFI (The Norwegian
Film Institute, Norsk Filminstitutt). These two institutions co-operate
on acquisition, preservation, and access of all Norwegian films and
film-related material. Our aim is to preserve all Norwegian audiovisual
material and to form a policy for film preservation as well as
being able to order the material according to priority.
NFI has built up a collection of film since 1957 through voluntary
deposit. Use of this material has been controlled by agreement with
the depositor. In 1992 the Sound and Image Archive of NB Rana was
established and storage facilities for nitrate and safety film were built.
In 1990 the Legal Deposit Act became law, this required the statutory
deposit of film and video (in addition to other types of published
material). This law sets severe limits for access to film and it has been
necessary to make agreements with the copyright holders so we can
make our film heritage available to everyone. This law is currently
under revision so we do not yet know if in the future we will be able
to make film available more easily – without affecting the rights of
the copyright holder.
Feature films
We have given priority to Norwegian feature films on nitrate stock,
this includes silent film, colour film and sound film. In addition we
6 Journal of Film Preservation / 60/61 / 2000